Former president Donald Trump recently appeared at the National Black Journalist Convention to be interviewed by a few Black journalists. It didn’t take long before Trump gravitated toward his old ways of insults and disrespect before going down the dark hole of racist attacks.  Trump questioned if the current Democratic Presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, is really “Black” due to her mixed heritage.

“I don’t know if she’s Black or Indian. She was Indian, and then she wass… Black.”

News Flash: the majority of us “Black” people have mixed heritage. It’s mixed into the history of the Black experience in America.

Race is a made-up social construct that was never based on actual science but rather pseudo-sciences.

It was used as a divide-and-conquer strategy following Bacon’s Rebellion to protect the wealthy European male landowners who held the power and control. And it has worked brilliantly taking on a life of its own and constantly evolving with the times.

It never had strict categorical definitions and would change often as to who was classified as what. And this is still being done today.

“Whiteness” came with privileges, so it was a sought-after label.

Enslaved Blacks were deemed less than human, chattel, property, by LAW with no human rights. Free Blacks were given the same status of being defined as lesser with no human rights.

“White privilege” meant that you were not targeted or defined by these terms and subsequent limitations.

So yes, “white privilege” is actually a thing, a part of America’s documented history. It has little to nothing to do with where one currently falls on the economic scale. What people do with opportunities not denied to them based on skin tone, was a horse of another color.

Democrat presidential nominee Harris identifies with the Black culture and is a proud graduate of an HBCU, and member of a Black Sorority.

But Trump played into Black stereotypes in a Black venue at the Black Journalist Convention.

He chose to whitesplain who qualifies as “Black” when that has been made perfectly clear to us for the past 400-plus years. Really? Remember, the one-drop rule? That it only takes one drop of Black blood to defile white blood.

This is what happens when you don’t know your history, or you simply engage in selective amnesia.

It was really clear when they denied us our rights as human beings when the slave masters were producing offspring with their enslaved girls, often at the age of puberty, as did Founding Father Thomas Jefferson.

There was no question then what category these “bi-racial” children fell into when they were put into the fields with the rest of the enslaved or were allowed to work in “the big house” because of their lighter complexions.

There was no question when these “mixed-race” people tried to vote and were beaten and denied.

There was no question who they were when they tried to integrate society and attend schools, and live in “white” neighborhoods; denied loans, denied employment opportunities; told where they could shop, eat, or which churches they would be welcomed in; which hotels they could stay in, etc. etc. etc.

There was no question who they were when the police or the Klan attacked them. And we could go on and on and on, but you get the picture. This is an issue of playing the race card when you feel you can use it as a divide-and-conquer strategy, and it reeks of a racist consistency.

To add insult to injury, it has been proposed that the police be given absolute immunity.  This would allow them to freely decide who lives and dies and who deserves to be beaten within an inch of their lives, you know, like the slave patrols. When we know, as quiet as it’s kept, that many white supremacists join the police departments for these very reasons, and are seldom held accountable.

Pay attention. Like they say, “The devil is in the details.”