I’m Milton Allimadi, publisher of Black Star News, adjunct professor of African History at John Jay College here in New York City. As the whole world knows, many Americans are out on the streets dancing and celebrating today. They are celebrating the end of the presidency of Donald Trump, the most racist, Islamophobic and misogynist president in the recent history of the United States. This election is historic for several reasons. Number one, it is only the 11th time in the history of this country that an incumbent president seeking re-election was utterly defeated. It’s record for another reason. The election turnout, record number of voters came out. The Biden-Harris ticket has got more than 74 million votes and still counting, places like New York, places like California, so this number may go up. So even though Trump also got 71 million votes, Biden could well end up getting more than four million votes in the popular election count than Donald Trump. Biden-Harris ticket now has 290 electoral votes, 20 more than the 270 required to win the White House.
It’s also historic for another obvious reason. This is the first time a woman of African and Asian ancestry, Kamala Harris, elected vice president of the United States. Also the first woman to be elected as vice president of the United States. So why are people celebrating and dancing in record numbers out on the streets? Because Americans now know how it feels like under a dictatorship. That’s what Donald Trump was; a dictatorial president. Americans experienced that for four years. So imagine African countries that have known dictatorship for 10, 20, 30 years. Dictators that are often backed by the United States. So we hope Americans now get a better understanding of how horrific it is to live under a dictatorship. In Uganda for example, my own native country, a dictator of 34 years, Gen. Yoweri Museveni, the most brutal destructive African dictator, supported by the United States. He was the only African ruler, who said, after Donald Trump called African countries a collection of ‘shithole’ countries, he said ‘I love Donald Trump.’ Unbelievable? Check it out. Do your research. January 2018. He said this because he’s playing the Uncle Tom role; Uncle Tom, thinking if he like bows down to Donald Trump, Donald Trump would extend more support to his dictatorship. Well, Donald Trump is out now. Uganda faces elections in January, 2021. The young people are mobilized, determined to get rid of Uganda’s U.S.-supported dictator, and I hope Americans, the American taxpayers now understand how it feels to live under dictatorship and have a little more sympathy for sisters and brothers in Uganda when they rise up to get rid of their own dictator come January, 2021.
Good riddance Donald Trump—and another and poetic justice is the fact that descendants of Africa, the continent that he referred to as shithole, descendants of Africa, African Americans, are the ones who are responsible for kicking Donald Trump out of the White House, showing up in record numbers in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, in Wisconsin; it was their record vote that determined the outcome of the election in those states, even though it’s still being counted in Georgia. Pennsylvania, particularly in the city of Philadelphia, record numbers, they determined the outcome in Pennsylvania and that secured the White House for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. So, who has the last word when it comes to being a shithole? You make your own choice.
