It’s not that every wearer of a MAGA cap is a committed white supremacist. But they are, at the very least, utterly indifferent to the history of the country they claim to love, and the way that history sought to destroy the bodies of black and brown peoples from the beginning. Wearing such gear and repping such a slogan says that the experiences of people of color do not matter. Their feelings don’t matter. The history of their families doesn’t matter. Their pain is not real. To wear such a hat, especially in racially-mixed spaces or mostly black ones (like DC, as with the Covington altar boys) is to perform an act of grotesque racial bonding. It is a sign of gang affiliation, in which everyone knows the meaning of the colors, the words and the smirk so often accompanying both.

No, America was never greater in some faraway time of yore. And anyone who thinks it was can only think so by disregarding the lives of millions of their fellow countrymen and women.

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And for those who claim the MAGA slogan was never intended to harken back to those bygone eras, but was merely a call for a return to the glory of the Reagan years, perhaps it should be recalled that these were some of the headiest days of the war on drugs, which has targeted black peoples for incarceration. These were the days of trickle-down tax cuts which never managed to trickle down to the poor, the working class or people of color more broadly.

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In other words, the only people for whom America was ever truly “great,” and for whom it might seem necessary to restore said greatness — especially in the face of cultural and demographic change, and given the intrinsic fragility that so often attaches to those who have never had to share before — are white people. Specifically straight, white, Christian men. Everyone else is better off today than ever before thanks to the committed efforts of the marginalized to gain freedom and to create a more perfect — or hell, even a halfway acceptable — union. And those are efforts that most straight, white, Christian men have opposed for 400 years.

No wonder they’re nervous.