It is something we have seen on a daily basis since the start of the 2016 presidential election. "Make America Great Again." Donald Trump has coined the slogan since 2012 and now can be seen on posters, commercials, billboards, shirts, buttons, and most famously, baseball hats. Originally created in 1979, and used in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign about the issue of the worsening economy. With Election Day happening this week, I am plagued by the repercussions of this slogan, by the ideals supported by this phrase. My one question to Trump and his supporters is, what specific time period are we returning to? At what point was America truly great?
Are we traveling back to the time where women had no rights to vote or had control over their own bodies? Even further back, when women could not own their own property, make contracts, and were legally bound to their husbands. A time when we had women hurting themselves with wire hangers and hypothermia because they did not have control over their bodies or access to oral contraceptives. When a woman could get fired for being pregnant or trying to report sexual harassment in the workplace. A time when a woman’s place was only in the home, not the corporate world, doctor’s office, military, or courtroom.
Are we traveling back to the time when African Americans were ripped away from their homes and brought to America, Land Of The Free, to be anything but free? To be forced to work on these lands, for nothing? With the only payment being in routine beatings and rapes? Where families were split apart and cultures were taken away. To a time when African Americans were freed from slavery but not from society’s unjust treatment and discrimination? A time when African Americans were segregated and humiliated all because their skin color did not match that of a white man’s. A time where “Jim Crow” and “separate but equal” laws existed. Even back to a time after the civil rights movement of the 1960s where African Americans were still repressed in American society through education, corporate businesses, and more.
Are we traveling back to the time when we stole land from Native Americans, murdered them and spread our germs? When we sent Japanese families into internment camps out of our own fear? When homosexuals lived in the closet out of fear of exclusion, decreased career opportunities, and even death? When two men who loved each other could not get married, or when two women could not raise a child together?
Where are we traveling to? When was this “Golden Age” of America that made it so great for everyone?
The United States is still a largely unequal country, with significant wage gaps between men and women, as well as larger gaps with women of minorities, unaffordable high-quality healthcare, the gaps between the richest and the poorest people increasing every day, police brutality, and so much more. But with that being said, life is better than it has ever been for most people in America. We have more rights and greater opportunities than ever before.
“Make America Great Again” is taking away the rights of women, African Americans, and many other minorities. Rather than seeing America as a country who is declining from its peak, we should see America as a country that is getting greater every day.
