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At this point, I really just need all white politicians, and especially Trump, to keep Black people’s names out of their mouths. They really don’t know how to address us without being cringe, condescending and inherently racist.
President Joe Biden was being all of the above in 2020 when he made an appearance on The Breakfast Club and told Black people, “You ain’t Black” if we didn’t know who the right choice was between him and Donald Trump. And Trump is doubling down on being all of those things, especially now that we’re getting closer to Election Day, and he’s getting increasingly desperate for non-white support.
“Any African American or Hispanic– and you know how well I’m doing there – that votes for Kamala, you gotta have your head examined. Because they are really screwing you. They are really screwing you,” was the exact language Trump used at a rally in Atlanta on Tuesday.
First things first
One: It is no white person’s place to lecture Black people–or any people of color–about what our needs are, what our values should be, or who is best to represent us in government. If Trump wants to tell Black and Latino voters what he’ll do for our communities if he’s elected president — which, in 2020, he couldn’t do without lying and taking credit for policies his predecessor was actually responsible for — he can do that. That’s a politician’s lane, no matter their race. But don’t talk to Black people like you’re a disapproving overseer — that’s no way to win us over.
Two: Trump talks about Black people a lot, but he doesn’t listen to us. He knows Black stereotypes, not Black people, which is why he keeps claiming we’re flocking to him because of his mugshot and ugly-ass tennis shoes. But he doesn’t know us, which is why he consistently steps far outside his Caucasian lane. Remember how he swerved way across the median when he questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity in a room full of Black journalists?
He didn’t know enough about us to know how that would be received even after he whined like an orange-tinted baby over a Black panelist at NABJ questioning him about his past racial aggression.
This is our conversation. Fall back.
When Barack Obama lectured Black men in Pittsburg about the lack of enthusiasm many Black male voters have for Harris, a lot of Black people disagreed with him, arguing that he was setting Black men up to be scapegoated should Harris lose despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of them will still vote for her over Trump.
But Obama’s remarks still carried the familiarity of older Black men coming at younger Black men man-to-man. We’re not a monolith, and Obama’s remarks caused quite the debate within the Black community, but the Black community is exactly where that conversation needed to be had. That conversation never includes self-serving white people who only care about our votes, not our issues.
On the other hand, when former New York Rep. Peter King made an appearance on NewsMax to offer his white-ass opinion on Obama’s remarks, his first thought was to liken Black people to slaves, insisting that Obama’s message to Black men was indicative of Black people’s “plantation mentality.” That kind of out-of-pocket remark is exactly why white people need to stay out of our Black business when we’re talking amongst ourselves.
About those heads that need examining
Now that I’ve gotten white people’s caucasity-infused propensity to step out of their lanes by insisting they have any relevant opinion about the needs of Black people let’s move on to a more obvious point: Black people who are supporting Trump should probably have their heads examined.
Why would any of us support the man who has promised to end all DEI programs across America if he’s elected again while relegating Black people to designated “Black jobs?” Why should we vote for the man who, in 2020, exclusively targeted predominately Black and Latino voting districts with his election fraud lies he is still promoting in 2024?
Source: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / Getty
Why should we support the white nationalist who spearheaded the propaganda-reliant attack on critical race theory, which has resulted in Republican legislators across the country moving to ban non-whitewashed Black History into white-and-fragile oblivion? Why would Black people line up to support the man who denies systemic racism against Black people, but has vowed to fight for white people by using his presidential powers to combat what he erroneously called an “anti-white feeling in the country” that “can’t be allowed?”
When Trump was fired in November 2020 and had to be dragged out of office after trying to overturn the election results by lying, cheating, and the use of intimidation tactics, his lies about his losing the race endangered the lives of two Black women from Georgia, mother and daughter Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, private citizens who served as temporary election workers in 2020.
In fact, under his administration, individual (or individual non-governmental group) hate crimes soared 20%. Most were committed by white supremacists, and against Black people. By comparison, under Obama, these acts fell by 21%. Even calibrating for Obama’s two terms as opposed to Trump’s one term, there’s at least a 10% decline in the crime.
He literally oversaw our deaths
And arguably, none of those horrors come close to the deadly horrors of Trump’s health policies before and during the pandemic. They were responsible for the single largest drop in overall American life expectancy since WW2. Disaggregated by race, the decline in life expectancy was triple for Blacks than it was for whites.
Following the release of the medical journal The Lancet’s report on healthcare during Trump’s presidency, Scientific American wrote that:
“…[Trump’s] incompetent and malevolent response to the COVID-19 pandemic capped a presidency suffused with health-harming policies and actions. In [its] final year…. more than 450,000 Americans died from COVID-19, and…. [m]any of the deaths were avoidable; COVID-19 mortality in the U.S. was 40 percent higher than the average of the other wealthy nations in the Group of Seven (G7).
He knows that, regardless of what some polls have said about the inroads he has made with Black and Latino voters, the majority of us will vote for Harris. So, he’s effectively insulting the overwhelming majority of us regarding our mental acuity while standing before a largely white audience. It’s wild how he thinks so little of our humanity and ability to think for ourselves that it doesn’t even occur to him that he’s being disrespectful to the Black and brown masses.
And this part
Also, who TF is Trump to tell literally anyone they need to have their heads examined?
Not that we needed more evidence of Trump’s cognitive decline, but during a town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, Monday, he stood on stage swaying to music in silence for nearly 40 minutes instead of taking questions from the audience, which is essentially the point of a town hall.
This was Trump’s response to two audience members passing out from heat exhaustion, which he responded to by jokingly asking whether “anybody else would like to faint?” That was his response to his supporters’ medical needs before he decided to stop taking questions and zombie dance to a playlist for the better part of an hour.
So, yeah — maybe Trump needs to worry about himself and leave Black and Latino people the hell alone.
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