The War on Melanin

Right now, as you are reading this, there is a 50+ year old man, let's call him Gabriel from Guatemala, who is hard at work refinishing my butcher block island counter in the kitchen. In hindsight, the counter should have been quartz or soapstone, but we ran out of money while doing the remodel close to 30 years ago.

Gabriel is one of the hardest working men I have ever met. The other day we had a complete conversation. He in his Half Spanish/Half English dialect and me in my Half English/Half Spanish intonations. 

The online Spanish classes I have been taking are already paying benefits. Though last week while at a local Peruvian restaurant I errantly ordered a shoe with red sauce and cheese.

He told me of his trek the USA, his father's drinking issues, his continual need to renew his working visa and most of all the travails involved in obtaining citizenship. Now, with Trump and his Red Hat brigade of Gazpacho Police it is impossible for him to travel to Guatemala to see his family of origin.

I'm no stranger to the citizenship bureaucracy as I am currently seeking dual legal status in the UK. It is a Gordian Knot of processes, paperwork, extraneous fees and waiting and waiting and waiting. 

If it's confusing for me, who is admittedly not the "smartest bulb in the package" (if I may borrow a phrase coined by our stable genius bomb dropping MFOTUS), imagine how difficult it must be for Gabriel, who often works two gigs in a day.

Gabriel mentioned how careful he must be as of late, with masked unidentified Proud Boys literally roaming the streets of Los Angeles and hauling off men bearing a trace of melanin. This potentially includes my nephew, who was adopted by my sister-in-law and her husband, while he was an infant. This young man is one of the brightest, kindest teenagers you will ever meet and has more humanity and potential than any of the lily white trash canvassing our city and playing GI Joe Douchebag. 

If my blood was boiling before it's now at temperatures only available on the surface of the sun or deep in the lava pools of a volcano ready to erupt. 

It bubbles up higher when chatting -- arguing -- with a know-nothing Red Hat who claims they can come to our country if they do it legally. Oh, like the caucasian crybabies from South Africa who got the red carpet treatment from President Fuckknuckle?

Also, I love the term "our country." 

Do these clueless 2nd Amendment Fetishists need to be reminded, it wasn't our country until some white privileged disgruntled 17th century seafarers stepped ashore, planted a flag and announced, "This is Mine Now!"

Followed by a wave of European immigrants (again very white and including my own) who, in order to become an American, had to take a shower to be de-liced, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, sign an X on a piece of paper and were handed a citizenship card which decades later turned into a MAGA hat.

We are no longer the "Bright Shining City on a Hill." 

We have become a "Shabby Strip Mall of Ignorant Conspicuous Consumers Ready to Clobber or Deport Any Person of Color Who Threatens to Take The Last 75 Inch Flat Screen TV On the Shelf."

We should all be ashamed.