Our 45th president has undoubtedly proven to be the most controversial in recent years, with many calling out the great divide between those that support his administration and those that oppose it. Donald Trump himself hasn't exactly done much to help his image, his attire and etiquette challenging a long history of politically correct and formally dressed leaders.
Among those that strongly position themselves against President Trump are the many celebrities who use their platforms to denounce and criticize the political leader. Some examples of these are stand-up comedians, who have formed a habit of satirizing President Trump, and artists who have talked at length about their political views in interviews. Rapper Jay-Z served as an exception to that for most of his career, opting instead to stay mostly quiet about his views and to only subtly imply them within the subtext of his songs.
In an interview with the New York Times last November, however, the rapper spilled exactly what he thinks of President Donald Trump in a way that paints our present situation in a very different light. When asked if he thinks the debate over racism in America is happening in a healthy way, Jay-Z responded by explaining that, while an ideal president would be open to hearing dialogue, Trump's presidency has still stirred up conversations that hadn't been put in the spotlight before. In order to devise any sort of solution to the problem regarding race, we must first start by recognizing the issue.
He went on to compare the issue to a tumor in that it doesn't just go away when we stop paying attention to it. We first have to diagnose the problem, no matter how that discovery happens. "If I get hit with a football," he added, "and then I go to the doctor -- it still happened."
Despite the waves of negativity Trump's term has brought to American politics, Jay-Z isn't wrong when he claims it's sparking a conversation about racism. Trump's lifespan as an American politician has always been tied to some degree of veiled racism. About a year ago, President Trump came under fire for an executive order that banned entry by citizens from parts of the Middle East. While perhaps the most glaring instance of racism, this is sadly not the first. After all, part of Trump's presidential campaign centered around claiming President Obama wasn't actually an American-born citizen, alleging instead that he's "un-American", therefore making him unfit for office.
Additionally, the heated 2016 election that put him in office fostered the perfect environment for passionate debates regarding race-relations between the most extreme proponents of both sides. These debates between extremists set the precedent for the great political divide that lingers as a result of Trump's political success. From the conservative side of this argument arose many white supremacists who felt enabled by Trump's abandonment of political correctness and whose almost laughable extent of racism thrust the issue back into the limelight.
While Trump's presidency has been shaking up the Internet with much more magnitude than any football, optimistically speaking, it won't serve as much more in the grand scope of American history. It'll be a temporary inconvenience whose positive impact will largely come after-the-fact when these conversations about racism are put in the hands of a president actually capable of solving them.