Donald Trump is nothing if not constant, and his Dumpster hearth of an interview with reporters on the Nationwide Assn. of Black Journalists conference in Chicago this week confirmed the Republican presidential nominee in full, foul mode.
He lied. He insulted. He whined. He was racist and misogynistic. He evaded questions and elided solutions, and confirmed all of the grace and gratitude of a kindergartner who pees in a sandbox and expects others to wash up the mess.
Above all, the Republican presidential candidate saved stabbing at the identical unlawful immigration scapegoat that’s the centerpiece of his 2024 presidential marketing campaign. This time, although, he tried to additional his competition that Donald J. Trump is the best president for Black individuals since Abraham Lincoln.
He unveiled the technique throughout his June 28 debate with President Biden, when Trump said that immigrants have been a “large kill on the Black individuals” and have been “taking Black jobs.” In Georgia, which he narrowly misplaced in 2020, his marketing campaign has aired radio and tv commercials insisting Biden cares extra about unlawful immigrants than the Black group.
On the NABJ conference, Trump blamed open borders for endangering the job safety of Black employees — by no means thoughts that unemployment charges for them have reached historic lows below each the Trump and Biden administrations, a time when unlawful immigration has grown to numbers not seen in a technology. When a moderator requested what was his message to all of the Black reporters gathered earlier than him and other people watching on-line, Trump responded it was “to cease individuals from invading our nation … who occur to be taking Black jobs.” When requested what he would do on Day 1 of a brand new time period, he blurted out, “Shut the border.”
Trump’s gambit is one more legacy of Proposition 187, the 1994 California poll initiative that sought to make life depressing for undocumented immigrants. Then and now, GOP politicians determine that one of the simplest ways to courtroom Black voters — a longtime bedrock of the Democratic Occasion — is to argue that immigrants within the nation illegally are a burden that hits their group more durable than others by taking away social companies and bleeding jobs away.
Right here’s the factor: There’s a historic foundation for these issues, even when Trump has pushed the Unlawful Immigrant Bogeyman dial to 11.
When South L.A. started to show from the center of the town’s Black group to a Latino-majority enclave through the Eighties and Nineties, the following tensions have been actual. Within the wake of the L.A. riots, teams protested exterior work websites and blasted contractors for giving jobs to Latinos as a substitute of Black employees as a result of the previous group would work for cheaper than the latter. The belief by Latino political leaders through the struggle towards Prop. 187 that Black individuals would be a part of them with out query offended leaders and group activists.
Incidents like that led to 47% of Black voters favoring Prop. 187, a margin that helped the decision go comfortably.
A few of the most outstanding Black voices within the anti-immigrant motion over the previous 25 years — homeless activist Ted Hayes, the late radio present host Terry Anderson, the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, former gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder — got here from that period. One of many loudest anti-immigrant voices in Southern California as we speak is Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren, a Compton native who has scolded immigrants from the dais for not talking English and has waged an aggressive marketing campaign towards avenue distributors. Throw in deep-rooted anti-Black sentiments amongst Latinos that received a outstanding showcase throughout the 2022 L.A. Metropolis Corridor racist tape leak scandal, and no marvel Trump thinks banking on getting Black voters offended sufficient towards a supposed south-of-the-border invasion is a winner.
The truth is that Black individuals aren’t as receptive to an anti-immigrant message as Trump and the GOP wish to assume.
L.A. councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, proper, throughout a Metropolis Council assembly in 2023
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Instances)
A 2006 Pew Analysis Middle examine confirmed that 47% of Black individuals thought immigrants within the U.S. with out authorized paperwork ought to be allowed to remain, in contrast with 33% of whites. However by 2013, an identical Pew report confirmed 82% of Black individuals felt there ought to be a path towards legalization for these immigrants, in contrast with 67% of whites. The determine dropped in a Pew survey launched this 12 months to 73%, nevertheless it’s nonetheless far greater than the 53% of whites who really feel the identical, and simply two proportion factors behind Latinos, who’ve more and more turned to the appropriate towards unlawful immigration for the reason that Prop. 187 days.
This common acceptance doesn’t shock L.A. Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson. He campaigned towards Prop. 187 in 1994, going door-to-door in his native South L.A. to argue that the initiative was a wedge challenge being utilized by Republicans to divide Black and Latino neighbors towards one another and make them neglect their shared working-class standing.
“One line I might inform individuals is, ‘Do you hear them [Prop. 187 supporters] speak about individuals from Canada? From Germany?” Harris-Dawson mentioned. “Black and Latino individuals I talked to understood it clearly.”
Harris-Dawson didn’t need to make the identical argument lately in Atlanta, the place the topic of unlawful immigration got here up in dialog.
“They mentioned, ‘We help immigration reform, as a result of we don’t need working-class individuals who can’t play protection,’” he mentioned. In different phrases, it was higher for the Black group for immigrants to have full rights as a substitute of preserving them with out papers and thus simpler to make use of to undercut Black employees. “The sophistication of that! They get that employees don’t take jobs; employers give jobs.”
He can see Trump peeling off Black voters from the Democrats by persevering with to hammer on the unlawful immigration challenge — however “he’ll additionally lose them” due to Trump’s lengthy historical past of racist canine whistles. Moreover, the councilmember argued, “individuals have seen it play out. … You see new neighbors are available and assume, ‘Oh, there’s an excellent household.’ And they’re. After which 10 years later, the dad and mom nonetheless don’t have papers and the youngsters can’t go to varsity.
“Black of us can sympathize,” Harris-Dawson concluded, with “individuals who cope with programs which might be ostensibly there that will help you, however in truth do the other.”
