After a police officer early last Sunday morning shot and killed a young black man who is said to have had a stolen gun on his person and failed to comply with orders to drop the weapon, businesses in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were set on fire; officers had rocks and bricks hurled at them – four coppers were injured – and random Whites were attacked by an enraged mob of mostly African-American youth.
The violence and destruction of property, which appears to have been more severe than the scenes after high-profile police shootings in Ferguson and Baltimore in 2014 and 2015 respectively, isn’t just about the shooting death of 23 year-old Mr. Sylville Smith by a black policeman but rather has more to do with “years of inequity, high unemployment and oppression,” said Alderman Khalif Rainey, according to CNN.
Black Americans make up 40% of Milwaukee’s population and more than half of all black men there in their 30s and 40s have served time behind bars. Milwaukee – which is the biggest City in Wisconsin, a state that incarcerates the highest number of black men in America – has been noted as among the worst places to live for African-Americans, due in large part to their long history of racial segregation and discrimination. Also contributing to the plight of black people there could be its tough-on-crime Sherriff, Mr. David Clarke, a regular pundit on cable television who at the Republican National Convention applauded the news that the remaining charges against Baltimore cops involved in Mr. Gray’s April 2015 arrest were dropped – Mr. Gray died at age 25 from injuries sustained while in police custody; his death was ruled a homicide, though no one will be held accountable.
If there was ever a group of people that that needed encouragement, acknowledgement and atonement, it’s Milwaukee’s Black population. Mr. Donald Trump yesterday visited Wisconsin with a message for black voters, but rather than visit Milwaukee he rallied in West Bend, whose White population is 95 percent, according to MSNBC’s Mr. Ari Melber.
In a room where the only African-Americans in attendance were said to be workers, Mr. Trump, who currently has less than 5 percent support from black voters, pledged to increase police in urban areas with high crime rates – the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that simply running from a police officer in a high crime area, even if no wrongdoing occurred, constitutes reasonable suspicion, which is why Mr. Gray was arrested.
Other than that, Mr. Trump, who’s consistently short on details and operates almost exclusively in a fact-free environment, promised nothing to Black voters that would make them consider supporting him.
Besides likely being scared of the anger displayed by some Black people in Milwaukee, Mr. Trump avoided the City because, despite his pledge to win 100 percent of the black vote, he doesn’t want to engage African-Americans in a meaningful way: Mr. Trump has turned down opportunities to speak at national conventions for Black and Hispanic journalists and parishioners of the A.M.E Church. In fact, cities with huge Black populations, like Philadelphia, have been more engaged by Mrs. Hillary Clinton than Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump might be serious about winning the presidency – I don’t think he is and neither do many of my associates – but he’s only joking when he remarks about wanting to win the black vote. Mr. Trump desires the black vote in the same the Ku Klux Klan desire diversity among its ranks. And it’s not that Mr. Trump doesn’t like Black people, it’s just that he just prefers his voters white, male and poorly-educated.
Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™
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