In a country where Donald Trump is the commander-in-chief, many black women are plagued with a problem they had no hand in creating. About 94% of black women chose Hillary Clinton on Election Day last year, rejecting her opponent’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” comments and frequent misogyny as evidence enough that he was ill-prepared for the highest office in the land. Still, he won.
Regularly, now, his role in the White House has been used as a platform of personal attacks, where he’s proven that his disrespect of women isn’t colorblind. It takes on a special form when his targets are also black.
In past weeks, Myeshia Johnson has been mourning the death of her husband, Sergeant La David T. Johnson, a 25-year-old United States Special Forces soldier who died on October 4, killed in action alongside three other American soldiers and four Nigerian troops during a surprise attack in Niger. It took the White House nearly two weeks to publicly respond to the tragedy — and Trump’s initial response was a politicized attack on President Barack Obama and an affront to Gold Star families like Johnson’s.
Johnson has since opened up about Trump’s actions following the untimely death of her husband — she said they were not only hurtful, but reflect a deeper disregard for the service Sgt. Johnson rendered to the country.
“It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone in his voice and how he said it,” Johnson said. “He couldn’t remember my husband’s name. The only way he remembered my husband’s name is because he told me he had my husband’s report in front of him and that’s when he actually said ‘La David.’ I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband’s name. And that’s what hurt me the most because if my husband is out here fighting for our country, and he risked his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name?”
In most cases, a surviving relative’s word would be sufficient in assessing the gravity of the loss of their loved one’s life and the sincerity of the eulogies offered to that end. Yet, in the case of Johnson, Trump continues to undermine her grasp of the events as she recalls them. Rather than honor Sgt. Johnson’s memory by treating his widow with the respect her position demands, Trump has been, well, Trump-ing for weeks now.
Read the full article at Teen Vogue.