This past week following the Indiana primary, America watched Donald Trump become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. With Ted Cruz and John Kasich suspending their campaigns, we are left to continue hearing "Make America Great Again". Aside from your political views and your opinion of Donald Trump, you have to admit his slogan sounds pleasing right off the bat. Amidst the growing global terroristic attacks, police brutality, and immigration, believing in an individual that thinks they can achieve bringing America back to the American Dream is quite comforting. Actually, if you break this idea down into three words: "Make America Great", it would be quite comforting for everyone. The four word phrase doesn't bring prosperity and equality for America as a whole, it only appeals to your middle class to upper class white American man. So it leads me to question Trump's mantra. How can America be great again, if it has never been great?
The America that I am living in and the America being sugarcoated in U.S. history textbooks, doesn't show America ever being a great and honorable country. Since the arrival of Europeans to present-day America, problems have arose creating the first division in America among the first settlers and Native Americans. Not only did the first settlers create division, they created oppression, spread diseases, and eventually kicked the Native Americans out of their own land via the creation of the Indian Removal Act, which they had the nerve to call it Manifest Destiny. We can claim this period of time to be "America: Land of the Free (from Europe's religious intolerance) and Home of the Brave (successfully finessing the Native American's land)"
Let us fast forward to the twentieth century...
The U.S. Public Health Service conducted the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment in 1932 on approximately four hundred black sharecroppers with tertiary syphilis, or "bad blood" as many of the doctors called it. In addition, over two hundred black men with no links to syphilis were made the control group in the experiment. These men were crookedly manipulated to be treated for the disease by the government advertising to the subjects free medical care. The theory of whites and blacks suffering from syphilis differently led these blacks to become laboratory animals. When the first cure of syphilis--penicillin--was discovered in the 1940s, they were denied the medication. As stated by one of the Tuskegee doctors, “We have no further interest in these patients until they die." leading many to believe the study to be an "ill-conceived experiment". As you can imagine, hundreds died from complications, and only a few died directly from syphilis. By 1997 in an apology delivered by President Clinton, there were only eight remaining survivors.
After Executive Order 9066 was signed into action by President Franklin Roosevelt, Japanese Americans residing on the Pacific coast were forced to moved into high-security internment camps. The attack on Pearl Harbor resulted in the American government to become xenophobic towards this nationality. Roughly 120,000 were placed in internment camps to work for $5.00/day. The government had high hopes of the interns being able to sufficiently produce their own food on arid soil, so they would not have to distribute any additional money to them. After World War II ended, they were released back into America only to find that they faced hostility by majority of the West Coast. In 1988, Congress apologized for the action by rewarding the surviving detainees $20,000 each after a movement seeking reparations and redress. As if a reparation could suffice for the physical and mental damages endured by the survivors.
These events in American history are to name a few of the detestable actions of the American government. Granted, I find it to be such a privilege to live in a democratic society, nonetheless, agreeing with "Make America Great Again" makes you a part of the bigger problem--continuing to give the upper hand to the ideal white American male. So Donald Trump (and his followers), I ask what do you mean when you say (and agree with) "Make America Great Again"? As for minorities, immigrants, females, middle class citizens, and lower class citizens, we are still waiting for a clear-cut and appropriate justification behind your infamous mantra.
