If You Were Still Doubting Trump’s Racism …

The U.S. president will not be paying his respects to the body of Rep. John Lewis, an icon in the fight for African Americans’ civil rights.

Donald Trump left the White House to go to North Carolina on Monday, categorically confirming that he would not be attending a posthumous tribute for Rep. John Lewis, a historic defender of the African American community. Lewis was a friend and colleague of Martin Luther King Jr. and his death at 80 years of age has been memorialized in the U.S. with several ceremonies since he died July 17.

On Sunday, the hearse carrying the body of the renowned and respected African American leader crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the very last time. It was also a Sunday, March 7, 1965, when he walked with King in the march from Selma to Montgomery, the Alabama state Capital, to demand that Black citizens have the right to vote, a day that became known as “Bloody Sunday” due to the racist abuse that ensued.

As a young man, Lewis was one of many victims of police brutality, subsequently suffering a fracture to the skull. It was as if Confederate Army officer Edmund Pettus himself had brandished his saber, just as he had in the Civil War fighting for slavery, or tightened a noose like the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.

The 19th, 20th and 21st centuries of American history have gone by and they don’t seem to be too distant from the obvious structural racism currently at play in the nation. Trump, talking to reporters, said “I’m not going, no,” confirming he didn’t plan to go to the Capitol to honor the iconic civil rights activist. It is worth noting that it was only in the 1960s when the governor of Alabama, the racist George Wallace, affirmed that there would be “segregation now, segregation forever!”

The American head of state barely said he was “saddened” to hear the news of Lewis’ passing, in his usual tweet, and that was it.

The rancors of the president are well known, and given that Lewis didn’t consider him a “legitimate” president — don’t forget he won from electoral votes, whereas the popular vote gave Hillary Clinton the victory — Trump was very critical of Lewis in 2017, saying his district in Atlanta was in “horrible shape.” However, many legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, remember Lewis as “the conscience of Congress.”

Under the current situation in the U.S., Lewis might have also been the conscience of the nation. But it doesn’t seem that Trump acknowledged that title. Trump went to visit the Bioprocess Innovation Center in North Carolina to make sure that “in a matter of days” there would be a vaccine for COVID-19 in the third phase of testing, something the U.S. president is praying will work in favor of his reelection prospects, less so than for the safety and health of the world.