What have blacks to lose, and when have they won?

Donald Trump’s recent remarks to the African American community ring hollow, especially to black parents concerned about their children. “What have you got to lose?” he asks, suggesting that his “Make America Great Again” campaign responds to centuries of injustice.

But was it great in the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries, when African families were stolen from their homes, transported as cargo, separated and sold to white slave-owners in America?

Maybe it was great in 1776, when those rich, white men set about to proclaim “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Except that the only folks who got to enjoy those privileges were rich, white men like themselves. Not women, not slaves, not African American free men, not the Native Americans whose land was stolen.

So we’ll fast-forward, past the Civil War when some blacks were forced into the Confederate Army to fight against their children’s freedom. We’ll breeze past the sharecropping system that swapped slavery for servitude for generations. We’ll skip the lynching and the mobs that served to terrify children and families into submission once their “freedom” was won.

Perhaps we will land on the 1940s when the United States was fresh from its victories in Europe and Asia. But African Americans, who were systematically redlined out of the neighborhoods they wanted for their children, wouldn’t call that a time of greatness. Statesanctioned discrimination in housing, education, employment, welfare benefits or health care are instead the ugly shadows of U.S. history, times that should evoke in all of us a sense of shame — not nostalgia.

Maybe it was the golden decade of the ’50s? Gasoline was only 18 cents a gallon, but how was that great when an African American family had to carry extra gallons of gas, along with food for lunch and a makeshift chamber pot, because gas stations were often unwelcoming to these consumers? Or with the benefits of the G.I. Bill in hand, young adults were gaining access to higher education in unparalleled numbers, but more than 95 percent of African American youth enrolled in college were limited to black-only institutions. They were not welcome in the universities we now open to all.

Surely America was not great in the 1960s when our streets were roiled by rioting and violence. When communities of color, left out of the American dream for too long, and suffering the relentless abuses of strong-arm police tactics, exploded in frustration and demanded that we right our historic wrongs.

In 1980, about 1 in 10 white children were living in poverty; the rate was almost four times greater for African Americans. The disparities persist today. Nearly 2 in 5 black children live in poverty, and those born poor typically remain poor; income mobility in the U.S. is a greater part myth than it is fact.

Today, a black baby is two times more likely to die in the first year of life than a white infant. An African American child is two times more likely to be maltreated than a white child. A black youth is five times more likely to be killed by gun violence than a white youth.

America can be great, but making it so means creating equal opportunities for all children to get a healthy start in life, to live in safe neighborhoods, to access high quality child care, to go to strong schools, and to see their parents working in good-paying jobs.

“What have they got to lose” is hardly the political platform of inspiration. America will be great when children’s life outcomes are determined by their hard work, their determination or perhaps their generosity to others. America will be great when we realize the potential of “justice for all.”