Why does a sector of African Americans support Donald Trump?
Although the president of the United States, Donald Trump, is considered by many as racist, there are a small number of African Americans who see him as a "leader who broke the establishment in Washington."
In recent months, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, intensified his campaign directed at the Afro-descendant population. In November of last year he launched his “Black Voices for Trump” campaign in the city of Atlanta, where 54% of the population is black.
Upon getting on the stage at the event, the president addressed hundreds of attendees who wore red hats with the phrase "BLACK LIVES MAGA" (acronym that stands for Make America Great Again, a distinctive phrase from Trump's speech), to whom he told : "We will campaign for every last African American vote in 2020. We have done more for African Americans in three years than the failed Washington establishment has done in more than 30 years."
“The Democrats have disappointed you (…) They have fired you. They have hurt you. You have been sabotaged for too long, ”emphasized Trump, who is seeking reelection this year.
Renowned African American leaders such as Herman Cain, former Georgia lobbyist and candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries; Candace Owens, American conservative commentator and activist; Alveda King, American activist and niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King; writer Carol M. Swain, and Bruce LeVell, director of the Trump Diversity Council, among others, have supported the presidential campaign of Trump, whom they label as a leader who broke the Washington establishment.
“What he did for this country was the most necessary, by ending political correctness. We were losing this country and everyone was very politically correct to tell us that we were losing the country, "said Candace Owens during an interview for the Fox News network.
"He (Trump) stood on a platform and told the truth, and it was time, because if you look at what happens in Europe I think we would have suffered the same consequences that they suffer if we had not had someone strong and with the will to endure. the blows of the media ”, highlighted the Afro-American activist.
"Why are white liberals trying to tell me who I am? (...) We had the lowest unemployment rate in, what, fifty years? I mean, how could you not support it?" Said African-American political activist Bryson Gray in remarks. to The New Yorker magazine.
With this campaign Trump seeks to obtain a higher percentage of the black vote than he obtained in 2016, when he only achieved 8%.
However, this margin was not far from the Republican predecessors of him. According to data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University, when John McCain faced Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, the Republican candidate only got 4%. George W. Bush achieved 10% in his two elections, while his father's George H. W. Bush obtained 10.5%. On average since 1976, according to the center, Republican candidates have only managed to capture an average of 10% of the African-American vote.
But achieving more than 8% by 2016 seems like an increasingly distant goal for Trump. A recent Washington Post poll revealed that 8 out of 10 African Americans describe the president as racist and 9 out of 10 disapprove of his overall performance.
As highlighted by the Washington Post, African Americans feel pessimistic under Trump's leadership and highlight that it is a bad time to be a “black in America”, especially when white Americans do not take into account the discrimination “that blacks experience. ”.
But not all seem to agree with this version. African-American political activists Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, known as Diamond and Silk, do not believe Trump is racist. For these bloggers, "Trump is realistic" and "the only color he sees is green, and he wants you to have something of him," they said during a dinner at the Hilton, in North Hills, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr, the last January 22.
During the event, activists even claimed that Trump did more for the black community than Barack Obama did during his tenure. The activists highlighted as an example the more than 1 million jobs created for black people and the financial support for predominantly black colleges and universities, arguments that are repeated by the majority of African Americans who support Trump.
Despite this, several analysts believe that Trump has been one of the presidents who has generated the most racial division in the United States in recent decades. The president has launched strong criticism and racist comments against well-known politicians and athletes.
In the middle of last year, Trump attacked four women legislators of color and diverse backgrounds: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts) and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan).
The president told them that they should return to "their countries of origin", "totally bankrupt and infested with crime."
Added to this is his attack on some black athletes from the National Football League (NFL) and the NBA after some of them knelt when the US anthem was played in protest by the treatment that the police give to black people.
“Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners (perform) when someone disrespects our flag? One would say: Get that son of a s ... off the field immediately. Outside! He's fired, '"the president said during a meeting in Alabama in 2017.
Likewise, the data does not help Trump. According to The New York Times, the African-American unemployment rate fell during Obama's term: it went from 16.8% in 2010 to 7.7% when Obama left the Oval Office in January 2017; that is, it fell nine points during the administration of the former Democratic president, while with Trump it fell from 7.7% to 5.4, that is, only two percentage points.
The newspaper also notes that African-American poverty during Obama's leadership went from a maximum of 27.4% to 21.8% in 2016, and fell to 20.7% in 2018, during the Trump administration, that is, it only dropped one point during the last administration.
