President Donald Trump prides himself on being a quick study and an astute judge of character. Whether that is true in his business dealings, it most certainly is not where black people are concerned.
He obviously knows little about us and interacts with few of us beyond a handful of celebrities — some of whom are glad to pose for photos with him even though they did not vote for him, like football legend Jim Brown and entertainer Kanye West (who recently deleted tweets supporting Mr. Trump). The president does not yet realize that photos are no substitute for policy.
The man who famously searched for "my African American" at a California rally last June ("Oh, look at my African-American over here. Look at him. Are you the greatest?") has found at least two of them: Omarosa Manigault, a veteran of his "Apprentice" television show who is now an adviser, and Ben Carson, the new secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Neither saved him from the recent gaffe that only confirmed why black folks are right to question his sincerity.
In an awkward gathering at the White House on Feb. 1, Mr. Trump, reading from a sheet of paper, seemed to think that Frederick Douglass is alive — in the flesh as opposed to the spirit. "Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice," the president, flanked by Ms. Manigault and Dr. Carson, told a gathering of his African Americans at the start of Black History Month. Douglass, a Marylander who escaped slavery, became a leading abolitionist, a journalist, an adviser to President Lincoln and a diplomat, died in 1895.
For Mr. Trump, superficiality is enough — like grabbing a line from Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations or from a Bible concordance because it contains a word or phrase that sounds right for the occasion. As the historian James Oakes recently said, "When you hear people like Trump invoke Frederick Douglass, it’s very clear that they have no appreciation of his life-long radicalism. He was advocating an active government role for equal rights from the moment emancipation was clearly accomplished."
Unlike ordinary people, whose knowledge base comes from what they were taught in their school days or what they know from extreme examples in media and pop culture, the president has handlers and historians at his beck and call and, thus, has no excuse for being ignorant and out of touch. If he cared, that is. He has the means to reach out to people attuned to the millions who remain wary, if not outright hostile, to him. Instead, he chooses to meet with those who, with few exceptions, are of dubious authenticity as representative leaders.
Mind you, I am not advocating that the White House speak only to "official" emissaries from black America. There are no such beings. As much as we might laud them during celebrations of our history, we do not want doors open only to a modern-day Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune or Martin Luther King Jr. to answer a perpetual question first posed decades ago as "What does the Negro want?"
In looking for his African Americans, Mr. Trump can certainly do better than a sycophant clown preacher from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, named Darrell Scott. Time and again since his campaign days, he has singled out Mr. Scott. At the Feb. 1 gathering, the preacher reported that even "top gang thugs" in Chicago admired the president more than they had Barack Obama and had asked Mr. Scott to convey that message. In exchange for social programs, Mr. Scott said, they were willing to "lower the body count" in a city that recorded more than 700 homicides last year. Always eager for praise, the president jumped right on what would have made sensible people at least raise an eyebrow. "I think that’s great. Chicago is totally out of control," the president replied. What’s out of control is the president’s ego and Mr. Scott’s veracity.
Within hours, Mr. Scott backtracked. He had — you’ve probably guessed it — "misspoke" because of a lack of sleep. He had not talked to "top gang thugs" but had talked to a man who once belonged to a gang. That was his own version of the sort of alternative facts with which the White House regularly regales us.
Black History Month in February — the shortest month of the year — is a time when all are invited to fill in their knowledge gap. The president can set an example, but with much more than the sort of vapid gestures we have seen so far.
E.R. Shipp, a Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary, is the journalist in residence at Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism and Communication. Her column runs every other Wednesday. Email: er.shipp@aol.com.
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