Donald Trump is casting himself as seeking the African American vote. He even put Omarosa Manigault, formerly of his Apprentice show, in charge of reaching out to African American voters. Many African American voters, that voted at the highest rate of every single group in 2012 to re-elect President Obama, are not feeling Hillary Clinton. To say that many blacks are not feeling the burn or energized by Clinton is an understatement. And by watching a few focus group reports, there are actually some young undecided black voters who appear wavering over Trump versus Clinton. And I understand the lack of excitement for Clinton. Let’s face it, Clinton is not an exciting political candidate. And her many years of baggage which amounts to distrust for many voters doesn’t help her either.
Donald Trump made clear his intentions in the first debate. As Maya Angelou once stated, when people show you who they are, believe them. His intentions are to keep blacks and Hispanics in their place—not to help uplift them but to trounce them. In reality, Donald Trump’s promise to go back to unconstitutional stop and frisk laws makes clear that he intends to use racist tactics that were outlawed by the federal courts to reign in blacks. Stop and frisk laws disproportionately targeted blacks and Hispanic persons, mostly men. Statistics show that from 2002 until August, 2013 when stop and frisk tactics were ruled unconstitutional, over 5 million persons were subject to it. Nine out of ten persons stopped committed no crimes. The overwhelming number of the 5 million stopped and frisked in New York City were Black and Latino men.
And Trump’s statements of failing to pay workers and small businesses who did work for him, failing to pay taxes and filing for bankruptcy 4-6 times shows he is not going to help the economy. His only help will be putting the U.S. into bankruptcy.
Trump is not targeting black or Hispanic voters. He intends to show that Hillary Clinton is not a good candidate so minorities will stay at home. This is where blacks and Hispanics must prove him wrong. It’s not going to be a love fest this election. Mitt Romney felt that blacks would stay home and not vote. And as I said then, we needed to prove him wrong. There is a reason why Romney and Trump want blacks and Hispanics to stay home. Neither can win a Presidential election if minorities stays home. That’s why Republicans have passed restrictive voter laws to help assist in lowering the minority voting base—under the ill-conceived and bogus guise of protecting the election laws. People stand a better chance of getting hit by a lightning bolt than voter fraud occurring.
I am not a Hillary Clinton surrogate. I supported Bernie Sanders during the primary. I have issues still with Hillary Clinton—mostly in the category of trust. But I cannot be silent anymore. I must do all that I can do to ensure that Donald Trump doesn’t take us backwards, figuratively and literally. For Hispanics, his efforts to build a wall and deport everyone who he deems to be a non-citizen entering the U.S. without papers should be enough to get out the vote against him. But I understand that Clinton’s issues also weigh on voters’ minds. For African Americans and Hispanics, with the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act, loss of Pell college grants, re-instituting the unconstitutional racist stop and frisk practices, self-describing himself as the law and order candidate –which code means putting blacks and Hispanics in jail or worse, this is no time to be complacent.
This is the time to prove Trump wrong by voting at the highest possible levels we can muster. Failure is not an option. Our lives and our children’s lives depend on it—figuratively and literally. We must take away Trump’s “trump” card. He is counting on blacks and Hispanics to stay home in November. We must prove him wrong.
Washington, DC based Debbie Hines is a trial lawyer, legal analyst, speaker and former Baltimore City prosecutor. She is frequently seen as a legal/political commentator on MSNBC, BET, CBS, PBS, Al Jazeera and Fox 5 DC to name a few.