Patti Davis

Opinion contributor

It was more than 50 years ago and his eyes still haunt me. The civil rights movement was strong and growing, but there were still too many men in white robes burning crosses on the lawns of Americans who weren’t white. Racism was stitched into the fabric of American society.

At my co-ed boarding school in Arizona, there was no one of color, until my junior year in 1968, when the school decided to integrate. Their idea of integrating was to bring in one black boy and one Hispanic boy.

Both boys kept to themselves; they were quiet and seemed as if they wanted to be invisible. Who could blame them, being dropped off in a sea of white high schoolers? The Hispanic boy was particularly shy. One afternoon, I heard from a group of giggling students that, the night before, several boys had lashed him to a bunk bed and dripped warm water on his wrists, which was supposed to make him pee. Apparently, it worked.

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After he wet his pants, they untied him and let their laughter float behind him as he ran from the room. The story went around the school, and I’m sure it got to the teachers, but no students were ever punished. I remember one of the boys bragging about it, laughing cruelly, and saying that the boy never should have come here; that he doesn’t fit in.

I said hello to him whenever we were near each other, but my memory is that I never heard his voice again. His eyes, however, traveled to a place deep inside me and scored themselves on the walls of my heart. Eyes full of wound, of helplessness, of a bitter acceptance that simply because his skin was brown, he had to watch his back and be on guard. Eyes that preferred to look down rather than meet anyone else’s gaze.

Don't look away from the hatred

I thought about him the other day when an African American friend said to me that things are getting worse in this country, and too many people are looking the other way. This conversation was after President Donald Trump tweeted about the four congresswomen of color and how they should "go back" to where they came from. Since then, the president has also attacked another African American lawmaker, Rep. Elijah Cummings.

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I thought about the other eyes that haunt me now. The cold blue steel of Donald Trump’s gaze as he let the chant of “send her back!” reverberate around him for 13 seconds. And the eyes of those in the crowd chanting — they were having fun, enjoying themselves. They might as well have been singing "Happy Birthday."

If you avert your eyes from this, if you will lull yourself into thinking that we’ll be okay, that America will survive this gleeful resurgence of racism, then you are in fact helping to make hatred synonymous with patriotism. Eyes that look away will doom us as much as those that are filled with cruelty.

Don't give Trump's rhetoric any oxygen

This is going to get worse. Donald Trump is on a roll and he isn’t going to stop. He’ll unleash his racist insults at anyone of color who stands up to him. And the hatred he has set free will result in more incidents like Republicans defending or refusing to condemn the president's racist remarks; like the memorial for Emmett Till being shot up and students posing in front of it with guns; like the murder at Charlottesville, Virginia.

I have a suggestion. What if the media ignored his racist tweets? There is no value in giving them or him any more attention. We know enough about the president's character and opinions not to need any further evidence or reinforcement. I have no idea if Fox News and other Trump-supporting media outlets would participate in a blockade on this president’s tweets, but it really doesn’t matter.

Trump's supporters in the media and the electorate are outnumbered by many other news organizations and Americans who could make the collective decision to simply deny them the space to grow. Hatred is like a tangled weed that needs oxygen and sunlight to survive. If all it finds is a vacuum, it will have trouble growing. And then, maybe, America will survive.

Patti Davis is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Wrong Side of Night.” Follow her on Twitter @patti_davis.