White people are ‘very badly treated’ says the Racist-in-Chief

Commentary: Last month, while the nation observed Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the president did not even mention his name. The bigotry does not stop there. He had previously declared that MLK Day and Juneteenth would not be recognized as a free day at the country’s national parks.
“White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university to college,” President Donald Trump told The New York Times, in an apparent reference to affirmative action in college admissions. “It was a reverse discrimination.”

Every February we hear, “Why isn’t there a White History Month?” Those same morons in June ask, “Why isn’t there a straight pride parade”Pride and Black History Month (BHM) celebrate the fight of marginalized people. People who were treated as second class citizens if they were treated as citizens at all.

I can speak firsthand of the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community, having lived through much of the gay rights movement. Looking at BHM, my view is only that of an observer, but I have seen quite a bit from my childhood on up to today.

I first became aware that Black Americans were treated differently than White Americans at an early age. My hometown of Rosenberg, Texas was segregated when I was a child, with a majority of minorities living across the tracks.

The downtown movie theatre had two entrances, the main entrance where my siblings and I entered, and a “colored entrance,” for people not like us.

I can recall the time I had to use the restroom in that theatre. The ladies’ room was on the first floor, but the men’s room was upstairs. I walked up the stairs of the art deco stairwell and found the door with a sign that read “White Men.” When finished, I walked over to the balcony seating area to glance at the screen and see who was there. There were just a couple of Black folks there, eyes glued to the silver screen.

Looking back, I wonder what it felt like for them to be relegated to the upper decks, out of sight of the privileged ones, downstairs.

Our family doctor had separate waiting rooms for his Black and White patients. The front entrance faced the main street and around the corner of the building was a separate entrance with a big “Colored” sign hanging over it. The two separate waiting rooms were divided by the nurse’s station.
When you’re sick, the last thing you want to worry about is if you’d be getting a better quality of care if your skin was a different color.

Then in 1966, I began fifth grade at Robert E. Lee Elementary, named for the Confederate general who fought for the preservation of slavery. By court order, schools were integrated and three Black kids, one girl and two boys, were in my class. This would lead to my first real interactions with kids whose skin was another color.

How frightening it must have been for them to be in that situation in a small southeast Texas town in the mid 1960s. Years later, the girl was elected cheerleader at our high school. One boy moved away, and the other was Frank, who grew up to be gay, and we became good friends.

The City of Rosenberg had two public pools in the 1960s, one at Travis Park and the other across the tracks at Brazos Park. Segregated pools were widespread in the South, where racist beliefs were that Black people were diseased or sexually and physically threatening.

Galveston beaches were segregated as well. The beach along the Seawall between 27th and 29th Streets, known as Brown Beach, was the designated area for Black people to
enjoy a day of fun in the sun.

Generation Z people find it hard to fathom what it was like in a segregated America and are sometimes shocked to learn it was no that long ago. In a way, I am witness to our nation’s racist past.

So when our president says, “White people were very badly treated,” it’s obvious he has never had to sit isolated in a theatre balcony, or wonder if his medical care was contingent on his skin color, or been restricted from a pool or beach because of a perceived diseased status, and has no idea what it means to be very badly treated.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent those of the Montrose Star. Johnny Trlica is the editor of Houston Rainbow Herald Facebook page and has been published in several newspapers and magazines. He grew up in Rosenberg, Texas, lived for over 30 years in the Montrose and now resides in Galveston, Texas. He may be contacted at HRHeditor@gmail.com.

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