Dahleen Glanton: Trump's claim that he has done more for Black people than any president since Lincoln makes me sick
Every time I hear Donald Trump say that he has done more for the Black community than any president since Abraham Lincoln, I want to let out a guttural scream.
It took me a while to understand the outrage I felt watching this white man speak to me, an African American, as if he were some sort of savior who has lifted my people from wretchedness and given us a chance to be more like him.
Though he stops short of saying it, his point is that Black people should be grateful. He is telling us that were he not such an empathetic and benevolent president, African Americans would be far worse off. He suggests that no other president has shown such generosity to a group of people as helpless as we are.
I now know the cause of my indignation. Trump sounds like a slave master proclaiming that he is good to his Negroes.
To keep their slaves submissive, the masters would threaten to sell them to less compassionate owners if they got out of line. “I have done more for the Black community” sounds like a slave owner claiming that he’s a good master because he doesn’t beat his slaves as often or cut off their feet to stop them from fleeing.
It is a racist, self-gratifying pronouncement that was passed down through generations of prominent white people who held power over African Americans. It was prevalent in the South during the 1960s, when Black women largely were domestic workers cleaning homes and caring for the children of white employers.
It was not uncommon for a white woman to brag to her friends about how good she was to her help. Though she paid wages too small to live on, she rewarded her “girl” with items from her home — discarded furniture, clothing and trinkets that Black people struggling to put food on the table would never buy for themselves.
Trump wants us to understand that even the first Black president, Barack Obama, couldn’t fix our problems. Only someone like him — white with an abundance of intellect — could lead us to the Promised Land. But there’s only so much he can do.
Trump’s comments reflect the racist, stereotypical attitude he and others in his circle espouse about the Black community. He sees African Americans as violently barbaric people and describes our neighborhoods as “living in hell.”
He has written us off as too dumb to understand how we have created these conditions ourselves. And he is losing patience with us because we refuse to acknowledge all that he does for us.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, expressed it more bluntly. Appearing Monday on “Fox & Friends,” Kushner brought up the old racist adage that Black people can’t succeed to the heights of white people because they don’t want to be successful.
“One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about,” said Kushner, a top White House adviser. “But he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful.”
Kushner went on to suggest that African Americans would rather complain than do what is necessary to improve their lives.
In other words, the white savior in the Oval Office has broken his back trying to help Black people, while we are being lazy and shiftless. This came from someone who came up in his father’s business and is only in his prominent position because he is married to the president’s daughter.
The hypocrisy of both Kushner and Trump, who inherited wealth from his father, is astounding. It shows complete ignorance when it comes to the interplay between race and economics in America.
It overlooks the impressive achievements of large numbers of African Americans in spite of a system that historically has offered little or no assistance. It also ignores that this same system has successfully fought to tear down equalizers such as affirmative action that sought to provide a bridge to economic parity.
Speaking at Stanford University in 2017, Harvard University sociologist William Julius Wilson pointed out that the income of more affluent African Americans was increasing prior to Trump taking office.
When adjusted for inflation, the percentage of African Americans earning at least $75,000 more than doubled to 21% from 1970 to 2014, he said. Those making $100,000 or more nearly quadrupled to 13%. In contrast, white Americans saw a less impressive increase, from 11 to 26%, he added.
By no means does that indicate that African Americans have reached economic parity in this county. In fact, we remain far from it.
But it does prove that Trump is not the savior to Black people he claims to be. More so, it shows that African Americans can do, and always have done, a lot better without him.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Dahleen Glanton is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
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