Years ago, I was an avid reader of two publications aimed primarily at a Black audience: Jet and Ebony
Ebony was a full-sized monthly magazine with a variety of features on politics, culture, lifestyle and entertainment. Jet, published weekly, was smaller, both in physical dimension and pages. It focused primarily on just the lifestyle and entertainment areas.
Both were published by the Johnson Publishing Company – which made John H. Johnson and his family fabulously wealthy.
Both are still published today. But, this year, they were sold to the something called the Clear View group….
…and, to say the least, one of its contributing editors, Damon Young, has made his views clear about Donald Trump – in a way that would never have been tolerated by Johnson Publishing.
It’s title? “I’m Voting For Hillary Because I Want Trump Supporters To Lose Badly And Go And Fucking Die”.
I’m assuming this gives you the idea. But in case you’re wondering what the body of this, er, scholarly commentary, contains, here’s a segment of his “explanation”:
I’m voting for her because I do not want to live in an America where the type of people who’d fervently, dogmatically, and unconditionally support Trump — who exist so motivated by and permeated with hate and fear and loathing that they’d stand in formation behind Darth Cheeto — have a reason to be optimistic about their beliefs. I do not want these people to feel good or inspired. I do not want them to receive some type of collective psychic victory. I do not want them to experience any measure of positive reinforcement. No encouragement. No stir. No rousing. No influx of energy. No invigoration. No revitalization. No nothing besides confusion, shame, and, if the confusion and the shame isn’t enough to convince them to at least consider not hating me and people who look like me and people who don’t look like them, death.
Yes, you read that correctly. I want these motherfuckers to lose. And if losing what might be the last winnable election for them in a millennia isn’t enough for them to move into the 21st century, I wouldn’t terribly mind if they withered the fuck away and died.
I’ll even write them a card. And the card will say “Thank you.”
Does Damon Young have a right to his opinions? Sure. Does he have a right to express them in words and find someone to publish them? Sure.
But Ebony used to be better than this. A lot better than this. And it is a tragedy that it has fallen to the point where this kind of unadulterated (and, frankly un-adult) hate would be considered acceptable from one of its contributors.
I strongly suspect Mr. Johnson, who gave Black readers a quality product, is turning over in his grave.
