The Black Agnostic
Donald Trump's "Tokens" of Love
Donald Trump courts black pastors in a common ploy to win the black vote
By: Waleed Shareef 11/30/2015
I once wrote in my article You'll Get Yours in Heaven, about how since the beginning of America, slave masters often would use religion as a way to convince their slaves that although they did not have the slave master’s wealth and easy lifestyle, if they only believed in the “hereafter”, they would one day get their reward in heaven. Since I wrote that article, a manifestation of this occurrence in modern times has taken place on the political spectrum. Billionaire Donald Trump have met with black clergy in a move that this candidate, that have openly used racist statements as a part of his campaign, is only doing to convince a large amount of blacks that this person that does not have their interest at heart here on earth, cares about what their spiritual leaders think. Or better yet, this billionaire cares that after all of his venomous rhetoric, he needs to wallpaper his campaign with images of blacks and what better tokens to collect than the traditional leadership within the black community, the clergy.
Let’s backtrack a bit. Let’s backtrack before a Black Lives Matter protester was beaten at a Trump Rally while the crowed was being encouraged by Donald Trump himself to act like a new age lynch mob. Let’s backtrack before Donald Trump released a report on black crime that was debunked as false and contained an image of a stereotypical black thug. If we keep going back, we land close to when Obama was elected president and the “birther” movement started. It was a movement that was proven to be frivolous and that championed the belief that the first black president of the United States was not legitimate because he was foreign born. Even though multiple records were disclosed including the Governor of Hawaii validating his birth in Hawaii, this movement that was heavily racially motivated, gave waves of “Go back to Africa” racists hope that our president would be found illegitimate and stripped of his presidency. Eventually, Donald Trump appeared as a champion of this rabble as he constantly was paraded on TV maligning not only the president’s citizenship, but also questioning the president’s education. It can be fairly argued that Donald Trump’s journey from a reality show and tabloid favorite to the top spot in the GOP was given a humongous boast by his bona-fides as a gladiator against the perceived black interloper in the White House.
What was made painfully clear to the GOP in the last presidential election was that you cannot win the presidency without the minority vote. As America continues its demographic shift to a more racially diverse populous, “amazingly,” ignoring any particular demographic or demonizing any one demographic has become a surefire way to lose the White House. Therefore, a politician could try to embrace the diversity inherent in our country and build a multicultural coalition, or they could attempt to trick a racial group by appealing to those that they feel would make a good backdrop on a campaign poster. So we now have Donald Trump collecting black clergy folks to
use in a cynical, and insulting, ploy to cause blacks to jump on board the crazy train. As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, the parallels to the old rich slave master imploring the slaves that “You’ll Get Yours in Heaven”, as my article detailed, is the same. By getting blacks to focus on our reward in heaven, our condition on earth would be made immeasurably worse by rolling back healthcare and putting policies in place that would harm those in our communities that would be disserved by the limelight seeking minister figureheads that Trump would gladly use to push us back onto the plantation.
