Some said Obama injected race into the Trayvon Martin shooting when he said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” This one left me scratching my head. Could the Obamas have perhaps given birth to a boy that somehow was not Black?
What is most telling about Trump, however, are the Blacks who he surrounds himself with, because most of them appear to harbor the same level of disdain for their own as does the president. For this, one needs look no further than the collection of Black soul-sellers he summoned to his side in Washington last week during the signing of a proclamation in King’s honor.
Grinning widely was Dr. Darrell Scott, a Cleveland minister who serves on Trump’s National Diversity Committee. When asked about the white supremacists’ rally last summer in Charlottesville that left one person dead, Scott blamed the anti-protesters who “came with the intention to start violence.”
Scott, who once said he was contacted by Chicago gang members who wanted to work with Trump to stop violence in that city, was eventually forced to walk that statement back when it was proven to be a lie.
Trump surrogate Paris Dennard exhibited his slavishness to Trump by attempting to equate Obama’s reaction to the shooting of nine Blacks during Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., by white supremacist Dylan Roof to Trump’s controversial response to the Charlottesville incident, but this is impossible. So connected to the tragedy was Obama that not only did he speak at the internationally televised memorial service, he also led the congregation in the singing of “Amazing Grace,” a song I’m certain that Trump doesn’t know the words to.
When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urged Republican colleagues to join her in calling for the removal of Confederate statues from the halls of the Capitol, Katrina Pierson, a former Trump spokesperson, said the statues should “absolutely not” be removed, adding that “those monuments, pieces of American culture and American history, have been there for a very, very long time.”
Also at Trump’s side was Bruce LeVell, an Atlanta businessman who is the executive director of Trump’s National Diversity Coalition and a member of the president’s 2020 advisory board. So out of touch with his heritage is LeVell that late last year he appeared on CNN and in the span of one minute incorrectly called Medgar Evers Medgar “Evans” and Medgar “Eggers.”
If Trump were truly interested in the state of Black America and bettering it, he would have forged bonds with people like Michelle Alexander, who has focused her work on mass incarceration. He would attract someone like Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which has done amazing work in guiding children who have been given up on to college.
Instead, he surrounds himself with Blacks who are willing to absolve him of every racist act he commits, no matter how blatant—past, present and yet to come.
(John N. Mitchell has worked as a journalist for more than a quarter century. He can be reached at jmitchell@phillytrib.com and Tweet at @freejohnmitchel.)
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)
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