Reprint from August 1, 2019
First of three parts
The NAACP gathered in Detroit and leaders urged presidential hopefuls prior to the Democratic Party presidential debates earlier this week and for its own convention, not to shy away as Donald Trump fans the flames of racism.
Lauren Gambino writes for The Guardian Weekly in Washington:
“In August 2016, Donald Trump stood before an overwhelmingly white crowd in Dimondale, Mich., and asked black people for their votes.
“‘What the hell do you have to lose?’ he said with a growl.
“He went on to accuse Hillary Clinton of caring more for immigrants than for black Americans, who he said were forced to live like ‘refugees in their own country.’ After four years of a Trump administration, he vowed, 95% of African Americans would vote to keep him in office.
“This week, it was evident that at least among members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, voters did not need four years to make up their minds.
“A man who entered national politics by promoting the false birther conspiracy against the Nation’s first black president, has, in office, equivocated in his response to a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va.; asked why the U.S. does not attract more migrants from Norway instead of ‘shithole’ countries like El Salvador, Haiti, and various African nations; enacted brutal policies at the southern border; tried to include a citizenship question on the U.S. Census; and told four lawmakers of color to ‘go back’ to their home countries, regardless of the fact three were born in the U.S. and all are American citizens.
“At the Association’s annual convention in Detroit this week, a unanimous vote recommended the impeachment of Trump, who the NAACP president, Derrick Johnson, said led ‘one of the most racist and xenophobic administrations since the Jim Crow era.’
“‘The pattern of Trump’s misconduct is unmistakable and has proven time and time again that he is unfit to serve as the president of this country,’ Johnson said.
“Appearing at the convention, the former vice-president Joe Biden cast the 2020 election as ‘a battle for the soul of this Nation’. Other members of the most diverse Democratic Party presidential field in U.S. history attacked Trump as a bigot whose rhetoric and policies have harmed communities of color while Bill Weld, Trump’s only Republican challenger, said the president ‘is a raging racist, OK? He’s a complete and thoroughgoing racist.’
“Yet disagreement remained over whether Trump is an aberration, as Biden has argued, or if he is a symptom of more deeply rooted social and political ills.
“‘A country that elects a man like Donald Trump has serious problems,’ said the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren. ‘And we need to make a big structural change.’
To be continued