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| The remains of a gas station torched during civil unrest in Milwaukee |
What a funny way Donald Trump has of reaching out to black
people. The Republican presidential nominee came to Milwaukee and, skirting black
neighborhoods, drove out to the lily-white suburb of West Bend to urge African
Americans to vote for him – a perplexing pattern he has since repeated in
Michigan and North Carolina.
In the West Bend speech he accused Hillary Clinton of
“talking down” to African Americans. But what do you call lecturing people
without even bothering to look them in the eye? In contrast, Clinton talks face
to face with African Americans.
The real estate tycoon could have done so, too. Coming to
town in the wake of the turmoil in the Sherman Park neighborhood, where
businesses were torched, he could have met with, say, business owners there – a
gesture that would have packed more meaning than the empty, albeit clamorous, rhetoric
that he spewed in West Bend.
Trump’s black support barely registers in the polls. He’s
clocking in at one to two percent – the worst showing ever for a GOP
standard bearer. So it’s understandable he would want to boost those numbers.
But the bizarre way he’s going about doing it makes you wonder: What’s his
game?
There is a history here. The GOP is, as Trump himself has
reminded us, the party of Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves. Thus, black
people were solidly Republican after the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt’s New
Deal, though, drew most African Americans to the Democratic Party. Still, a
sizable minority remained loyal to the GOP.
Richard Nixon fixed that, adopting what’s known as the
“Southern strategy,” which involved winning office by appealing to whites
turned off by the Democratic Party’s embrace of the civil rights agenda. The
strategy chased many of the black loyalists out of the Republican Party. But
the thinking was that the party gained far more in white votes than it lost in
black votes.
That thinking was
correct, with an emphasis on “was.” Now, due to racial changes in the
population, that strategy causes more losses than gains – the reason why wise
men and women of the party have called for a shift away from the strategy.
They face a major roadblock, however. Remember the white
voters the party drew by appealing to anti-black sentiment. Well, now those
voters make up a vital part of the Republican base, and they like the Southern
strategy just fine, thank you. Immigration reform? No way, José. (Anti-black
people tend to be anti-brown, too.)
Trump has exploited this ambivalence in the Republican
Party. Rather than abandoning the Southern strategy, he has doubled down on it.
For instance, thrilling the Republican base, the reality show star has called for
a ban on Muslim immigrants and the erection of a wall along the Mexican border and,
of late, has insinuated that black people cheat at the polls. No wonder his
candidacy cheers white supremacists, like former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard
David Duke.
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| Protesters greeting Trump at a stop he made in downtown Milwaukee for an interview with Fox News talker Sean Hannity, before the candidate's trip to West Bend |
The Southern strategy, America learned, still has enough
juice to win the Republican presidential nomination, but at a high cost: It
chases away so many people of color and fair-minded whites that it imperils
victory in the general election.
So Trump comes to a white suburb in the hypersegregated
Milwaukee area to connect with black voters. His rhetoric thuds false. A true
dialog would take place face to face, and it must begin with an apology from
the showman about his fanning racial fears for political gain.
After all, many African Americans have a hard time
forgetting that Trump helped lead the charge to foist an aura of illegitimacy onto
America’s first black president. Trump noisily demanded to see Barack Obama’s
birth certificate, as if the commander-in-chief was an alien who must produce
papers.
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A note to readers
Helping to open and run an art gallery took me away from this blog for several years. But I'm back now. I'm continuing with the gallery, but I think I'm more adept at juggling.
