In addition to Donald Trump’s willingness to lie as easily as he breathes, he also has an uncanny ability to convince his rabid fanbase that tiny pieces of truth are far more important than they actually are. For instance, the unemployment rate for black Americans has fallen during his presidency. Trump touts this as a great accomplishment, but leaves out all of the context that clearly shows it isn’t.
Tiger Woods did explain his continued friendship with Trump by saying that one must respect the office of the presidency, but never said that he respects Trump or approves of his policies, and he certainly never mentioned a lower unemployment rate for black Americans in his explanation. Yes, there have been five black celebrities who have said positive things about Trump, but that ignores the larger statistics that show Trump with only a three percent approval rating among black Americans and a 93 percent disapproval rating.
It isn’t “the left” browbeating black voters into disapproval of Trump, and insisting that an entire race of people can be duped into believing untrue things by smarter, duplicitous white politicians is in itself a racist assumption. Separating black Americans from Democrats or the political left is also erasing blackness from political participation as if they aren’t real people: there aren’t Democratic voters and black people, black people are Democratic voters. In fact, 84 percent of registered black voters are Democrats compared to just eight percent who are registered Republicans.
“Some of my best friends are black” is no longer an accepted way of explaining one’s lack of racism. Trump has, apparently, either not gotten that memo yet or he just doesn’t care.
Twitter was not impressed by Trump’s rant. See some of their responses below:
Featured image via Flickr by Gage Skidmore under a Creative Commons license
