First of all, while this is a fairly low point for African-American unemployment, it still remains nearly double the rate of white unemployment.

Rate of Black and White Unemployment

Please note that African-American unemployment is now at 6.1 percent, which still nearly double the white rate of unemployment at 3.4 percent. It happens to be just barely past the high point for white unemployment during the 2008 great recession, which peaked at 8 to 9 percent. So basically the floor for black people is roughly equal to the ceiling for white people.

That’s not something that is likely to really inspire African Americans to realize that we’re supposed to stop improving just when we get to where the rest of country began.

And again, the fact is that Trump didn’t bring back the jobs. Logic, facts, and the chart above show that the bulk of the job gains we’ve all benefited from started long before Trump, all the way back in 2009.

The black unemployment rate has fallen below 6 percent for the first time, setting a new record that suggests progress is being made toward closing a longstanding employment gap between blacks and whites — but also offering a reminder that there’s a long way to go before it disappears completely. The new figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics pegged the black unemployment rate in May at 5.9 percent, breaking a record set just one month earlier, when the rate was 6.6 percent. It’s the lowest number ever recorded since BLS began breaking down the numbers by race in the 1970s. The overall unemployment rate also declined to 3.8 percent, something President Trump subtly — and controversially — celebrated over Twitter before the numbers were even officially released. [...] As I’ve written before, Trump’s claims about the black unemployment rate are somewhat misleading. While it’s undeniable that the rate has hit a new low, it is also true that black unemployment began declining during the Obama administration and has been falling steadily for the past several years. Trump hasn’t reversed those gains, but that doesn’t mean he can claim full credit for them either.

Under Obama, black unemployment improved from over 16 percent down to 7.6 percent which is a nine-point swing to the positive, while under Trump it has gone from 7.6 percent in 2016 to 6.1 in 2018, which is an improvement of just 1.5 percent, six times smaller than the improvement made by Obama.

As unemployment has come down across the board, the real detail is that wages haven’t increased and that may be because 99 percent companies who benefited from the Trump tax break are hoarding the money rather than raising wages.

Mountains of evidence continue to expose the the Republican tax scam as terrible deal for working-class families but a boon for rich corporations. Case in point: Some 99 percent of companies said the tax scam was not prompting them to increase minimum wages for employees, according to Aon, a human resources consulting firm. Aon’s survey of 1,000 companies was reported by the Wall Street Journal, and is consistent with other surveys of how companies are using the massive giveaway orchestrated by Trump and Republicans in Congress. A separate poll of 1,500 companies, conducted by Mercer LLC, showed a mere 4 percent of companies “are redirecting tax savings to budgets for bigger paychecks in the coming year,” reports the Journal.

Meanwhile, Trump has also made no real gains on the black-white income gap, which in fact is growing larger because of the impacts of mass incarceration.

That is one result from a recent working paper by the economists Patrick Bayer of Duke University and Kerwin Charles of the University of Chicago. Previous studies of racial wage gaps only examined those in work. That understates the problem because a staggering number of prime-age black men are not—35% compared in 2014 with 17% of whites (see chart 1). Much of this difference is due to mass incarceration. Nearly 8% of prime-age black men did not work because they were institutionalised—the vast majority in prison—compared with 1.5% of whites. The elevated rates of workforce non-participation and unemployment for black men could also be explained by employers’ reluctance to hire applicants with criminal records.

And it seems that generally speaking, most white people have no idea that such a gap even exists

Black families in America earn just $57.30 for every $100 in income earned by white families, according to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. For every $100 in white family wealth, black families hold just $5.04. [...] Americans, and higher-income whites in particular, vastly overestimate progress toward economic equality between blacks and whites, the psychologists reported Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Americans believe that blacks and whites are more equal today than they truly are on measures of income, wealth, wages and health benefits. And they believe more historical progress has occurred than is the case, suggesting “a profound misperception of and unfounded optimism” regarding racial equality. “It seems that we’ve convinced ourselves – and by ‘we’ I mean Americans writ large – that racial discrimination is a thing of the past,” said Jennifer Richeson, who was another of the study’s authors, along with Julian Rucker, a doctoral student. “We’ve literally overcome it, so to speak, despite blatant evidence to the contrary.”

Trump does now have the accomplishment of a brand new trade deal between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada—and he should be proud that Barack Obama had already negotiated it for him during the discussions for the TPP.

As Michael Grunwald wrote for Politico last year, Trump’s new NAFTA—the one he wrecked diplomatic relations with Canada and roiled currency markets in order to secure—is basically Obama’s T.P.P., with Obama’s name papered over by a gilded TRUMP sticker. Now that the deed is done, one wonders what all the fuss was really for, aside from the optics. “The reality is that America has expended a tremendous amount of national political capital for pretty modest changes,” observes James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute. “President Trump has claimed NAFTA 1.0 was the worst trade deal in U.S. history and helped make America a poor country. If so, then it’s hard to see how NAFTA 2.0 changes that status quo. Is it now just a really bad trade deal?”

So Trump has managed to steal Obama’s economic and jobs accomplishments, and now he’s stealing the results from his trade negotiations. Classy.

Then there’s the “crime” aspect of things, which came up way back in 2015 after Trump retweeted a set of blatantly incorrect and racist crime statistics which falsely claimed that blacks were responsible for 81 percent of the murders of white people. So naturally, he then went on that great racial healer Bill O’Reilly’s show to let black people know that “we’re all still solid” with him, and he’s really so not a racist. Honest.

x x YouTube Video BO: Are you aware that the liberal media and the Democratic party in general [are] trying to paint you as a racist? Are you aware of that? [Ya mean “Liberal” media like the entire New York Times Editorial Board?] DT: I think so, but I think people know better than that. I think I’m probably the least racist person on earth.

The “least racist on earth”—there’s another little Tourette-like phrase of his.

Politifact points out that the figures he retweeted are wildly exaggerated compared to those provided by the FBI.

Trump Number FBI Number Error factor Blacks killed by whites 2% 8% 4 times Blacks killed by blacks 97% 90% Just a little off Whites killed by whites 16% 82% 5.4 times Whites killed by blacks 81% 15% 5.4 times

Now racists will look a the black v. black murder figure of 90 percent and sill proclaim “Aha, there’s the problem” without ever noticing that the white vs. white murder number is still 82 percent, which is not exactly massively better. Still, there are a ton of problems with even the FBI numbers themselves—because they only include single offender/single victim murders which are less than one-half of the total and don’t include mass killings such as those perpetrated recently in Charleston, Las Vegas, and Parkland (all perpetrated by white men, technically). They don’t acknowledge that only 62 percent of murders are ever solved, or “cleared,” so you can’t even get to 80-90 percent without ignoring that almost 40 percent of the perpetrators get away and we have no idea who they are. But even if the original numbers were correct, exactly how do you get to exaggerating them by 4 to 5 times, and not even realize that there’s a problem here?

You’d have to be either a racist or a goddamn flaming idiot not to realize these numbers were flagrantly wrong. Or both.

The most accurate estimate of this figure I’ve seen, which takes all the above issues into account, comes from the FBI Supplemental Homicide Report which indicates that the rate of whites killed by whites when a suspect is identified is 62.5 percent, while the rate of blacks killed blacks is actually just 55 percent. That is mostly, it seems, because the rate of unsolved cases where blacks are murdered is a staggeringly high 40 percent, 16 points higher than the unsolved rate for white victims of murder, which is at just 24 percent.

Perhaps the unsolved murder rate might be something Trump would want to work on in order to satisfy the black community. I know, I know—I’m just saying it’s an issue that needs solving, so he could give it whirl, y’know? Instead, he has Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as attorney general and he’s decided he’s not interested in paying attention to the quality and civil rights adherence of local police departments.

On April 3, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo ordering a review of all Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations and reform agreements of local police departments across the country. "Local control and local accountability are necessary for effective policing,'' the memo stated. "It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies.'' The new DOJ policy is widely expected to lead to a reversal of federal oversight of many of the country's most corrupt and violent police forces. Over the past two years, a series of high-profile DOJ investigations--carried out because of the pressure exerted by massive protests after the police murders of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Laquan McDonald in Chicago--brought into the national spotlight some of the entrenched racism, unchecked violence, willful negligence and unaccountability in U.S. police forces.

So again, that would not be an improvement for black people, as we are still seeing unarmed black men shot down without good reason by police, from Stephon Clark in Sacramento to Botham Jean in Houston. Only now, the federal government under Trump and Sessions will turn a completely blind eye to it all rather than investigating, identifying, and correcting any systemic problems within those departments as they had previously attempted to under Obama’s AGs, Eric Holder, and Loretta Lynch.

The truth is that the propensity to experience violent crime according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics seems to be linked far more to people living in poverty, and is almost exactly the same for those who may happen to be black, white or Latino when they happen to be in the same income bracket.

Persons in poor households had higher rates of stranger (12.3 per 1,000) and nonstranger (24.2 per 1,000) violence compared to persons at all other poverty levels. The rate of intimate partner violence for persons in poor households (8.1 per 1,000) was almost double the rate for low-income persons (4.3 per 1,000) and almost four times the rate for high-income persons (2.1 per 1,000). The overall pattern of persons in poor households having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for poor non-Hispanic white households (46.4 per 1,000) and non-Hispanic black households (43.4 per 1,000). However, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary across poverty levels. Poor whites (56.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (51.3 per 1,000) in urban households had higher rates of violence than persons in all other types of households.

It could be argued then that ancient racist trope of “violent angry black man” can better be understood as a by-product of a lack of opportunity in the crushing trap of poverty, which actually affects black and white citizens in an equally negative manner. However, poverty rates among blacks tend to be higher and the density of poor persons within an urban setting is much higher after decades of legal segregation, white flight, and illegal red-lining and discrimination in housing than poor whites in a rural setting. The actual rate of violence is the same between the groups but the density of the incidents is much higher for those who are just more tightly packed in the cities instead of being spread out in the country.

A national project of urban and rural infrastructure renewal (like the CCC during the Depression) would not just provide token jobs but an actual livelihood for people in these situations, using them to eliminate blight in red-lined ghettos and forgotten, burned-out factories from the left and right coasts to the Rust Belt. A dedicated national effort might reduce problems like the opioid crisis and gang violence, and actually raise incomes and create brighter futures. Perhaps if we had mandatory minimum funding for schools (regardless of the income bracket of the community) rather than mandatory minimum sentencing for prisons (regardless of mitigating factors in the alleged offense) things might have a chance to improve. Such a Manhattan Project to renew America across the board could probably be funded with just a fraction of the new increases we’ve seen in the latest military budget. We could even give a priority for this project to hire out-of-work military veterans.

Yeah, I know: pipe dreams. I still have them.

Or we could do like Trump and have people like Betsy Devos at the Department of Education shutting down efforts to limit discrimination in our schools and allowing them to be re-segregated with her charter school plan, where the schools picks the most profitable students instead of vice versa. Then there’s Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who seems like he’s only capable of raising housing costs for those who are already too poor for unsubsidized housing.

Frankly, I’m not expecting anything better than that from Trump. When the above-mentioned defensive discussion with O'Reilly happened it was just a day after Trump had gloated over a Black Lives Matter protester being beaten and called the n-word at one of his rallies, where he said "Maybe he should have been beaten up.” But still O’Reilly tried to cover for him.

BO: I never saw any racism from you. However, when you tweet out a thing, and this bothered me I gotta tell ya, you tweet out that “whites killed by blacks” — these were statistics you picked up from somewhere — “at a rate of 81 percent.” And it’s totally wrong. Whites killed by blacks is 15 percent, [Actually it’s 12 percent] but you tweeted it was 81 percent. DT: Well I didn’t tweet, I retweeted something by somebody that was supposedly an expert and it was also a radio show.

Right, okay. An “expert” with the twitter handle @WhiteGenocide? It’s all the radio show’s fault that you retweeted crazy, racist crap? Whatever. Then there was the time O’Reilly tried to tell him how to get the black vote and Trump really, seriously didn’t listen and just stayed with his “jobs” mantra.

x x YouTube Video BO: Smiley brought in the fact that you were this “racial arsonist”, that’s what he used, and I said “hey look, I’ve known the guy 30 years and I’ve never seen any of that. You gotta give me an example and he reallly couldn’t. But that’s the perception in the African-American precincts that you’re a racial guy, you don’t like them. BO: Is there a strategy that you have or your staff has to negate that? DT: My message is I’m going to bring jobs back, Bill. And they’re going to have jobs, because right now we don’t have jobs. China has the jobs, Mexico has the jobs, Japan has the jobs.

It was at this point that O’Reilly went off on a rant about how “some of them have forehead tattoos” which is so nuts it’s not worth the pixels to repeat.

Okay, I’ll do it—it’s priceless.

BO: How are you going to get jobs for them?” O’Reilly asked. “Many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads, and I hate to be generalized about it but it’s true. If you look at all the educational statistics, how are you going to give jobs to people who aren’t qualified for jobs? DT: We’re gonna bring jobs back. We’re gonna have Apple computers made in this country not China. We will get the skills, we will get the skills, we have an incredible population. BO: But what about the grievance industry run by your friend Al Sharpton? We want to bring prosperity to all Americans, not job blacks, but we “owe them” because of the historical atrocities that they had to live through, their families, and their ancestors. How you gonna do that?

Trump didn’t have a real answer for that either, he just repeated “Jobs (somethingsomething) jobs.” That was his plan then, that’s his plan now.

During the campaign, when Trump was at about 1 percent support among African-Americans, he claimed that he would get 95 percent of the African-American vote. He ended up with about 1 percent.

He’s still only getting about 1 percent, although the White House has been championing the idea that his support among African Americans has risen to 36 percent, as was recently noted in a poll from Rasmussen that is pretty much a crock.

x odayÃ¢ÂÂs @realDonaldTrump approval ratings among black voters: 36%



This day last year: 19% https://t.co/mazBCWoIMy @POTUS @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/uIqYxoBn6w Ã¢ÂÂ Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) August 15, 2018 Those results were then picked up by pro-Trump media outlets like Breitbart, which used the data to argue against “accusations of racism from the Democratic left.” It might seem far-fetched that over a third of African Americans would now approve of a president with a very long history of racial insensitivity — especially because fewer than 10 percent of black voters supported him in 2016. That’s because it is far-fetched. Trump’s black approval rating is nowhere near 36 percent. Polling firms that have interviewed far more African Americans, and that are much more transparent than Rasmussen, all show that Trump’s black approval rating is much lower than 36 percent. For example, Gallup has interviewed thousands of African American respondents in 2018. Its polling suggests that Trump’s black approval rating has consistently been around 10 to 15 percent through 2018. Gallup poll of African-American approval

Then again things aren’t totally bleak for Trump with African Americans: he’s still got Kanye West,

Okay, stop laughing. Really—stop.

Kanye is the perfect black Trumpette because when he’s not ranting on the Saturday Night Live stage about being bulled over his MAGA hat, apparently he now thinks the way to bring the country “together” is to abolish one of the primary constitutional amendments which started the process of bringing us together: the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

x x YouTube Video "In 1865, the 13th Amendment stated that no man is destined to slavery or involuntary servitude unless convicted of a crime," West read from his phone. "This translates to in order to make a freed man a slave all you have to do is convict them of a crime." Host Harvey Levin tried to confirm where West was going. "So in other words what you're saying is they carve out prison for involuntary servitude and you can use prison as a pretext to bring involuntary servitude back," Levin said. "Is that what you're saying?" "Well it has," West said."There's people getting paid 8 cents a week working for companies that are privately owned and a lot of them are first-time offenders. A lot of them are non-violent crimes."

In Kanye’s defense (although there’s no good excuse for the hat or the endless whining about the hat), he makes perfect sense here. He’s right about the 13th Amendment having a loophole that allows for incarcerated persons to be used for slave and forced labor inside privately-owned prisons. It shouldn’t be abolished, but it probably should be amended to fix the conviction loophole which yet again, as noted above, has a direct impact on the income gap and the wealth gap. Then there’s the loss of the constitutional right to vote by many people who were formerly incarcerated and meanwhile, the GOP has done absolutely nothing to restore the most vital and effective portions of the Voting Rights Act. Trump hasn’t even uttered the words “Voting Rights Act” yet, and he probably never will.

This same point about the duly convicted clause was made just this past year, with far more eloquence, by director Ava Duvernay in her documentary film 13th.