Some Asian Americans came to my show on Saturday.
One said he’d been reading my “Amok” columns for years and he thanked me for writing.
It is a reminder how the fight never ends, and why we do what we do.
A perfect reality check for MLK Day. There’s never been a time to be fiercer than ever as we live by Dr. King’s words from his “I Have a Dream” speech.
King dreamed that his children “will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Are we there yet? Were we and now going backwards?
And what does it mean to not judge anyone, whites included, by their skin color?
Ideal, yes, but what does the phrase “the content of their character” really mean. Especially, if you look at say, the president, or as I like to call him “CFDT34” for “convicted felon, Donald Trump, 34 counts.”
Are we paying enough attention to the content of his character? Shall we ask E. Jean Carrol the winner of sexual liability and defamation cases against Trump? Shall we ask him more about his 10-year friendship with Jeffrey Epstein?
I’m not in the Epstein files. Trump is.
Shall we look at Trump sending in the troops, most recently Minneapolis, where he without hesitation essentially declared the innocence of the ICE agent who shot and killed the poet and activist Renee Good, a white American citizen.
Trump declared Good a “domestic terrorist.”
The content of Trump’s character should be clear.
He lies and misleads. More than 30,000 times in his first term, according to the Washington Post. It stopped counting in the first year of the second term.
Everything he says cannot be trusted. Pity the Iranian protestors who took Trump at his word that “help is on the way. It’s not. What does Trump say to the men and women who died trying to protect Iran’s institutions at Trump’s pleading. Countless are dead.
Were all his actions in the first year – from tariffs to Venezuela and Minneapolis, and Kilmar Abrego Garcia to DODG – just hiccups? Or historic actions? Will American democracy continue to stand? Or is the future foreshadowed by what Trump did, without authorization, to the East Wing?
He’s surely disrupting and dismantling our sense of a united and diverse America.
MLK Day: Perfect time to reflect on a possible race war
MLK Day is the perfect time to reflect on a possible race war.
Consider the phrase again from the “I have a dream speech.”
A grand bit of rhetoric, but in 2026 expect it to be misused and misinterpreted. Instead of being a pledge of equality and fairness for all, right-wing politicos continue to hijack it in the name of “color blindness.” That’s the policy that justifies our continued invisibility.
But it’s more than skin deep.
When whites feel even more threatened by the growing number of people of color in America, we get social media tweets like one last week from Elon Musk, the Tesla guy, whose DOGE cuts lopped off whole agencies like USAID and other programs that already have resulted in 600,000 deaths.
White solidarity
Recently, Musk put out a tweet where he agreed with the statement, “If White men became a minority, we will be slaughtered…White solidarity is the only way to survive.”
More than 42 million people saw this message of hate. And none of Musk’s followers said a thing, as if expressing the hateful sentiment of “white solidarity,” is normal. It’s somewhat softer than “white supremacy,” but people of color get the venomous idea.
Musk is out there raising money from all his tech buddies and no one has pulled out because of the racist tweet. The monied elites are with Musk.
And so is the president.
When asked by the New York Times last week about civil rights protections, the president was in line with Musk.
Trump tried to “both sides” it, as he did the murderous Charlottesville protests his first term. He said civil rights accomplished some “very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people – people who deserve to go to college or deserve to get a job. So it was reverse discrimination.”
That’s the same way the GOP saw it in 1996, when it pushed for a ban in affirmative action through Prop. 209, blasphemously called “The Civil Rights Initiative.” Whites claimed discrimination and turned MLK upside down.
Prop. 209 won in California, reversals to get back what was lost have failed for now. That’s why any regression is dangerous.
And now the sentiment behind 209 is making a comeback through Musk, and the ICE invasion of Minneapolis, the anti-immigration action that masks a real race war.
The Department of Homeland Security is on record showing paradise as “America after 100 million deportations.”
The US has just 43 foreign-born Americans. To get to 100 million deportations, DHS would have to round up every immigrant of any status – even naturalized citizens – and then get 57 million Americans who are citizens by birth, thanks to the 14th Amendment and Wong Kim Ark.
He wants to deport us all.
Your accent – even your white accent – makes you suspicious.
But DHS has a quota. It’s “detain first, ask questions later.”
And what are they going on?
“Content of one’s character?” More likely just skin color. Or your strange accent.
This is where things are headed. Those Republicans who say they’re avenging reverse discrimination have a content of character devoid of ethics and morals. Thats how they follow the goose step dance of Trump and Musk, and cheer the racism of white solidarity.
Think about this during your day off in honor of Dr. King.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, news analyst, comic stage performer and former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” He writes for the .net’s US Channel. He has written a weekly “Amok” column on Asian American, race and social justice issues for more than 30 years. Find him onYouTube, patreon and substack.
See his show on Trump Derangement Syndrome, “69, Emil Amok: A Real Journalist Stands Up,” with dates from Jan. 26 to Feb. 7.
Jan. 26 | 8:30pm
Feb. 2 | 8:30 pm
Feb. 7 | 2:30 pm.
It’s part of San Francisco’s Solo Fest at the Potrero Stage on various dates in January and February. Check the times here.
