What Will White America Do with Its “N-Word President?”
Recently, I saw Sam Jay’s comedy special, “3 In the Morning,” from 2020. Halfway into her special, Jay calls Trump, “the first nigga president.” Jay’s comment challenged me because Trump’s white identity is glaring.
But for good reasons, I’ve learned to take seriously the theories comics cloak as “jokes.” Take Chris Rock, for example. In an interview with Vanity Fair from August 1998, Rock said, “I view Bill Clinton as the first black president. He spends a hundred-dollar bill; they hold it up to the light.”
Both Jay and Rock see beyond skin color to name an effect. Toni Morrison did the same.
In September 1998, Morrison wrote in The New Yorker about former President Bill Clinton’s treatment adding that, “African-American men seemed to understand it right away. Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President.”
With those thoughts in mind, I looked online. I wanted to know if anyone else saw nigger in Trump.
I found a book on the subject. In 2020, Tara Abydos, Ph.D. published, “Our First Nigger-President: Trumpian Politics and the Curious Fate of White…
