In case you missed it, let me give you the headline from former President Donald Trump’s disastrous Q&A with the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago on Wednesday:
It was a hot mess.
Period.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
I kept asking myself how could a major party candidate for president of the United States of America in the year of our lord 2024, not understand the racial and ethnic diversity of his countrymen?
How could he not have prepared to face the all-Black audience he was going to be in front of?
How could his staff not have prepared him not to say “Black jobs” again — after launching that weird and roundly mocked phrase at the CNN residential debate in Atlanta in June? Or to insult those questioning him?
I am a mixed-race Black woman who descends from slaves on both sides of my family tree. Both of my great grandfathers were white men of Scots-Irish descent. Trump (as with most white Americans) clearly has no concept of what Black people have known since slavery: the “one-drop rule.” If he had, he would not have gone before thousands of Black journalists and questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’ blackness.
We who are Black, brown or of mixed race know how this “one drop” of Black blood works. In short, the “one-drop rule” was intended to protect white slaveholders and white wealth from possible inheritance claims by their mixed-race children. And through post-Reconstruction America, it was a way of identifying Black men and women as inferior and to be segregated and set-apart. His ignorance of America’s complex racial history was on full display. He is clueless about race, culture and police brutality, which are critical issues in the Black community.
I watched the NABJ interview in abject horror. I was an active Republican for more than 20 years. How could Trump again be the Republican nominee for president when he accords himself this way for all to see? Trump is nothing like the late President George H.W. Bush (who I worked for), former Rep. Jack Kemp (a mentor), Sen. Elizabeth Dole, the late Gen. Colin Powell, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (who I also worked for), Gov. Tom Ridge, Sen. John McCain or even President George W. Bush. None of these solid, dignified conservatives would have presented themselves to an all-Black audience in this way. They would have had the good sense to read the room and be respectful with their responses.
Trump, on the other hand, was caught utterly flat footed. Playing the victim, Trump lamented the first question asked to him by ABC’s Rachel Scott, “Well, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question … in such a horrible manner, a first question. You don’t even say hello, how are you.” What a cranky old man.
The Harris campaign had an immediate response, and it was hard-hitting. Interestingly, the Harris campaign did not push back on Trump’s attacks on Harris’ race. As we lawyers like to say: res ipsa loquitor. The thing speaks for itself.
Trump’s troublesome display also made clear that we, as a nation, have much work to do on cross-cultural, cross-generational dialogue. White Americans, like Trump, simply do not know how to “shift” culturally, as Blacks do everyday in our jobs and lives. They do not have to. But Black people always need to wear two hats. Our true authentic selves as Black Americans, and the one that has to manage white attitudes and stereotypes of us so that we can engage our white peers in ways that make them comfortable.
President Joe Biden was forced to end his reelection bid after a disastrous debate performance in June in Atlanta. But Trump’s conduct at the NABJ conference was worse. But who thinks Trump will do the right thing for his party and step aside after such an open and hostile display of racial ignorance?
Whatever happens, the Republican Party has to start over in 2025 and finally lean into the 21st century. Republicans are living in a time warp. Trump and his vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, showcase this defect nearly every time they speak. They need to start listening to former Republicans, including me, and others who have been trying to tell them for 25 years that this train wreck on race and gender equality was always coming.
Sophia A. Nelson is the author of “Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Michelle Obama” and “E Pluribus One: Reclaiming our Founders’ Vision for a United America.” She is a former GOP counsel for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
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