WHEN Donald Trump launched his bid to lead America, his ‘illumination’ of how he intends to reconstruct his country and restore its lost glory would have captured the imagination and admiration of many, but his fierce attack on Africans last week not only exposed his lack of appreciation of history, but isolated him from both black people and the African continent as a whole.
Expressing his deep disgust for Africans by referring to them as, “lazy fools only good at eating, lovemaking and thuggery”, Trump forgot to mention to those in Indianapolis, the venue of his blistering attack of black people, that America was constructed by Africans.
Not even his threat to deport Africans, especially those of Kenyan origin including ‘their son Barack Obama (current United States President), cannot mask the trademark American resentment of Africans.
“African-Americans are very lazy,” said Trump.
“The best they can do is gallivanting around ghettoes, lamenting how they are discriminated.
“These are the people America doesn’t need.
“They are the enemies of progress.
“Look at African countries like Kenya for instance, those people are stealing from their own government and go to invest the money in foreign countries.
“From the government to opposition, they only qualify to be used as a case study whenever bad examples are required.
“How do you trust even those who have run away to hide here at the US hiding behind education? (sic)
“In my opinion, most of these African countries ought to be recolonised again for another 100 years because they know nothing about leadership and self-governance.”
A report titled How Slave Labor Made New York by Peter Harper published in 2013 says the glory that America enjoys today was born out of the brutality that slaves were subjected to by their masters.
Below is what the report says:
“The very name ‘Wall Street’ is born of slavery, with enslaved Africans building a wall in 1653 to protect Dutch settlers from Indian raids.
“This walkway and wooden fence, made up of pointed logs and running river-to-river, later was known as Wall Street, the home of world finance.
“Enslaved and free Africans were largely responsible for the construction of the early city, first by clearing land, then by building a fort, mills, bridges, stone houses, the first city hall, the docks, the city prison, Dutch and English churches, the city hospital and Fraunces Tavern.
“At the corner of Wall Street and Broadway, they helped erect Trinity Church.
“In 1711 the city’s Common Council established a ‘Meal Market’ at Wall and Water streets for hiring slave labour and auctioning enslaved Africans who disembarked in Manhattan after their arduous trans-Atlantic journey.
“The merchants used these labourers to operate the port and in such trades as ship carpentry and printing, according to the National Park Service.
“Africans, according to the Park Service, also engaged in heavy transport, construction work, domestic labour, farming and milling.
“Their efforts were part of the euphemistically titled ‘Triangular Trade’; Africans living on what was then called the Gold Coast – with Africans being considered black gold – were bought using New England rum; the Africans were sold in the West Indies to work the fields to create sugar and molasses; and the sugarcane products were taken to New York and New England to be made into rum.
“The Buttonwood Agreement, which started what became the New York Stock Exchange, was signed in 1792 under a buttonwood tree in front of 68 Wall Street, about a block away from the slave market at the intersection of Wall and Water streets.
“The agreement covered transactions and companies involved in the slave trade, including shipping, insurance and cotton.
“Granted, many white folks did indeed help build America – as they profited from slavery. 
“John Jacob Astor, who was born in Germany in 1763, became America’s first multi-millionaire, making his fortune in furs, the China trade and cotton transportation, part of the slave trade.
“Astor, who died at age 84 in 1848, is the namesake of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and neighbourhoods in New York City.
“Moses Taylor, who helped finance the illegal slave trade, had his offices at 55 South Street, now part of the 111 Wall Street complex.
“His decades-long banking operations evolved into Citibank.
“He sat on the boards of firms that became Con Edison, Bethlehem Steel and AT&T, according to Alan J. Singer’s New York and Slavery: Time to Teach the Truth.
“When Taylor died in 1882, at age 76, his estate was worth US$40 million to US$50 million, or roughly US$44 billion in current calculations.
“Singer also explained how Philip Livingston of Dutchess County, just north of New York City, was ‘probably the New York merchant most involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade’.
“Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, endowed Yale University’s first professorship using his slave-based wealth.
“He was also a founder of King’s College, which later became Columbia University, and his name is found on homes and estates, some of them now historical sites, in the Hudson Valley and on Livingston Street in Brooklyn Heights.”
Trump must surely wake up from his deep slumber and grasp the fact that his wish of recolonising Africa will remain just that, a wish.
He should get a grip of history as a matter of urgency.
Let those with ears listen.