OPINION: The former president deserves credit for the handful of policies he enacted to make Black America great again. Let us know when you find one.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
On Jan. 8, 2014, Barack Obama did something for Black people.
In 2012, Black students made up 16% of public school children but represented more than a third of children who were expelled, arrested or suspended from school. Black students were suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white students and were referred to law enforcement officers twice as often as their white counterparts.
To address these school discipline disparities, the Obama administration used a legal concept called “disparate impact.” According to the longstanding, court-approved interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a policy can be discriminatory if it negatively affects a legally protected group, even if the discrimination was unintentional. So on Jan. 8, 2014, the civil rights division of the Department of Education issued a “Dear Colleague” letter threatening every public school district in America with disparate impact lawsuits “based on public reports of racial disparities in student discipline.”
It worked.
Just four years later, out-of-school suspension rates dropped dramatically. By the 2017-18 school year, nearly 52,000 fewer Black students received out-of-school suspensions and the number of Black students arrested at school dropped by more than 5,000 students. According to the Learning Policy Institute, between 2012 and 2018, “the Black-white suspension gap decreased among secondary students in 45 states and Washington, DC.” Decades of school discipline racial disparities also decreased for Hispanic and Native American students. In fact, during the entirety of the Obama administration, out-of-school suspension rates dropped for all students, regardless of race — something that had not happened since the DOE began collecting this data in 1973.
White people hated it.
Not only did conservatives call for Trump to rescind the Obama-era policy but to justify their position, they claimed Obama’s “Dear Colleague” was harmful to Black people. The Heritage Foundation (the think tank responsible for Project 2025) said Obama’s “illegal racial quotas” ignored Black children who were affected by “poverty, broken families and neighborhood crime.” The pro-white race scholars who redefined critical race theory for the Manhattan Institute alleged the rule hurt “predominantly minority schools with predominantly minority teachers.” The National Review begged Trump to rescind Obama’s policy because Black children need discipline to help mitigate “the devastating effects of single-parent homes.” So, despite the research, data and actual proof that showed Obama’s policy benefitted all children, on Dec. 21, 2018, Trump’s Federal Commission on School Safety reversed Obama’s Dear Colleague letter …
For Black people.
When Trump says he did “more for the Black population than any president since Abraham Lincoln,” these are the examples he cites. While there are numerous articles dissecting Trump’s racism, xenophobia and hate for anyone who’s not a straight white Christian, his claims about what he did for Black Americans are rarely challenged. Because of this, many of the people who believe “Obama didn’t do anything for Black people” are willing to believe that Trump gave them stimulus checks, hooked them up with a “Black job” and got their uncle out of jail.
He didn’t.
Gerren Keith Gaynor
Natasha S. Alford
Michael Harriot
Michael Harriot
Michael Harriot
Michael Harriot
Associated Press
Michael Harriot
To set the record straight, we decided to examine 10 of Trump’s biggest pro-Black political achievements to see exactly what he did to make Black America great again.
Donald Trump was not wrong to claim responsibility for the lowest Black poverty rate in history. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2019, only 16.3% of Black Americans lived in poverty, which was historically low. Do you know who else presided over the lowest poverty rate in history? Barack Obama. And Bill Clinton. And George H.W. Bush.
It’s almost like the Black poverty rate keeps going down.
The same is true for the historically low unemployment rate that Trump often touts. But if Trump deserves credit for lifting Black people out of poverty, shouldn’t he take the blame for the biggest rise in Black unemployment in history, which also happened under his watch? Even if one excuses Trump by blaming the rise in Black unemployment and poverty on a worldwide pandemic, then one must also concede that Biden is a better caretaker of the Black economy. The Black unemployment rate, poverty rate, the Black-to-white unemployment gap and the number of Black Americans without health insurance reached record lows under Joe Biden.
Apparently, lying is not a “Black job.”
Trump said he “saved historically Black colleges and universities” by signing the FUTURE Act, which provided annual funding for HBCUs. And technically, he did
Not only did the Trump administration fund HBCUs at the same rate as the Obama administration, but every single one of the Trump administration’s budget proposals tried to decrease federal spending on HBCUs. Most of his fellow Republicans voted against the FUTURE Act. And, according to Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., who wrote the bill, “The only words the president contributed were his signature.”
I’m sure you’re shocked to learn that Trump is trying to take credit for a Black woman’s work.
Contrary to the claims of noted economist and bootyhole color commentator Sexyy Red, Trump was not responsible for the coronavirus stimulus package that gave millions of Americans $2,000 in COVID relief funds. As Politico notes, Trump “railed against the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill” after Democrats forced it through Congress and threatened a government shutdown.
To be fair, Trump wasn’t siding with his party when he tried to lower stimulus payments to $600. Republicans actually supported the COVID relief legislation. Instead, Trump didn’t want Democrats to get credit for actually helping people going into a national election.
But let’s say Trump was responsible for the stimmie checks. Does that mean Sexyy Red is willing to sell her vote for a measly $2,000?
The residents of Pound Town must really be hurting.
According to the popular narrative, Trump’s Paycheck Protection Program really benefitted the Black community — even if many of the PPP loans were fraudulent.
Again, not only did Trump oppose the legislation, but he funneled billions of federal dollars to his conservative allies to bail out their businesses. PPP loans were basically Trump’s friends and family slush fund. But what about all those Black scammers who got loans?
According to the actual data, Black-owned businesses received less than 2% of PPP loans. White-owned businesses got 83%.
Black scammers really need to step their game up.
Trump’s biggest education policy involved a plan to steal Black people’s money.
According to numerous studies, Black homeowners pay higher property taxes than their white counterparts. Black taxpayers also pay higher federal income taxes. While federal taxes and property taxes make up about half of school funding, according to Edbuild, “the average nonwhite school district receives $2,226 less than a white school district.”
Trump is gonna fix that.
When Trump boasts that he “called on Congress to pass school choice legislation to expand educational opportunities for all American children, especially those in our nation’s inner cities,” he’s talking about his school choice plan, which would use $500 billion in taxes to send kids to mostly white private schools. His Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act would also give tax breaks and scholarships to people who already send their children to private and Christian schools. And if you think the Department of Education Title IX program that supplements low-income schools would bridge the gap …
Trump wants to get rid of the Department of Education.
5. Gentrify Improved Black neighborhoods
One of the programs Trump loves to tout is his Opportunity Zones — his 2017 tax plan that offers tax incentives to encourage investment in low-income and minority neighborhoods.
While it sounds like a brilliant idea, a 2022 study of 100 areas that received these tax breaks found that opportunity zones are essentially a plan to colonize Black neighborhoods. Not only did Trump’s plan benefit wealthy investors, but the rise in housing costs displaced low-income residents at alarming rates. Meanwhile, Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development rolled back Obama-era policies that fought housing discrimination in white areas.
Perhaps the highlight of Trump’s anti-racist legislation is the First Step Act. A report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission revealed that 91.3% of the 1,051 people who received retroactive sentencing reductions due to the passage of the First Step Act were Black. He should be proud.
But that’s not quite what happened.
In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which narrowed the gap in racially discriminatory crack vs. cocaine sentences by 82%. To pass the legislation, Republicans agreed to support the bill as long as the Democrats didn’t make the legislation retroactive.
The first draft of Trump’s First Step Act did not address the crack vs. cocaine disparity. It didn’t address drug sentencing. It didn’t address sentencing reform at all. The amendments were only included when liberal organizations like the Color of Change and the Prison Policy Initiative urged Democratic lawmakers to vote against the bill unless Republicans agreed to include prison reform, sentencing reform initiatives and rehabilitation programs. Conservative senators eventually agreed and Trump signed the bill, which simply made Obama’s bill original bill retroactive
Thanks, Obama.
Trump loves to say he was the only president who actually reformed the police, but is it true?
On June 16, 2020, Trump signed an “Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities” that promised to ban chokeholds, increase mental health training and track police officers who committed illegal uses of force.
It did none of that. Not only did Trump encourage cops to be more brutal, he militarized the police, promised to expand the death penalty for drug dealers and wants to pass a law to protect cops from prosecution. Trump’s Supreme Court appointees effectively ended affirmative action, and his administration stopped enforcing consent decrees — a tool used to monitor law enforcement agencies with repeated civil rights violations.
To be fair, giving cops more freedom to kill Black people is technically a reform.
Trump claims undocumented immigrants are stealing all of the “Black jobs,” so immigration reform helps Black people.
Even if he was correct (he isn’t), Trump forced Republicans to kill bipartisan immigration reform legislation. He was the originator of the plan to bus undocumented migrants to majority-Black cities. He embraced white nationalism by explaining that Black migrants come from “shithole countries.”
Most importantly, Trump was bad at protecting the border. He deported fewer people than Obama and Biden. Biden stopped and arrested more undocumented migrants than Trump, and used policy to reduce the number of crossings instead of a stupid wall.
By the way, Trump only built 47 miles of new border wall.
Abraham Lincoln didn’t intend to free the slaves. Abraham Lincoln didn’t free the slaves; the 13th Amendment did. In fact, Abraham Lincoln expressed exactly what he wanted to do for Black people:
I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of Slavery in the States where it exists. … I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races — that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM HOLD OFFICE… I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
OK, this one’s a tie.
Michael Harriot is an economist, cultural critic and championship-level Spades player. His New York Times bestseller Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America is available everywhere books are sold.
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