During a videotaped statement originally aired on CBN on Saturday, president-elect Donald Trump suggested “more correct” racial and social identifiers that could be used to help bridge the divisions that many feel have become evident in recent years.
The representative statement is the first time that an elected president has established a tone for social identifiers. Until now, accepted identifiers have generally been left to public opinion.
Pundits immediately took to the airwaves and suggested that this was a new twist on political correctness.
“This is the new PC,” suggested MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. “If Trump carries this identifiers thing through into his presidency, that’s the very height of political correctness, the very PC that Trump blared on and on about during his campaign. If he puts these things through as some sort of edict or executive order, then thats it, that’s the government’s seal of a approval, seal it with a kiss, because if you say something else they’re slamming you in a cell for being an extremist.”
In the taped speech, which ran just over 19 minutes, Trump offered new identifiers for several key US demographics, as well as rationales for each identifier, which overwhelmingly equated to community pride.
The segment of the speech concerning new identifiers for black Americans ran almost 4 minutes and was aired throughout the afternoon cable news programs, receiving mixed reviews.
The text of this segment ran as follows:
Look at the oppression our black community endures simply by being called black. Black is a horrible color, a simply terrifying color. What an ugly, putrid color. This is a word that conjures up the most negative stuff, apprehension, just sleazy, dirty, bad stuff. It’s frightening, just very frightening stuff. And look at all the things people have called them over the years. African Americans, blacks, coloreds, negroes, spades, spooks, big-lips, and a few others that it probably wouldn’t be polite to mention. It’s no wonder these communities are a mess, let me tell you. And people are coming up to me and they’re saying “We need one more-correct term to help bind the community.” Seriously this is the kind of thing that people just come up to me and say. And you know what? They’re smart, smart people. Very intelligent.
I’m not even sure what the correct term is these days. Blacks? African Americans? I’ve been hearing some people say, uh, superpredators? I don’t know that any of these binds these communities. They’ve been here for years, they’re no more African than Dave Matthews or Charlize Theron. Get over it! Africa isn’t the only place where dark-skinned people originate from, and it would be prejudiced, perhaps even racist, to suggest that’s where they’re all from or where you can ship them all back to. America should not stand for racism.
That’s why I think, and I would be willing to, you know, sign for this or whatever, but I think that if we want to identify the community with something that binds the community, I’m of the opinion that we should start embracing them as Basketball Americans.
I ran this by Steve Bannon, and he thinks it’s brilliant.
After suggesting the new name for the Basketball American community, Trump went on to suggest new names for the gay community (Fabulous Americans), people of Middle Eastern descent (Sand People), the little people community (Munchkinland Americans), as well as Calculator People, Gardener Americans, Nintendo Americans, and Those Guys With the Puka Shell Necklaces.
Public reactions
As well as the cable news attention, people took to the internet to offer their opinions on the president-elects suggestions.
“What about when I don’t feel fabulous?” Fabulous American Ray Forsythe wondered in a Twitter post.
“What the fuck? What the actual fuck?” observed Basketball American La’Quan Jefferson on a viral posting which circulated on Facebook.
“I kind of like it,” said Konstantinos Kostas, a puka shell necklace salesman from Redondo Beach.
“Wooo wooo! Get on and ride the Trump Train baby! This train is going places!” posted Superior American Phil McFerrin, just above a photo of a lynching.
Brown Valley Observer 