Readers Write: Don’t let Trump morally bankrupt America

The Island Now

With the death of George Floyd and the nation mourning and protesting for equality, President Trump believes that he is the best one to handle the race problem and to come up with a solution very quickly. How fast is quickly?

 Let’s go back to the beginning. Let our starting point be the year 1865, the year the Civil War ended, a war that was fought to end slavery in our country. Abraham Lincoln was our president. It took from 1865 to 1946, 81 years, for another milestone to take place, at a time when Harry Truman was our president. Coincidentally, it was just after another war had ended.

 In that year of 1946, Kenny Washington became the first African-American to play in the National Football League with the Los Angeles Rams. He was 28 years old at the time. Washington had been an All-American running back at UCLA in his senior year of 1939. Why did it take seven years for him to join the Rams? Welcome to the NFL. In Washington’s senior year, his running mate in the same backfield at UCLA was underclassman Jackie Robinson. One year later, in 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League baseball playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Can you imagine teammates on the same college football team who were responsible for breaking the color barrier in two professional sport leagues one year apart? Move over, MLK.

 Here we are now, in the year 2020, when it seems that we’re going through another war, with President Trump leading the way or more appropriately blocking the way. It’s been only 74 years since the NFL opened its doors to Mr. Washington. Ironically, he had the same family name as our first president. Is it so difficult to treat black people as equal? Many of us root for our black brethren who play for our favorite teams on the baseball or football fields or on the hard court. It’s not only the professional teams but also our college teams that are loved, especially Southerners’ devotion to their dominant college football teams from Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Arkansas. These are states that all voted for Trump.

 These Good Ole Southern college football teams have black players who dominate their rosters. You would think President Trump, with his sports background, would want to ingratiate himself with many of these great black athletes, and he does, but somehow in the process, he ignores the majority of that race. Perhaps it’s because of his upbringing, where his father Fred, would ensure that none of the apartments in his Trump Village development would be rented to people of color. It seems the younger Trump carries on that tradition from the “White” House. Should we trust him to resolve the race situation? Can he fix it? We all know that in his case, the race is “fixed.”

 Can we fix it? Yes, but only if Trump is no longer president. He has declared bankruptcy for at least four of his companies. Let’s make sure he doesn’t bankrupt our country, both financially and morally.

Alvin Goldberg

Great Neck

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