Did you know that Trump has a ten-point plan to help African-Americans?
Still, the choice of outlet is just downright laughable. Literally. When I mentioned MediaTakeOut during a phone call with a representative of a Chicago-based community group, I elicited a laugh so contagious that we had to pause and marvel at the sheer absurdity of the choice.
But for all its sweeping economic populism, the platform does nothing to address the disproportionate killings of often-unarmed black people by police officers, the issue that’s been the biggest rallying cry of the Black Lives Matter movement since its inception. There’s no mention of scaling back mass incarceration. Trump doesn’t even promise to pick a Supreme Court justice who would ardently defend the civil rights of black people. And if one reads into his nomination for attorney general—Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, a man who in the 1980s was deemed too racist for a federal judgeship under President Reagan—it appears that Trump could care less about civil rights, even if his plan promises “equal treatment” under the law.
Trump’s campaign was music to her ears. But community leaders I spoke to this week say that to them his proposals are anything but.
“I’m not sure what’s so ‘new’ about this deal,” says Katelyn Johnson, executive director of Action Now, an advocacy group that organizes in low-income black communities. “From the ten points, what I got were false promises. There were no specifics, and these items have historically hurt black communities.”
“We want to make sure everyone’s voice is heard . . . . It’s going to be very difficult for the country to heal right now, and we have to be very aware that this is not business as usual, and that this is not the new normal,” Runner says. “It is important to say that America wasn’t great back in the time when they think that it was—and we need to build moving forward instead of going backwards.” v
