Motivations of Blacks and Jews on Trump team
By Dorothy Inman-Johnson
Special to the Outlook
Though there are not many, it is hard to understand why Blacks and Jews remain on Trump’s team as he proclaims his support for maintaining Confederate monuments, while enabling Klan and Neo-Nazi supporters to spew hate directed at minorities and Jews, and advocating police violence toward minorities in spite of repeated police shootings of unarmed Black men. During the Charlottesville White supremacy demonstration, these documented hate groups shouted “Jews will not replace us (meaning the White race)”, “Unite the Right”, and “Blood and Soil” used by the German Nazis to denote purity of the German race. Hitler used that thinking to justify sending more than 250,000 Jews to gas chambers for no other reason than their heritage. Their racist chants were made against a backdrop of confederate flags and swastikas. It made no difference to Trump that this hateful demonstration had caused the death of an innocent young woman and the injury of 19 others. Trump still could not force himself to hold them responsible; not even after David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, gleefully proclaimed that their actions were in support of Trump’s vision for America.
Even with a Jewish son-in law and a daughter who converted to the Jewish faith, Trump does not have the backbone to stand up to Klan and Nazi hate groups; so, he certainly will not risk losing their support to protect the rights of African-Americans. Further, it is likely based on his past attacks on President Obama, excuses for police brutality, and his documented housing discrimination against Black Americans that Trump is as much a racist as David Duke.
It is particularly embarrassing for African-Americans like HUD Secretary Ben Carson and Amarosa Manigault-Newman, Trump’s Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison, to support an administration so aligned with terrorist organizations that were created for the sole purpose of denying justice and equal rights to minorities, in light of the horrors Black Americans have had to endure since being brought here in chains. The first African slaves were brought to America in 1619, two hundred and forty-four years before President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation changing the legal status of over 3 million slaves to free. It took five more years for the passage of the 14th Amendment granting citizenship to the former slaves in 1868. The Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1865 and evolved into a White terrorist organization to keep those uppity Blacks aware of White superiority through hooded, robed intimidation, beatings, and murder. It took almost another hundred years until full citizenship protection was granted in the mid and late 1960s when laws were passed that outlawed discrimination. And in the era of Trump, most African-Americans feel our voting and civil rights are still at risk in 2017.
Therefore, the response Amarosa received recently at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference in New Orleans should not have surprised her. She was invited as a member of a panel to discuss police violence against African-Americans and the Trump administration’s lack of leadership on the issue. She repeatedly refused to address the questions on the issue, and instead wanted to take her time on the panel to tell her life story. When confronted by noted journalist, Ed Gordon, an argument ensued. Attendees at the session stood and turned their backs on her, while some others staged a walk out.
During the Trump campaign, she was named Director of African-American Outreach. She learned quickly that her association with that campaign gave her zero credibility with the Black community. So she was given a new title after Trump’s inauguration that is as meaningless as the first title. And Ben Carson should be embarrassed to have been appointed to a position to oversee subsidized housing, for which he has no qualifications, just because he is Black; when, actually, White Americans far outnumber Black Americans and other minorities living at or below the federal poverty line. It would seem that Carson would have been more qualified to be Surgeon General, with his credentials and skills in the medical profession.
Either they have no concern about their tattered reputations, or they just like getting that check and being in the glow of a President; even a terrible one. However, all money is not good money; and a job is not worth selling your soul to have.
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