CHICAGO (AP) – President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed in the last months of his presidency – and without the slightest trace of irony – to have done more for black Americans than anyone, with the “possible exception” of Abraham Lincoln.
He boasted that the African American unemployment rate it fell to record levels under his supervision before the coronavirus pandemic devastated the economy. Trump announced his government’s criminal justice review for shortening mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses and leading to the release of thousands of incarcerated people, mainly black Americans. Trump also liked having increased funding for historically black colleges and universities.
But in the end, historians say that Trump’s legacy – and his electoral ruin – will be largely shaped by rhetoric aimed at awakening significant areas of his white base that pulled the frayed threads of race relations in America.
His division strategy was shown last week as he urged his supporters, mostly white men, to come to the US Capitol in the name of his unfounded allegations of electoral fraud.
After the pro-Trump crowd stormed the hallways Congress, Trump did not immediately condemn the violence. He did not denigrate the protesters as “BANDIDOS” or warned that he was prepared to greet them with “ferocious dogs” and “sinister weapons”, as he had threatened peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters after George Floyd’s death this year.
Instead, his initial response was a series of warm tweets and video messages in which he asked his violent loyalists to “go home in peace”, let them know that he felt their “pain” and say that he loved them.
Trump was often explicit in using the race as a club.
He claimed without evidence that Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, was not born in the United States, said that Mexican immigrants were “bringing crime” and were “rapists” and argued that there were “very good people on both sides” then violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, left a counterprotester dead.
He asked in particular why the United States would accept more immigrants from Haiti and “shitty countries” in Africa, not in places like Norway. Trump even wrote in a tweet that appeared to be aimed at a group of first-time lawmakers – progressive Democrats and women of color – to “go back and help repair the totally destroyed and crime-infested places they came from.”
“Since the black civil rights movement in the mid-20th century, there has been that kind of tacit agreement in the American political conversation that you could appeal to racial animus, but you had to do that in a particular way,” said Eddie Glaude, Jr., president of the Princeton University African American Studies program. “Trump made it explicit again. He brought it up. He incorporated certain assumptions about race that were driving our policy anyway. “
Human rights activists say the siege of the Capitol was the macabre end of a presidency that embraced white supremacist and extremist groups and fanned the flames of chaos and violence.
“This is a time of reckoning for the United States,” said Bob Goodfellow, interim executive director of Amnesty International USA. “President Trump has repeatedly encouraged the violence and disorder of his supporters. These are not the actions of a leader, but of an instigator. “
The New York real estate mogul has risen to the presidency, despite his complicated past with the black and Latin communities of his hometown. There was his refusal to apologize for harsh comments in 1989 about five black and Latino men who, as teenagers, were unjustly convicted of a brutal rape of a runner in New York’s Central Park. Trump paid for newspaper ads at the time calling for the state of New York to adopt the death penalty after the attack.
Early in his real estate career, Trump and his father were prosecuted by the Justice Department for violating fair housing laws by discriminating against black candidates. The Trumps finally signed a consent decree, but did not admit guilt.
Trump’s victory in the White House in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton was aided by the first drop in black voter turnout in 20 years. Since his defeat in November to President-elect Joe Biden, he has made unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud in large urban centers like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia – all areas with large African American constituencies – that have proved essential to Trump’s defeat.
There was no evidence of the massive fraud or gross error that Trump and his team alleged in dozens of cases that the judges, nominated by Republicans, Democrats or Trump himself, systematically rejected.
Still, the Republican National Committee, after Trump’s defeat, tried to launch the Trump era as the one in which the Republican Party loosened Democratic control over black voters.
“Because of his leadership, we have changed the political map forever and Republicans have a roadmap to be competitive and victorious in non-traditional communities,” said RNC spokesman Paris Dennard in a statement.
Reverend Marshall Hatch, a civil rights activist in Chicago, said Trump’s defeat at the polls brought a moment of relief.
But Hatch said his joy was quickly eclipsed by the recognition that about 74 million Americans were well voting for Trump, although he has repeatedly downplayed white supremacy, defamed women of color and tried to lessen the issue of racial injustice in American policing.
Hatch leads the New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood, which still has scars from the riots that followed the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. more than 50 years ago. The predominantly black neighborhood was disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic toll.
The church’s surroundings have one of the highest infection rates in the state. The Hatch church community has lost several worshipers – including its older sister, Rhoda Jean Hatch – to the virus.
“If these were disproportionately white people dying, it is difficult to see Trump or the nation reacting the way it did in the political context,” said Hatch. “It is difficult to reconcile that there are about 74 million Americans – and most of them white – who thought Donald Trump still deserved a second term.”
A few miles away, on the West Side of Chicago, a friend and fellow activist from Hatch, Rev. Ira Acree, said he fell into a depression in early summer, when the weather worsened in black neighborhoods like yours after the police murder in George Floyd Memorial Day in Minneapolis.
Acree, who was recovering at home after being diagnosed with COVID-19, remembered watching on television while police officers used tear gas and riot control tactics to fend off protesters from near the White House moments before Trump crossed Lafayette Square for a photo opportunity in front of the church that had been damaged during the disturbances the night before.
Acree’s concerns escalated months later, after Trump refused to condemn the far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys, during a presidential debate.
Acree said he was trying to remain optimistic about the fact that Trump’s defeat marked a turning point in race relations, but then the riot at the Capitol dashed much of that hope.
“I am concerned that this may just be the beginning,” said Acree. “It will explode if our best doesn’t get up and say enough is enough.”