I turned on the television today and saw a newsflash that made me physically ill. Steve Harvey and his goofy looking, patriarchy pushing, misogynistic self, was laughing and joking and doing his usual country bumpkin, shuffling routine. This was of course, typical and expected from him. I have actually been completely disgusted with him ever since he, replete with his host of failed marriages and relationships, fixed his fingers to write a so-called relationship book, advising women to be ladies and think like men. You know. Insanity. Well this particular breaking news segment (please tell me what isn’t breaking news CNN?) was especially nauseating, because he had just emerged from the tower of Trump meeting with the building’s owner, about how he can help him deal with the plight of black folks.
Now this meeting happens, mind you, right after after Steve, stupidly, makes derogatory remarks about Asian men. Which in itself was bad enough. What I haven’t seen anyone actually point out in the firestorm that erupted after however, is the very thing that stood out to me the most. Contained within his ridiculous commentary about Asian men, was his outright demeaning and lame mocking of black women. He not only made it seem as if black women would never date anyone Asian (another in a long line of pimp techniques that these types employ in order to make black males seem more desirable to black women, over and above any other men, than they actually are), he also portrayed all black women as basically uneducated and stupid by saying they don’t eat food they can’t pronounce. This was to done to, falsely and insultingly, indicate that black women are unable to indulge in or understand what it is to enjoy international cuisine or are inept at pronouncing the words on an Asian menu. As a person who recites a sutra in classical Chinese daily, I was personally offended by that particular remark.
Harvey then goes on to say after the Trump meeting: “They're kind of beating me up on the internet right now for no reason, but that's life, isn’t it?”. So all of this concern that people have about his insane and insulting remarks is “no reason” to him and doesn’t matter one bit. Yet this clown, is who Trump selects to meet with as a person who can effectively articulate the concerns of black people on the whole and black women in particular. It was the last straw for me, among a huge host of a number of other straws, as I viewed it as just one more slap in the face to black women by this so-called president-elect, (see Congressman John Lewis for further explanation of the last part of that sentence).
It is very important for all of us to look at patterns of behavior when it comes to examining the attitudes of people who claim to be our political leaders. If we don’t, it is to our own detriment. The pattern I see with Trump and he has made this more than clear, is that black women don’t even exist to him. He refuses to take any black woman seriously and the few he does have around, basically serve as mere caricatures for him. He proved that with his choice to give Diamonoid and Polyblend a platform to spew all of their mammified insanity all over every conceivable screen there is, during this presidential election, setting black women’s image backward 200 years. Then he also puts this Omarosa character, the ultimate in the “angry black woman” stereotype, front and center, as the one to represent him on the campaign trail, when the issues black people face are discussed. He then rewards her blatant demand that everyone should get on their knees and bow to him like he is a king, (as if we live under a monarchy and not a democracy), by giving her a post, tantamount to Secretary of Ghetto Relations or something. Not a cabinet position of course but merely a member of his staff. To have a black woman in his cabinet would never even be a thought to enter his mind, much less anything close to a reality.
But the most glaringly obvious omission on his part, has been made evident during the infamous series of meetings he has been having as he holds court at Trump Tower. An omission made evident by who he has chosen to meet with when it comes to the discussion of black people. Not one of these people who emerges from his golden elevators to be interviewed by the press or stand for a photo op with him, has been a black woman. Not one. There is no way that anyone can even think that this is not by design, considering the fact that black women occupy leadership and organizing roles in every area of what is considered to be black life in this country, as well as in the larger society itself.
He has instead decided to select some of the most misogynistic representatives from what is being deemed, by him and no one else, as “the black community, with track records that have shown them to be nothing but black males who have either a horrendous track record with black women, have exacted emotional and physical harm against black women or who aren’t even partnered with black. From Jim Brown to Kanye to those unheard of preachers he ran around with all throughout his campaign, not one of these black males can say they have any true understanding or anything more than a superficial knowledge, of the specific issues that black women in particular have to face. Nor are those difficulties, central to their platform as representatives and enforcers of, the black patriarchy.
They are, for the most part, the types that are extremely male centered and sexist in their thought process and politics and have never advanced any agenda that will assist black women in advancing as women outside of a patriarchal construct. Yet this is who he has selected to represent black people on the whole. Considering the fact that the vast majority of black households are headed by black women who are raising their children alone and many are at risk for poverty and incarceration and have a lack of access to capital and resources as a result, as well as the fact that black women are the fastest rising group when it comes to small business ownership and hold the position of number one in college enrollment, one would think there would be at least a group of black women he would actually want to sit down with, that could give insight and voice to the particular concerns black women have if, as he claims, he has the interest of the black community at heart. This idea that black males are automatically representational of everyone who is black, is not only erroneous and nonsensical, it is ineffective, if one is going to even think about tackling the issues that are happening in the black community today.
Now I do realize that black women voted for Hillary at a rate of 98 percent and I also realize that he is vindictive and spiteful and a misogynist himself. So I am not naive enough to be surprised by his lack of attentiveness to this part of the populace. I also realize that Rudy Giuliani is his boy and that he himself made it clear about his feelings about black women, a long time ago, when he was running for mayor in NY, when asked on a WBAI radio interview about the killing of Eleanor Bumpers by the police and justifying it by calling her a “large, imposing woman”. However, this glaringly obvious omission must be brought to to everyone’s attention, as it is a majorly hypocritical point to highlight about a person who claims to care about the issues that black people are facing. Not saying anything about this, only to serves to make it seem as if it’s unimportant. It is important.
We all need to be making an issue about his one-sided and insulting choices of black meeting attendees, based on the politics of a male centered yesteryear and make it clear that it is absolutely unacceptable. We also need to make it clear that black women will not go backward into invisibility, just because Michelle Obama is no longer going to be the First Lady. The issues remain and the concerns black women have are still valid. They will not go away just because we now have a myopic person entering the Oval.
Black women do not have to settle for this treatment from him. Its also time to make a lot of noise about this and demand more from him, if as he claims, he wants to bring the country together. Trump has got to make worlds, no universes better moves than this in order to make that happen. Black women are right here as citizens of this country and they are not going away and no amount of trotting Omarosa out in front of everyone, when faced with the particular issues that are of concern to black women, in order to try to deflect and get all black women to shut up and go away, is going to change that fact. Neither is his attempt to pull some black males together to make it seem as if they have some automatic, universally black, leadership role, they don’t have, to talk about TV shows, mutual friends and golf. So what are you going to do about this Trump? Black women would like to know. Because so far you are not showing us very much in the way of progress in this area, at all. Neither is Steve Harvey.