For many African Americans in the United States, the coming Presidential elections will be a life-changing one for them. Not in terms of fulfilling political desires, but in terms of what they have passed through under the tenure of the current United States President, Donald Trump.
President Donald Trump is clearly not a politician who dances to tunes of racial sentiments and obligations and he has not taken any measures to hide that part of him. From the terrible handling of the Coronavirus pandemic which has continued to disproportionately kill African Americans to a spate of high profile racially-related Police killings in recent months in Georgia, Kentucky, and Minnesota, Donald Trump has shown how discriminatory he is to the African American folk in the United States.
The death of George Floyd saw the eruption of protests which shook more than three dozen cities in the United States as crowds expressed outrage over the death of George Floyd and the black security guard who was killed in police custody in Minneapolis. Demonstrators shut down freeways, set fires and battled police batons and tear gas, the pain and frustration of the moment spilling out into the streets.
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In Columbia, the city where Mr Biden delivered his victory speech after the South Carolina primary just over three months ago, demonstrators on Saturday said they were demanding more than what it seemed like an election in November would deliver. Not only justice for the death of George Floyd but a change in political and economic power that would prevent the death of another black person in police custody, another brutal video going viral.
The reasons for their demands are not so far fetched from President Trump’s inability to deal with domestic, complex political challenges. His handling of internal problems, from failing to reprimand the police officers responsible for the killing of George Floyd, sparking riots across America, to his decision to support the forceful repelling of the protesters.
Trump’s hostility toward people protesting the police killing of George Floyd and systemic racism has pulled millions of white Americans closer to Black Americans. More than half of white people now say they agree with the ideas expressed by the Black Lives Matter movement, and more white people support than oppose protests against police brutality. To a remarkable degree, the protests themselves have been biracial. These events have irreversibly damaged his public image even among his most ardent of African American supporters. Numerous Trump former voters are appalled by his racism, as well as his overall moral squalor.
The Trump administration’s failed management of the COVID-19 pandemic and the blowback on the African American communities in the United States has also taken a huge toll on the opinion they have on him. His mismanagement of the pandemic has thrown the United States into one of the worst social and economic crises in its history. President Trump’s inaction during the early stages of the global pandemic when America was on the front foot, and later his slow and uncoordinated response to rising cases, all underlined by a denial of science and facts, has marched the American economy into free fall which has more or less ruined the employment rates in African American communities. And to make things worse for them, he has shown more favouritism towards the elite White businesses more than how he has shown concern for the African American folk.
Jeff Bezos’s net worth recently reached $200bn and Elon Musk’s $100bn, even as numerous African Americans reported that their households didn’t have enough food. America’s richest 1% now own half the value of the US stock market, and the richest 10% own 92%. The main reason for this is that large corporations, Wall Street banks and a relative handful of exceedingly rich individuals have gained enough political power to game the system. Chief executives have done everything possible to prevent the wages of most workers rising in tandem with productivity gains, so most gains go instead into the pockets of top executives and major investors. They have outsourced abroad, installed labour-replacing technologies and switched to part-time and contract work.
They’ve busted unions, whose membership shrank from 35% of the private-sector workforce 40 years ago to 6.4% today. Under Trump’s Government, they have manipulated the Government to slash their own taxes, unravel safety nets for the poor and middle class and reduce investment in education and infrastructure. They have also completely eliminated a raft of labour protections. They have defanged antitrust enforcement, allowing their monopolies free rein. The free market has been taken over by crony capitalism, corporate bailouts and corporate welfare. This has caused a huge upward spiral of unemployment rates among African Americans in the country and the favouritism has more or less ruined other smaller businesses of which most African Americans have a higher stake in.
Since the start of the pandemic, American billionaires have been cleaning up. As more than 50 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance, billionaires became $637bn richer. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth has ballooned 59%. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’s, 39%. Walmart’s Walton family has added $25bn. Big drug company CEOs and their major investors are doing nicely, too. Since the start of the pandemic, Big Pharma has raised prices on over 250 prescription drugs, 61 of which are being used to treat COVID-19 making them nearly inaccessible to poor African Americans.
This has shown how racially-dependent President Trump’s Government is. According to Donald Trump, struggling White Farmers in Iowa taking billions in Federal assistance are ‘hardworking Americans down on their luck’ in contrast to the struggling single African American parents in cities using food stamps who he has described as ‘welfare pickers.’
President Donald Trump’s recent acts of benevolence towards African Americans is only riddled with deceit and has been seen as a campaign strategy to steer the majority of Black votes towards himself. Judging by how biased and racially stereotypic Donald Trump’s Government is, it is only fair to say that African Americans are in for a rough ride should Trump succeed in his second term bid.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK