NY Times Mag: Trump is Right - Democrats Have Failed Blacks
"Let that uncomfortable truth sink in."
11.2.2016
17
The New York Times Magazine has published an essay by a black reporter arguing that the essence of candidate Donald Trump’s criticism of the Democratic party rings true: it has "failed and betrayed the African-American community."
While far from painting a pro-Trump portrait, civil rights reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones noted in “Donald Trump’s Inconvenient Truth” that Trump's "surreal" comments at a recent North Carolina campaign rally carried the usual law-and-order rhetoric, but with "an unexpected twist":
“Our job is to make life more comfortable for the African-American parent who wants their kids to be able to safely walk the streets,’’ Trump said. ‘‘Or the senior citizen waiting for a bus, or the young child walking home from school. For every one violent protester, there are a hundred of moms and dads and kids on the same city block who just want to be able to sleep safely at night.”He pointed out the high unemployment rate among black men in Milwaukee, the number of households run by single mothers who were living in poverty and the low high-school-graduation rates. “I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different and much better future,” Trump told the crowd, which at times stood eerily silent. “It is time for our society to address some honest and very, very difficult truths. The Democratic Party has failed and betrayed the African-American community.” Trump went on to say that Hillary Clinton “panders and talks down to communities of color,” “seeing them only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future.” It was time, Trump proclaimed, that Democrats compete for black votes.
The "message was presumably targeted at white moderates, the independents and disillusioned Bernie Sanders legions," Hannah-Jones writes. "Trump was speaking more directly about the particular struggles of working-class black Americans and describing how the government should help them more than any presidential candidate in years. Let that uncomfortable truth sink in."
"Whatever his motives," she continued, "Trump was talking about the black working class in a way that few national politicians do... [F]ar too often, the way Democrats talk to, and about, black Americans is indistinguishable from the way their Republican counterparts do. And President Obama has been as guilty as anyone."
Hannah-Jones hastens to add that much of what Trump said is just "rhetoric" and that black voters shouldn't necessarily "buy what Trump is selling," but "by brushing Trump’s criticism off as merely cynical or clueless rantings, we are missing an opportunity to have a real discussion of the failures of progressivism and Democratic leadership when it comes to black Americans."
"If Democrats want to keep black voters, they need to work for those votes," she concludes.
Of course, that won't happen, at least not the way Hannah-Jones means, because the Democratic Party has a vested interest in dividing this country racially and perpetuating a victim narrative among blacks and Hispanics in order to posture as their savior.
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