If you watched the debate and are currently finding yourself trapped on a never-ending treadmill of dread, conjuring in your mind all the horrible things that will happen if Trump is elected, allow me to provide you with some stern words and some hope.
Donald Trump will not win this election in 2024 because America will reject his brand of fascism.
Once again, black people will come and save this Union.
It will not be white people, it will not be immigrants, it will not be Latinos or Asians, it will not be Arabs or Muslims, it will be black people.
It is our damnation. Promehus’s torment is the eagle and his liver, Sisphuys’s hell is the rock never making it to the top, and for black people it is saving a nation that has never even tried to treat us with respect or provide us with dignity.
Yet, this is our mission black folk: we must save America again.
How am I to make such proclamations? I ran for the House in AZ01 in 2018; once I entered the race, the DCCC put the race on its radar and started funding it. In 2020, I was a vice-chair of the Arizona Democratic Party and co-chair of the Maricopa County Black Outreach Committee. I was the only person to serve on the executive committees of the largest battleground county in the nation and key battleground state. I was also the only male elected Biden delegate to the DNCC. We flipped Arizona and had the largest black turnout in our state’s history.
In 2022, I was a surrogate for Governor Hobbs. In 2023, I was the first black man to serve on an Arizona Governor’s transition team. As we get closer to the election, I will be assigned a team of GOP operatives who will unleash a bot army against any of my tweets. Last cycle, it was Kari Lake’s top surrogate, the Chairwoman of the Arizona GOP’s husband, and Charlie Kirk’s number two at Turning Point USA, Tyler Bower.
I have knocked on over 7,000 doors, sharing my values with my neighbors. I have made over 12,000 calls to Democrats and unaffiliated voters.
I have access to focus group data, I see polling, and I speak with campaign managers and people who run independent expenditures. People who serve at all levels of government call me and request my skill set.
You can throw my name into Google, which will spit out this information.
I needed you to know this about me so you can comprehend what I am about to write: if you are white and you are reading this, you have no black friends.
This is not me casting aspirations on your character. This is not me lamenting the failure of black-and-white unity. This is a fact.
If you are white, you do not have black friends. You might have a black friend, but you most likely don’t have black friends.
Many white people I am connected with on social media and through politics might consider me their black friend, but we are not. I might be fond of the person and shake their hand or hug them, but they are not my friends.
If you are white, I need you to concentrate on this one statistic: 40% of white people have zero black friends. Fifty-five percent (55%) of white people have one black friend, and the remaining five percent have more than one black friend.
The average black person has eight white friends.
You must wrestle with that statistic to get this Word I give you today.
You have no black friends, and it shows in your panic about the debate. I can see it in your tweets. If you had actual black friends, you would have seen what I saw in the debate: one man answering the questions, spinning his accomplishments, blunting his failures, and offering opportunities for everyone, not just the powerful and propertied. That was President Biden.
The other man got on stage and lied. He told grand lies, bold lies, easily provable lies, and lies even when he did not have to. He lied to you, the American people because he does not respect you and has contempt for you. That was Trump.
Trump spent his time on stage lying to the American people, and instead of condemning him and casting him out of polite society, white people want to replace Biden with some other white man. Not Vice-President Harris, but with Pete, Gavin, or even Bernie.
You want to replace Biden and ignore Trump's lies because you are white. Your whiteness and your proximity to whiteness have blinded you from the uncategorical truth: Donald Trump is unfit to serve in any office or position in the United States. He is an unrepentant criminal/traitor, and that should be enough to disqualify him from serving anywhere in this great nation.
You are white. That means you congregate in white spaces. You socialize with white people. You worship at white houses of worship. You are members of white clubs and groups. Everything about your existence is steeped in whiteness.
When you go on Facebook, you see your white friends and family complaining about Biden. You read your other white friends and family members praising Donald Trump. You read posts from more of your friends saying they both are terrible.
When you go to the grocery store, you hear more white people talking about how we should replace Biden with Gavin or Pete. You overhear white people talking about how Trump just wiped the floor with Biden. You listen to people saying that both are a mess.
You believe the news when you hear black voters are coming out for Donald Trump. You believe the news when you read that black voters are abandoning Democrats. You believe this because you are not proximate to black people.
Let me say this in no uncertain words: We, the black delegation made up of descendants of formerly enslaved people, do not f*** with Donald Trump or people who support him.
The few black people who support him, we do not f*** with.
Amber Rose, we don’t f*** with her.
Lawrence Taylor, we don’t f*** with.
Tim Scott, we don’t f*** with.
Bryan Donald, we don’t f*** with.
The corny rappers with the f***** up hairlines, we don’t f*** with.
In The Culture, we have a saying: IDFWPWFWPIDFW
Y’all need to start colonizing that mentality from us.
If you were able to spend yesterday with me, you would have heard a woman call me whose brother died a sudden and gruesome death. He died on Thursday, and in three hours, his lifeless body was going to be pushed down the hospital corridor in an honor walk for his organs to be harvested and used to save people’s lives or give them a better quality of life.
This black woman, who was drowning in grief and mired in sorrow, unprovoked, told me to tell her the truth and not lie to her like Donald Trump was doing during the debate.
When I was in Washington, DC, I overheard a black man in his 60s who worked as a cook having a conversation with a black woman about what a liar Donald Trump was.
All through my day, I never heard any black person talk about the need to replace Biden because Biden is not the problem. You, white people, have nominated Donald Trump to be the Republican standard barrier. Donald Trump is the problem, not Joe Biden.
Your white echo chambers have robbed you of the ability to see that there is a silent and growing majority of black people who will stand in line for hours and brave the elements because we don’t f*** with Donald Trump.
We reject an America where decency does not matter.
We reject an America where honesty does not matter.
We reject an America where a man can lie, lie, and lie and not be held to account for his lies.
We reject an America that wants to be led by an avowed and practicing bigot.
I need you to take a deep breath and think about what an economy that works for everyone looks like. What does an affordable or even free college look like, what does homeownership look like for everyone, and what does ending mass incarceration feel like?
We can have a better healthcare system that provides dental and vision care, but we must fight for it.
What does the Supreme Court look like once we replace Alito, Thomas, and Roberts with a nominee selected by Biden versus Trump?
When your white friends, family members, and acquaintances start talking about Biden, start reading the truth to them:
Do you want a man who was adjudicated a rapist to be the next President?
Do you want a man who, a jury of everyday Americans who dutifully listened to the evidence each day and obeyed the Judge’s instruction, found him guilty beyond all reasonable doubt of fraud, conspiracy, and a host of other felonies to be the next President?
Do you want a man who gives comfort to Nazis, antisemites, racists, white supremacists, homophobes, and other dregs of society as the next President?
Do you want a man who fomented an insurrection against the very nation he seeks to be the President of, back in the Oval Office?
Then you have to make a real decision for yourself: do you want to continue messing with someone who believes that Donald Trump should be president.
James Baldwin concludes his letter to his nephew asking when white people will learn to accept one another. I would refine his question: when are white people going to stop tolerating the intolerable and those who support the intolerable?
Y’all might not be ready for the cookout, but you can invite us to the potluck, and we will bring some delicious, well-seasoned food.
This is our country, and we have to organize, share our values, and defeat Trumpism and those who deify him.
Get yourself some damn black friends today.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Garrick McFadden's work on Medium.