You know, white people in general should not tell black people how to conduct themselves or tell them what the secret to "success" is, but that is especially true of a filthy rich fail-son who was born on third base and gifted a real-estate empire he had no part in building.
This is actually a post about Jared Kushner, not Donald Trump, but about halfway through writing the above sentence I realized it applied perfectly to both of them.
Kushner appeared on Fox News this morning where said the trouble with black people is that they don't want to succeed as much as Trump does.
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner said Black people must “want to be successful” in order for his father-in-law’s policies to help them.
“One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about,” Kushner said Monday on “Fox & Friends.” “But he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful.”
This is like telling people to just 'stop being poor,' but for an entire race; as if a lack of willpower is the only thing preventing them from overcoming multiple centuries of systemic racism and economic disadvantage that began with literal slavery.
This is especially rich -- pardon the pun -- coming from a slumlord (Kushner) speaking on behalf of a colleague (Trump) whose family is famous for denying housing to black tenants.
Over the next decade, as Donald J. Trump assumed an increasingly prominent role in the business, the company’s practice of turning away potential black tenants was painstakingly documented by activists and organizations that viewed equal housing as the next frontier in the civil rights struggle.
The Justice Department undertook its own investigation and, in 1973, sued Trump Management for discriminating against blacks. Both Fred Trump, the company’s chairman, and Donald Trump, its president, were named as defendants. It was front-page news, and for Donald, amounted to his debut in the public eye.
Kushner's comments were directed at the "black community" in this specific case, but this is also how nearly every Republican lawmaker or official views all minorities and even poor white people. They say you should lift yourself up by our own boot straps and if you have no boots that's a failure of personal character, not a result of your specific circumstances.
They're telling you you're the problem while also rigging the game against you in every conceivable legal or illegal way.
It should not go unaddressed, so what exactly are Trump's policies; the policies that would make black people successful if only they wanted to be?
It's not higher wages. It's not free education or even affirmative action. In fact, the Trump regime is currently suing Yale University for allegedly discriminating against -- checks notes -- white people by admitting too many minorities. It's not freedom from being murdered by unaccountable police officers whom Trump has actively sided with. And it's not equal access to housing.
One of the closing messages of Trump's campaign has been a direct appeal to racism by saying the Biden administration will appoint Senator Cory Booker, a black man, to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) where he will corrupt cozy suburban neighborhoods populated by innocent white women.