ATL Redline, Justice, Politics, Racism

I'm Just About Done Being A Pawn In Trump's Play For White Women

I am sick of white reporters telling white women how to feel about Trump's appeal to black voters.

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(Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

(Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Donald Trump lied about his position on Birtherism today. He lied about who started it, lied about his relentless push over the past five years to de-legitimize the nation’s first black President, and then announced: “President Obama was born in the U.S., period,” with the same sense of “discovery” as Christopher Columbus.

The media will talk about this, for a day or two, until Hillary Clinton forgets to throw her Diet Coke in the recycling bin and doesn’t immediately allow reporters to dig through the garbage can in her kitchen in Chappaqua. Then we’ll be back to our regular news cycle of arguing whether Clinton is trustworthy enough to receive curbside trash collection.

The Birther gaslighting is just the latest in Trump’s so-called efforts to “reach out” to the African-American community. That’s the political narrative being pushed by the largely white media. We in the black community know damn well he’s not talking to us. He’s not trying to win over black voters. All of this is just a play for white women. Trump can be absolutely annihilated in black and brown districts, and still win the presidency. But he cannot lose suburban white women by historic margins and still win. He has to find some way of connecting with that demographic.

His campaign has decided that those suburban white women think he’s racist, and they don’t like that. Non-college-educated white men apparently have no problem voting for a bigot — or being offended when they are rightly called “deplorable” for associating with one. But it would seem that suburban white women are uncomfortable voting for a proven racist.

Trump’s political calculus has left me, a black male, feeling more marginalized than at any time in my 20-year history of voting while black. Because right now I live in a world where suburban white women get to tell me if Donald freaking Trump is too racist to become President of the United States! The election right now is being fought over whether white women think the way Donald Trump treats black and brown men and women is acceptable to them.

I’ve seen suburban white women stand on the train, in heels, instead of sitting next to me on the rush hour train back to Westchester. I’ve seen suburban white women congratulate themselves for being oh so progressive for allowing their daughters to play with my son… as if the alternative was macing my three-year-old in the park and calling the cops. I’ve been to parent-teacher symposiums on race where mothers have revealed that their chief concerns about history lessons were that they don’t make their children feel “bad” about being white. And these are supposed to be the people in charge of telling me whether or not Trump is too bigoted to hold high office?

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It’d be one thing if the battle for this key demographic was being fought over issues that they care about. Let me be clear: I do not begrudge suburban women their political power.

But don’t drag me — and my issues, and my community, and my hopes and dreams for a better life for my children — into a conversation where I ain’t even invited. Keep. My. Name. Out. Yo’. Mouth.

This Birther thing was the last straw. Donald Trump was the spokesperson for a deeply hurtful and incredibly infuriating campaign designed to show that Barack Obama was an illegitimate president. It was racist in thought, tone, and deed, from the very beginning. It was a powerful reminder that any minority, even the leader of the free world, could be forced to “show their papers,” to any white man claiming authority. IT WAS NEVER OKAY. He was buoyed into political prominence BECAUSE his hardcore racism was exactly what some conservatives wanted. Trump: the political phenomenon, and Trump: the disgusting Birther, are inextricably linked.

Black people, by and large, aren’t going to forget that. His Hail Mary reversal has nothing to do with the black community. It was a bald play for white women who don’t consider themselves “Birthers.”

We have to ask why he thinks this would work. And Occam’s Razor suggests that he thinks that white women actually do want to vote for a person who is just as racist as Donald Trump… they just don’t want to feel racist while doing it. His play is all about giving those women cover to vote their ignorance and fear, while keeping up appearances within their community. “Oh, I’m not voting for a spewing bile duct of racial animus, I just think we really need a strong leader for our country.”

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I don’t know if it will work. I’d like to think my neighbors are better and smarter than Donald Trump thinks they are. But regardless of his ultimate political effectiveness, the narrative that Trump is trying to make inroads with the African-American community ends here.

I am sick of white reporters telling white women how to feel about Trump’s appeal to black voters. I am done with talking heads taking Trump’s drop-ins to black churches at face value.

He’s not talking to black people, he’s making an example of black people to impress his white friends. Trump is walking around in political blackface, singing Porgy and Bess to kill it at the Rotary Club.

You don’t have to be a pundit of color to call a spade a spade when you catch it shoveling s**t. ENOUGH of this foolishness. Give Trump all the free white media you want, but stop ACTING like he’s saying anything of value to the black community. Instead, why don’t you bring on some more white women to comment on whether or not any of Trump’s bullcrap is actually working on them. White women are more than capable of telling you how much racism they’re willing to accept in their presidential candidate. We should hear from them directly, and stop playing this dog whistle game engineered by Kellyanne Conway to appeal to white women like her.

I’m done being a Rorschach test through which suburban white women can measure their racial tolerance. Trump is a bigot, nothing he can say will change that now. Whether that matters or not is entirely up to you.

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He didn’t even go into all the ways black men have been used to scare white women into voting Republican in the past, because that subtext deserves its own post.

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