The Cost of Greatness

The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

2020 has been one long Twilight Zone episode for a lot of people. Things you never thought you would see, hear, or experience have become everyday occurrences, and the people you thought you knew are showing sides of themselves you never thought you would see. 

That is how it was for me and a friend of mine I will call “Tammy.” We had gone to high school together and reconnected as millennials often do through social media. Memories of our awkward teen years and crazy college girl nights came rushing back. I loved pictures of her new house and gushed over her new baby. She congratulated me on my marriage and told me the wedding looked like a fairy tale. It was the perfect Facebook friendship, until it wasn’t. 

Tammy’s Facebook page slowly began to change from its normal content to post after post about Donald Trump. Video clips from rallies and memes filled with questionable “facts” popped up. I didn’t say anything; it was not my place. As the civil unrest of the Summer unfolded, her Facebook page changed, yet again, to more inflammatory posts about race and police interactions with African Americans. She now backed the blue, and every athlete who kneeled for the flag or spoke out for social justice just needed to “shut up and play.”

So, I messaged her and explained to my friend that I didn’t care who she voted for, but I felt a lot her posts were offensive and hurtful. Her response was robotic. She laughed and quipped that she didn’t know I was snowflake.  She told me that Trump was going to make America great, and that it was Obama and the Dems who ruined everything. To add insult to injury she sent me a video explaining how Democrats had been the political party of the slave owners, and I needed to learn “history.” 

It was at that point I made a decision to unfollow Tammy but not unfriend her. With everything else going on in the world, setting up this simple boundary allowed for  peace and quiet for a while, but that was until yesterday. Tammy sent to all her friends on Facebook Messenger a large Make America Great Again picture along with all the rhetoric that went along with it. It was then I knew I had to say something. 

This was my response:

Please know I love you, but when you chant, post, cheer or scream "Make America Great Again'' the America you are asking for is an America where we would have been separated by law and by hatred. This Great  America is an America that believed I, as a Black woman, was less than. Despite you and others trying to defend MAGA as an all-inclusive rallying cry to the past greatness of this nation, I implore you to count up the cost of this greatness on a personal level. 

In your great America:

We would not have gone to the same schools as kids.

All those fun nights on the town making those silly college girl memories never would have happened.

A lot of weddings would not have taken place.

Fear would rule our actions while the evil hand of racism pulled us further apart.

Memories never made---

Loves never found---

Friendships never forged---

We would have been two strangers in your Great America.

So understand what you are invoking when you call for this Great America. 

I want a great America too---one that looks like our friendship. Not perfect, but always loving, always supporting, and always moving towards better.

Signed,

Your African American Biden Supporting Friend