President Obama won the presidency on a wave of hope that he’d heal racial divisions. That optimism was misplaced. Three-fifths of the public in a recent poll said race relations are worse under Obama than before. That is 18 points more than in 2014. Just 9 percent said race relations have improved since Obama became president.
Paradoxically, his successor has a chance to succeed where he failed. President-elect Trump is a seemingly unlikely champion of racial reconciliation.
He rose to political prominence by, amongs other things, advancing the idea that the first black president wasn’t born in the United States. So it’s not surprising that the Pew Research Center poll finds 46 percent of voters think race relations are about to go downhill. That number includes three-quarters of black voters.
But there is hope. Despite his dour pitch to black voters durng the election, or perhaps because of it, Trump did better among minorities than Mitt Romney did. During the campaign his tone was dour — “What the hell do you have to lose?!” — but on election night, he struck an optimistic note, saying, “It’s time for America to bind the wounds of division … It is time for us to come together as one united people.”
To realize that promise, Trump should swiftly and unambiguously disavow the white nationalist movement that in the past few days has been videoed in an undisguised Nazi celebration of his victory. To his credit, Trump did so last week when he met with the New York Times. He should continue to do so, consistently, clearly and adamantly.
He should also work with Congress to enact meaningful criminal justice reforms, including axing some mandatory minimum sentences, repealing outdated criminal laws and ending racial disparity for drug crimes. Trump must also convey empathy and a willingness to listen.
The most effective way he can earn the respect and support of racial minorities is to build on the great strength of his election campaign, which was to hear and give voice to the anger and bitterness, but also the hope, of those who feel left behind by economic globalism and scorned by its beneficiaries.
He gave them an unorthodox conservative voice, and it is one well-suited to persuading people, including racial minorities, who are at the bottom of the economic pile, that their best hope lies in free-market conservative prescriptions that will allow them to thrive.
Nor is it only in economic matters that conservative policies would benefit those being left behind. Market choices rather than government regulation and federal obstruction could lift people out of poverty, out of bad schools that doom their students and out of joblessness.
Trump should visit crumbling inner city schools and tour dilapidated manufacturing plants. Although he is not a religious man, Trump should continue to visit black churches to show solidarity with that community, as he did when seeking election.
He will be mocked for this by the left-liberal establishment, but every time they howl about his encroachment on their fiefdoms, the cry they throw up will be one of fear rather than plausible outrage, for he can convey the truth that they have nothing to offer and he does. Political opponents will use everything he says and does over the next four years, as they already are, to stain him with racism.
But black voters once found the party of Lincoln a hospitable place, and they can do so again. Trump has upended the political establishment’s prejudices about which voters will be attracted to which party and why. He has a chance to make a difference with a voting bloc that many Republicans assumed was out of reach.
But beyond the political calculations, Trump has an opportunity to prove that his pledge to govern as a president of all Americans wasn’t just bluster.
