what the **** have republicans done for black people since Reconstruction?
Well, in fairness, prior to Kennedy, the Democrats weren't a sane choice for blacks. Kennedy seemed like a good choice, to be sure for he promised to put civil rights on the front burner. From what I know about Jack Kennedy (admittedly secondhand via Mother who was a few years ahead of Jackie in school), however, were I to describe what he thought about blacks by paraphrasing Coco Chanel's words..."What do I think of blacks? I don't think of them." Somewhat sympathetic, yes, but only in the sense that blacks didn't figure in his life one way or the other so what was there to think.
The sad reality, at least as I understand it, is that if Jack was largely indifferent toward blacks, Johnson was an outright racist. To this day, Daddy will swear that the only reason Johnson pushed that bill through Congress was because it was "on the table" and he didn't care for the political optics of losing the vote on it. That and his figuring that if he tossed a few "bones" the "n*ggers'" way, they'd calm down and nobody would have deal with them in earnest for a decade or more and it'd pretty well ensure Democrats the black vote.
I'm inclined to believe my father, but I also can see that Johnson's chicanery has come to an end about in the 1990s. Consequently, while I see the extant history that gives rise to Republican's claims about Democrats' deceitfulness, it's hard, nigh impossible, to see it as being the current nature of the Democratic party. It's all the more difficult to see Trump as being racially neutral or positively feeling about minorities, and blacks in particular.
While I come from a somewhat fancy and old white family, unlike Trump, there are 30+ or so black folks who've known me for years on end -- from the children whom I played with to our housekeepers' and cooks kids who were also my boyhood friends to the kids whom I have mentored over the past ~30 years and so on -- who, were I running for office, would gladly regale voters will story after story depicting how I'm not cut of the same racial cloth as my father. My own father and mother even would make a point of sharing that they made a point not to teach their biases to me. There are white folks who'll also be happy to recount how taken aback they were when I rebuked them for things they said or did and that I considered racially biased and morally/ethically wrong. I haven't seen any folks from "way back when" stepping forward to tell of how Trump was and has long been different from most privileged white people of his day. Not one.
Whom I've heard attest to Trump's legitimacy as a non-bigot are Trump himself, and he's misrepresented key details and been wishy-washy about the approbation he's received from the likes of the KKK, David Duke and others of that ilk. I've heard his surrogates who've stood up for some of the most absurd crap the man utters also assert that he's racially neutral, yet given their willingness, in the face of some of his silliest remarks, to not display a high enough level of integrity to even grant so much as eccentricity to remarks that anyone with half a brain has to ask, "WTF?",...given that behavior, they aren't very believable when they attest to Trump's racial predisposition. Trump isn't all that believable on that point either.
Why aren't they believable? Well, quite honestly, because:
- they are all white folks
- the few who are black have short and limited histories with Trump
- Trump hasn't accepted any invitation to address a major black organization
- I can't think of one actively positive thing he's ever done on behalf of black folks
- Trump's made multiple glib remarks that were he in any way sensitive to how blacks perceive white folks in power, he'd never have said, nor said them as he did...This one is a big deal. Even to my white ears, "the blacks" sounds so much like "the n*ggers" given the syntactical way he uses that phrase. Would it hurt him to say "the black people of ...?"
But all of that is what I think. More important, however, is what black folks think. In all my dealings with black people, the one theme that's come across plainly to me is that white folks are not to be trusted until they truly earn it. Just saying the right words with nothing more to back them up isn't going to cut it because above all else, black folks know their history is one that's forced them to be black people before they are just people and they know that most white folks have been conditioned to see them that way. That's something that I think is very hard to wrap one's head around as a white person. When I've gone, for example, to Indonesia, China, the UAE, Kenya, or Mexico, it doesn't even cross my mind that folks might notice that I'm white much less think something, anything, of it, or worse, feel or think something negative about it.
That's, from what I have gleaned, not at all the black experience, and certainly not in the U.S. And that is impossible to relate to as a white person -- Lord knows I've tried -- yet to genuinely gain a black person's trust, it's what one must overcome; it's like climbing a mountain and not knowing how far up the summit is. I don't know that I can call it fair, but I can understand why it is as it is.