I know it’s been a good long while since we had an honest and open conversation. I can’t say that I speak for everyone from my particular demographic of African Americans, because we don’t all agree—just as we all know not every Caucasian American thinks or believes the same.
But before things go too much further and get too much worse, we need to talk. Seriously talk. Not at each other, not about each other from another room, but to each other.
First: Let’s get to brass tacks about this Trump guy.
He says he wants to make things better for all of us, which would be nice. However his track record is a bit spotty. He once did something nice for Jesse Jackson. Okay, that’s cool. But he was also president of his father’s company when they were deliberately trying to keep black people from living in their buildings. Yeah, sure, that was a long time ago. In the meantime there was the Central Park Five incident, when he called for the death penalty to be used on five innocent black teenagers accused of a brutal rape. That one still kinda burns.
He desegregated his Mar-a-Lago Club, but the truth isn’t that he did that for the benefit of blacks and Jews who had been excluded from other clubs. He did it to get back at the Palm Beach society, which looked down its nose at him.
For many longtime residents, Mr. Trump's decision to set up camp here was bad enough. That was in 1985, when Mr. Trump paid about $7 million for the 128-room Mar-a-Lago mansion, built 70 years ago by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Over the decades, Ms. Post's party schedule had placed the estate at the center of Palm Beach social circles. By the time she died in 1973, it was a local institution. (Part of the original guest quarters eventually became the Bath and Tennis Club.)
Mr. Trump arrived well-known, though not necessarily well-regarded. He brought with him a reputation as a real-estate developer accustomed to battling local residents who resist his wishes and as a latecomer to high society who hadn't learned the art of discretion.
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In the early 1990s, Mr. Trump found himself mired in a costly divorce just as real-estate markets began to slide. He complained openly about the $3 million a year in maintenance costs that the estate was costing him. He proposed subdividing the 17-acre property into smaller lots for residential development.
That set the stage for Mr. Trump's first big battle with Palm Beach leaders. The town, which years earlier had approved a subdivision proposal for the site from another developer, rejected Mr. Trump's plan, prompting him to sue for $50 million in damages. He dropped the suit when the idea emerged to turn the home into a private club. The town council agreed to that, but placed restrictions on the club, such as allowing no more than 500 members, to allay residents' fears about traffic congestion and noise. In the spring of 1995, the Mar-a-Lago Club officially opened, and is now charging $75,000 for membership, plus annual dues.
So here’s the thing: Mar-a-Lago wasn’t really a club prior to Trump’s arrival—it was a private residence. It was a home. Trump needed to make some cash, so he tried to make it into 17 separate residential properties he could sell or lease, which the city council rejected. That’s when he decided to make it a private club with a $75,000 annual membership fee, like some of other local clubs. Many of those clubs were segregated, his new club was not, and he used that fact as a way to cry that he was being discriminated against by the city.
Last December, after the council refused to lift the restrictions, Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Palm Beach, alleging that the town was discriminating against Mar-a-Lago, in part because it is open to Jews and African-Americans. The suit seeks $100 million in damages
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Even the Anti-Defamation League in New York, which in a 1994 battle forced Palm Beach's Sailfish Club to open up its membership, was concerned that Mr. Trump was using the charge of anti-Semitism for his own mercantile ends. The league's national director, Abraham Foxman, met with Mr. Trump soon after to air his concerns. According to Mr. Foxman, Mr. Trump agreed to modify his claims to allege only that the town council has treated Mar-a-Lago unfairly, compared with other clubs in town.
So just to set the record straight: He was in fact trying to get a better deal out of the Palm Beach City Council for his club, not doing anyone else a favor. This one time, he wasn’t as jerky as the other local clubs, so kudos on that. However since then, generally speaking, he really hasn’t done anything else for black people. Not really.
But now he says he’s our only hope. Now he says only he can make things better for us. And he starts out by saying things have never been worse for us, “ever ever ever.” Do you understand why that’s not a comforting appeal? If not, I’ll let Don Lemon explain it for me.
After panelist Peter Beinart ridiculed Lewandowski’s defense of Trump’s comment that black communities are “absolutely in the worst shape that they’ve ever, ever, ever been in before,” the Trump advocate said it was “a fact.”
Lemon shut him down, saying, “As a person of color who has lived the last fifty years in this country, things have never been better for African-Americans.”
Later, after Lewandowski attempted to deflect from Trump’s racism by saying he has African-Americans working for him, Lemon took the former campaign manager — along with his boss — to the woodshed.
“Then why doesn’t he ask those African-American friends why the words he uses are so insulting?” Lemon asked. “Because I’m sure they would tell him, if they were indeed his friends, if they were indeed employees who weren’t afraid of him and of losing their jobs. They would sit down and say, ‘listen Mr. Trump, what you’re saying is insulting, and I know you’re not talking to me, you’re talking at me. And I know that you’re not actually reaching out to me, you’re reaching out to make other people more comfortable with voting for you.’ That’s what I would say to him as someone who has given him a chance and has interviewed him more than eight or nine times.”
I don’t agree with Don on everything—not hardly—but I agree with him here.
Yes, it’s true that the poverty rate for African Americans is 26 percent. But it’s also true that it used to be much, much worse than that and has been recently improving.
As you can see, the chart above ends five years ago at 2011, when the black poverty rate was slightly higher at 28 percent compared to where it is now at 26 percent. You know what the opposite of 26 percent is? 74 percent. Which would be the proportion of us who are not in poverty and are not on welfare and are in fact, working. Maybe if you want to talk about us, you could try addressing most of us once in awhile.
And speaking of working, unemployment has also been improving.
Crime is also, in fact, not getting worse.
Yes, shootings are up dramatically in Chicago and in Baltimore this year, but neither of these situations are anywhere near as bad as they were 20 years ago when Chicago averaged nearly 1,000 murders per year. What’s happening in a few cities isn’t part of an overall national trend, because the overall trend is still heading down.
Still, we appreciate white people’s concern about this. It bothers us too—seeing as we’re the ones getting killed most of the time.
It’s also good that you care about our educational system now. You didn’t seem to care much for the last few decades or so, but bygones. “School choice” has got a few major downsides, but thanks for the concern.
In the end I personally don’t see how Trump is going to fix any of these lingering problems. Crime “crackdowns” have been attempted before. He’s not proposing to fix the schools, just shift some kids to new ones and hope they’re better somehow. He’s not proposing to reinstate Jack Kemp’s Empowerment Zones, not that they worked. He’s not proposing to roll back unneeded voter ID restriction, which could block hundreds of thousands of people of color from voting. He’s not proposing to get the police to improve their dismal 40 percent arrest rate for black murders.
And he’s also not addressing things like this.
Now we don’t yet know all of story on why Terence Crutcher is now dead, but from what most of us can see he didn’t make any threatening moves and wasn’t armed—and that’s important, because this shooting clearly does meet the standard set by Tennessee v. Garner.
The Tennessee statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against, as in this case, an apparently unarmed, nondangerous fleeing suspect; such force may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others. [emphasis added]
There was no probable cause to believe Terence Crutcher, who was literally standing with his hands up, posed a “significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officers” here. None.
Trump has lots of opinions on just about everything. He says our neighborhoods are worse than living in Afghanistan. But he’s said nothing on Terence Crutcher’s death because he is supposedly waiting for more facts?
During an interview on CNN’s New Day, host Chris Cuomo noted that Trump has been eager to speak about violence in black communities but has said nothing about the recent police killings of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa and Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte.
“The candidate you support has been silent so far, uncharacteristic of him,” the CNN host observed. “Why?”
Donald-Kyei acknowledged there were “a few bad apples” in law enforcement.
“It’s unfortunate that you have officers, some officers, a small percentage that are not following the rules,” she explained.
“So, how do you explain [Trump] not sending that message out right now, not leading?” Cuomo wondered. “He ordinarily has something to say when something happens.”
“I believe that Mr. Trump, like all Americans are waiting to find out what the actual facts are,” Donald-Kyei insisted. “The police have to do their investigations and talk to the officer and different things like that.”
“So we definitely have to let the police do their investigation and get to the bottom of this.”
Right. But this isn’t the first time this has happened. Trump had nothing to say about the shooting of Philando Castille, who had a legal gun permit. He had nothing to say about Castille having been pulled over 52 times and never getting arrested. He had nothing to say about the killing of Alton Sterling, in a state that doesn’t require a permit to open carry. He had nothing to say about he killing of 13-year-old Tyre King, who had a realistic looking BB gun—but then again, Ohio is also an open-carry state. He didn’t say anything when Officer Slam threw a 13-year-old girl across a school room. He didn’t say anything about the McKinney, Texas, pool party incident. He had nothing to say about the shooting of Laquan McDonald, even though police clearly lied about what really happened and tried to cover it up. And he had nothing to say about the officer who lied and falsely arrested Sandra Bland. [Anderson Cooper asked him about Sandra, he said it was “Terrible”]
He didn’t say anything about any of that until he was specifically asked at a black church.
Trump: That man had his hands up. To me it looked like he did everything you’re supposed to do. This young officer, I don’t know what she was thinking, but I’m very very troubled by that. In my opinion that was a terrible situation and we’ve seen others. Police are aware of that too. Police are troubled by it too. Maybe people that do that shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. So we all respect our police greatly and they just have to get better and better and better.
I was with him up until the last part about the police being “troubled.” This was not long after he had Sheriff Clarke, who says Black Lives Matter are terrorists, screaming “Blue Lives Matter” at the Republican National Convention. I’ve rarely seen any of them come forward and say they’re “troubled” by anything any other cop does. This is more than one officer being scared and “choking” —she killed someone in cold blood. “Maybe she shouldn’t be doing what she’s doing” is a pretty mild response. It’s not like she accidentally backed into him and caused a fender bender. She. Killed. Him. For no reason at all.
“Troubled” is the least anyone should be by this tragedy, and not being a cop anymore is the least that should happen. She should be jailed, but the fact is that almost never happens.
We’re told that if you’re armed you should expect to be immediately shot and killed by police if they confront you and you fail to comply or are belligerent. Yet that’s not what happened with this guy.
This guy didn’t comply. He didn’t drop his weapon. He screamed obscenities at the police for 10 solid minutes and wasn’t killed. They didn’t even arrest him, and he got his gun back. This is an example of a good cop, one who is patient and is clearly looking out not just for his own safety but also the safety of the suspect. There are many many examples of this, but unfortunately not enough of them in the black community.
Studies and just plain basic math show that police do not treat us all equally. But technically police kill more white people than black, so maybe more of you guys should be concerned about this. In 2015 that was 581 (white) to 306 (black). Still, there are fewer black people in the country so when you look at it by how many per million people it goes to 2.93 per million white people and 7.27 per million black—which means we are almost three times more likely to be killed by police. And 230 of those people were unarmed, which means that since 2001 police have killed approximately 3,450 unarmed Americans—which is more than the number of Americans killed on September 11, 2001. Of those killed by police, about 45 percent were white and 35 percent were black.
Most of us have a problem with that.
When Colin Kaepernick decided to silently protest these facts, Trump said maybe he should “leave the country” and try and find a better one. Meanwhile, Kaepernick says the shooting of Terence Crutcher was exactly what he was protesting.
Kaepernick condemned Friday night's fatal shooting of an unarmed Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by a police officer. "This is a perfect example of what this is about," Kaepernick said. "It will be very telling about what happens to the officer that killed him."
One aspect Kaepernick is taking upon himself is following through on a $1 million pledge to support communities, and he said Tuesday he plans to award $100,000 monthly over the next year to programs he's currently reviewing, with those distributions posted on a website he's currently building.
I’m sure you realize that Francis Scott Key owned slaves and fought abolitionists, right? That when he wrote about the “land of the free, and the home of the brave” he wasn’t including us. Certainly not in the third verse.
“No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Key was a Baltimore-born lawyer practicing in Washington DC, who is most noted for his participation in the conspiracy trail of Aaron Burr and his many arguments before the Supreme Court. He was the son of a prominent Maryland plantation owner, and himself owned several slaves.
Although generally opposed to slavery as an institution, Key was a virulent anti-abolitionist. In other words he strongly opposed the setting free of slaves, but instead advocated that there be colony established in Africa for their relocation if they had been freed. He also represented many slave owners who sued for the recovery of their “property” in cases of escaped slaves.
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Key was held captive on a British ship during the Battle of Baltimore (that’s where he wrote his famous poem that became the U.S. National Anthem), and his guards were freed black men. The British called them the “Corps of Colonial Marines”, and many of them died during the battle. That’s likely what inspired Key to write the lines above, as he had no sympathy for black troops. [emphasis added]
So it’s possible that to us, that whole anthem sounds a little different when really placed in context. And even if you’re still highly offended by Kaepernick, sitting or kneeling is a highly preferable choice to the rioting and looting we’ve seen in response to the shooting of Crutcher and others.
Not all of us agree on exactly how to approach this, or fix any of this. What is clear to me and many others is that Trump seriously doesn’t have solutions. His suggestion to reinstate the practice of “stop-and-frisk,” which specifically targeted minorities without probable cause, was found unconstitutional by a federal Judge and was actually 98 percent ineffective, only generating convictions 1.5 percent of the time. Over 84 percent of the people stopped, and sometimes assaulted, by the NYPD under this policy were minorities but guns and drugs were found more often on Caucasians.
• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded a weapon was half that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.
• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped.The NYPD uncovered contraband in one out every 43 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 57 stops of Latinos and 61 stops of African Americans to find contraband.
A policy that targets minorities even when they are less likely to be guilty of anything is the exact definition of “systemic racism’, but still Trump advocates exactly this policy and his Vice Presidential candidates says we shouldn’t even discuss “institutional racism” anymore.
He has not only failed to address police bias and brutality, he hasn’t addressed bigotry and bias in housing, or lending, or hiring, or the income and wealth gap, or how, exactly, he would help improve any of it. In fact, his tax policies are much more likely to make most of those issues worse and potentially increase the federal debt by $5.9 trillion.
Look, I do understand much of where you’re coming from. America and the world are changing. Jobs are shifting globally. The cost of living continues to rise, but the size of paychecks haven’t been growing for a long, long time. Job insecurity is growing. There’s student debt and housing issues to deal with. The cost of the daily worker commute. Food safety and air quality. Clean, lead-free water. Climate change and the spread of global terrorism. We have challenges ahead of us. Serious ones.
These are issues for all of us. One would hope we could agree on some of it.
But if you honestly think Trump is the solution for us, or even for yourselves, you need to check that noise. The guy who retweets racist and bogus crime statistics from @WhiteGenocide, who grossly overstates every problem we have while ignoring every problem others continue to perpetrate against us, whose son thinks calling people of color “Skittles”—as in the candy Trayvon Martin was buying when he was chased down and killed—is hilarious. The man who turns around and falsely claims the African-American pastor in Flint who interrupted his political spiel was a “nervous mess” when clearly she was perfectly calm and had previously defended his being allowed to speak, the guy who spent the last five years until last Friday claiming the first African-American president was somehow an illegal alien fraud, a phony and an affirmative action baby … is not somebody most of us are ever going to trust.
And if you think on Nov. 9 we’re going to quickly forget all the shit he said about us and how so many of you openly endorsed it all: think again.
That’s when the real hard work of fixing this nation’s numerous problems—which Trump has made demonstrably more difficult in terms of race relations—will truly begin. Hopefully, most you are with that plan and aren’t just going to continue to obstruct progress and complain.
That choice is up to you.