Taking undue credit
For most Black Americans, Trump’s record of success provesweaker than he pretends.
Donald Trump likes to boast that he has done more for Black Americans than any other president since Abraham Lincoln. To state the obvious, he has not.
Trump’s record when it comes to the Black community is, at best, anemic — and at worst, actively damaging. What helpful steps he has taken, he generally exaggerates — and when the credit deserves to be widely shared, has taken it all for himself.
So, in this final week before Election Day, when the president has consistently called attention to his record, let’s flip a a favorite phrase of his and ask: What exactly have African Americans gained under the Trump presidency?
Trump often cites three things in his pitch to Black voters: the economy, funding for historically black colleges and universities and the passage of the First Step Act. Let’s look at each.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Black unemployment did fall under Trump, hitting a historic low of 5.9 percent in May 2018. He deserves credit for this — but not nearly as much as he likes to take. The decline began during Barack Obama’s tenure, which saw Black unemployment drop from 16.8 percent in March 2010 to 7.5 percent by the time he left office.
What’s more, as the economy sputters back amid the pandemic, many Black Americans are being left out, recovering just 1 in 3 jobs lost when businesses closed in the spring. White workers, by contrast, have seen about 2 in 3 jobs come back.
Black-owned businesses are also suffering, with more than 90 percent denied Pay Protection Plan funding from the Small Business Administration. As a result, more than 40 percent of Black-owned small businesses have shut down during the COVID-19 crisis.
Trump may be on firmer ground when he touts his actions in support of historically black colleges, but as always he seeks to take credit for work that began long before he was sworn in. He signed a bill restoring funding (and guaranteeing future funding) for historically black colleges. But what he leaves out is that the bill enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Congress, where lawmakers had spent years negotiating compromises on related issues.
Trump deserves credit for supporting a stronger version of the First Step Act than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had been willing to bring to the floor. The improved criminal justice reform bill had near-universal Democratic support and reduces sentences for some drug-related and other crimes on the front end and reforms life inside prison to make inmates better able to stay out of prison once they are released.
Under First Step, more than 3,000 people have been released from federal prison for good-time credit and another 3,000 — most of whom are Black — have had sentences reduced.
Trump has sought to drum up votes among Black male voters by contrasting the First Step Act with former Vice President Joe Biden’s role in passing the 1994 Crime Bill, which contributed to the mass incarceration of Black men. Biden has since called elements of that bill, which passed with the support of both Democrats and Republicans, a mistake.
But passage of the First Step Act should not overshadow Trump’s dismal record on race, nor the harm inflicted on the Black community by his administration’s other policies.
Under Trump, the DOJ pulled back on consent decrees with police departments that had proven effective in tackling police misconduct. He is seeking to overturn Obamacare, which reduced the number of uninsured Black Americans by one-third. He has downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic and failed to mount an adequate response to the virus, which has disproportionately hit the African American community and has killed nearly 1 in 1,000 Black people in the U.S.
Then there’s his rhetoric. Trump made his entry into politics by pushing a racist birther conspiracy theory about Obama. As a presidential candidate and as president, he has leaned on racist dog whistles, resisted denouncing white supremacy while condemning the Black Lives Matter movement, and been reluctant to acknowledge systemic racism.
“What the hell do you have to lose?” Trump asked Black voters in 2016. The answer, then and now: Too much.