We all saw Donald Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) annual convention in Chicago. The organization scheduled an hour-long talk with him as part of its ongoing 10-year tradition of inviting presidential candidates to speak. But Trump’s team cut the NABJ’s allotted hour in half before calling him from the stage, possibly because they saw the direction of the interview and feared Trump saying something so outrageously racist even his most ardent Black supporters, like Tim Scott, would have to denounce him to salvage credibility in the Black community.
"For the record, Kamala Harris is a Black woman, and she has always identified as a Black woman."
When NABJ announced they were inviting Trump to appear, I was concerned this was a bad move for the organization and that Trump would use this opportunity as a campaign commercial to toss his supporters red meat, weaponizing the organization against presumed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. I was not alone.
“The NABJ sold its soul by inviting [Trump] and should be ashamed,” said journalist Kevin Powell, a former NABJ member. “We cannot be so thirsty for clicks and likes that we will stoop this low to get some attention, at the expense of ourselves. Truth is what matters and basic dignity and respect for ourselves. And fighting for a real democracy, like those before us, not normalizing those who do not respect or like us at all.”
Not that you’ve forgotten, but this is the same Trump who once took out a full-page ad calling for the death of five innocent Black teenagers accused of raping a white woman in New York’s Central Park. He’s also peppered his campaign speeches with racist rhetoric aimed at Muslim and Latino immigrants in subsequent years. I knew if the NABJ didn’t have reporters who were as belligerent with the truth as he was with lies, the whole session would be a disaster that would ultimately work in Trump’s favor.
ABC host Rachel Scott launched the session by recounting some of the controversial things Trump has said that Black people found offensive, including calling Vice President Kamala Harris “crazy.” Scott asked, “Why should Black voters trust you after you have used language like that?”
Trump did what he does best when confronted with a question he either can’t or won’t answer: Berated Scott and her network, calling it “fake news.” When pressed to answer, he tried to talk around the question by claiming to be the best president since Abraham Lincoln (moderators made sure to interject Lyndon B. Johnson, who’d signed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965). The nation saw Trump refuse to denounce his claim of Harris being a “DEI hire.” And it witnessed him try to deny Harris’ Blackness.
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” said Trump. “I didn’t know she was Black until several years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said. “I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
For the record, Kamala Harris is a Black woman, and she has always identified as a Black woman. She is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother. She attended Howard University, a historically Black university, where she pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the oldest Black sorority in America. While Harris has never denied the Indian side of her heritage, she presents and identifies as a Black woman, a nuanced fact Trump and his MAGA crew can’t seem to grasp.
But Trump doesn’t seem to want to understand the racial nuances of Black America, and I doubt he cares to understand the complexities that affect us as a community. Trump likely did not approach the NABJ’s national convention to engage in sincere dialogue. For all we know, he’d planned to divide Harris’ Black support by questioning her Blackness.
Irrespective of whatever damage Trump did himself in the long run, he managed to use this moment with NABJ as a publicity stunt, to show his supporters he could walk into NABJ’s house, look them square in the eye, and tell Black people exactly what his white nationalist followers wanted him to tell them. Snippets of Trump insulting Kamala Harris dominated right wing podcast and blogs for the next two news cycles. In that respect, Trump won and the NABJ lost big time.
Charlie R. Braxton is a poet, playwright, and cultural critic who writes about music and politics. He is the author of three volumes of verse, “Ascension from the Ashes” (Blackwood Press,1990), “Cinders Rekindled” (Jawara Press, 2012), and “Embers Among the Ashes: Poems In A Haiku Manner” (Jawara Press, 2018).
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