On August 19, 2016, Donald Trump went to Dimondale, MI, a mostly white suburb of Lansing, Michigan, and appealed to the black people he chose not to appear before saying, “What the hell do you have to lose?” What he said exactly was:
You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed — what the hell do you have to lose?
Trump added:
I will produce, I will produce the inner cities and I will produce for the African-Americans. And the Democrats will not produce. All they’ve done is taken advantage of your vote… If you keep voting for the same people, you will keep getting exactly the same result.
I’ll ignore the misleading statistic about black youth unemployment, after almost three and a half years in office as President. It’s time to look at how black people fared under Trump, and what the hell did we lose?
JUSTICE: While it’s hard to lose something you never truly had, as soon as he got into office he made justice harder to come by, particularly in cities that had already acknowledged providing inequality under the law when it came to their black citizens. One of his first appointments as Attorney General was “the gentleman from Alabama,” Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. Sessions was a Senator from Alabama at the time but notably was not a Federal judge. His nomination years before had been rejected for things like calling a black Assistant US Attorney “boy” on several occasions and telling another to “know his place.” He also called the NAACP, “unamerican” though he denied it under oath. Sessions short time as Attorney General was rocky for his recusal from the Russia investigation but even while being emasculated by Trump on Twitter, Sessions still sought his approval by making things harder for black people, with Trump’s approval.
Before Trump, the Federal government and the Justice Department took an interest in what was going on in America’s cities. When a pattern of racial injustice in policing had been discovered. The Justice Department stepped in and reached agreements with cities as to what steps to take to improve their behavior which was monitored by the Feds. These consent decrees were crucial to affecting change, giving black people hope that things might get better in say Ferguson, MO, or Baltimore, MD.
The Obama administration launched 25 investigations into the “pattern or practice” of police departments and entered into 14 consent decrees. They made local and state police accountable to someone other than their own Mayor or Governor who might have been either complacent or complicit with what was going on. There was recourse when say a black jogger gets murdered by two white men who believed they were above the law.
The Trump administration not only failed to initiate any investigations, but they also undid all the existing consent decrees they could and let it be known they wouldn’t enforce any they were bound to maintain. On his way out the door, Sessions issued a memo limiting the ability of the Justice Department to initiate and enforce consent decrees. Regarding the case of the jogger, Ahmaud Arbery, Trump said it was “very disturbing,” but he, “trusts Georgia justice.” Black America has watched “Georgia justice” since there was a Georgia, with Trump, you lost any hope the federal government gives a damn about justice for black victims.
Voting Rights: Justin Clark is a senior adviser and counsel for the Trump re-election campaign. He bragged about the Republican Party history of suppressing votes in swing states:
Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places, Let’s start protecting our voters. We know where they are… Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020.
In 2018, a consent decree that had been in place since 1982 was lifted that kept the Republican National Committee (RNC) from continuing to engage in suppression tactics including voter verification, aggressive poll monitoring, and other “ballot security” efforts. The RNC was freed to go back do doing what they always had, with nobody but the Trump Justice Department to challenge them, as if that was going to happen. Trump is opposed to every effort to make voting easier, especially voting by mail during a pandemic, hoping to suppress turnout by making people literally risk their lives to vote against him. He threatened to veto and COVID-19 funding that “bails out” the Post Office that plays an integral role in the election process including sending and receiving registrations and ballots. Trump has looked the other way while states like Georgia, Florida, and Wisconsin have removed millions of voters cumulatively from the rolls, a disproportionate number of them black.
Education: Trump talked about the quality of the schools in the black community, then appointed Betsy DeVos as his Secretary of Education to make them worse. Since her appointment, DeVos has siphoned off funds from public schools to private and public charter schools, effectively making predominantly white and religious schools better off and with few exceptions providing fewer resources for mostly minority schools. DeVos separately has gone after those with student loans, garnishing their wages illegally during a freeze on collections because of COVID-19. Her department says they’ll refund the funds but has provided no timeline.
Trump did ultimately sign a bill supplying funding to HBCUs including those that are religion-based. Out of the other side of his mouth, he questioned the need for funding HBCUs because “it benefits schools on the basis of race.” In a “listening session” with HBCU leaders in 2017, Trump mostly talked until allowing 7 of 15 leaders one minute each to respond. Trump moved an HBCU initiative from the Education Department to the White House where he could quash it on a whim.
Jobs: Trump has consistently praised the unemployment numbers during his term, following a trend of low unemployment from the Obama administration. He said repeatedly that black unemployment is the lowest in history though I can think of a time it was lower. Since COVID-19 struck, the overall unemployment rate has reached 14.7%, a figure unseen since the Great Depression. Trump certainly didn’t cause the virus and the need for social distancing and closing businesses. But his slow response and attempts to wish away the disease instead of taking early steps to combat it has made everything worse. It has become clear that black people and other minorities are overrepresented in the jobs lost as their jobs were least able to be conducted remotely. The unemployment rate for African-Americans is 16.7% and for the black youths he discussed in 2016, undoubtedly worse now than then.
Lives: On September 5th, 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Kanye West famously said, “George Bush doesn’t give a damn about black people.” Kanye has since cozied up to a new Republican President, proudly displaying a MAGA hat in his well-publicized visits to the White House. There have been a trail of black celebrities who trekked to Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, or the White House, all getting played for a Trump photo-op and getting nothing for their people. After COVID-19 struck, Trump revealed he could top Bush for truly not giving a damn. When it became clear that close to 50% of coronavirus deaths were black people, Trump immediately pivoted to opening up the economy, literally sending a high percentage of black people to their deaths to improve the economy and his election chances. All the people that said people would have to die to save the economy; former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and Donald Trump, are willing to sacrifice old people and black people to get their way. Enough!
When Trump posed the question in 2016, there may have been some reason to believe there wasn’t much to lose by supporting him. People could only speculate as to what kind of President he’d be, what policies he’d implement, how he would manage in a crisis. There’s enough evidence to accurately assess all of these things. White Nationalists have had more prominent positions in his administration than black people. The only black people you can name are Ben Carson at HUD and the Surgeon General Jerome Adams. They have become little more than bobblehead dolls agreeing with whatever Trump says or does. Stephen Miller, on the other hand, is setting immigration policy. Steve Bannon has moved on but says, “Let them call you racist. Wear it as a badge of honor.”
Trump has shown us who he is. The only question is, what are we going to do about it? Voting him out of office would be a start.
—
Previously Published on Medium
—