by Clarence Henderson

Clarence Henderson

Support independent local journalism. Subscribe to The Charlotte Post

While the mainstream media and Democratic establishment smear President Trump, he’s busy implementing policies that benefit all Americans. When he arrives in Greenville for a massive campaign rally this week, the President will bring with him a record that promises a new deal for black America.



Black voters understand that the divide-and-conquer strategy pursued by the Democrats is no longer in their interest. The African American community needs opportunity, employment, and a fair deal — not racial pandering, group division, and dependency-inducing handouts that the Democrats have been using to purloin our votes for 50 years.



But Democrats have nothing else to offer: too afraid to take on their elite patrons who promote race-based political correctness, Democratic politicians choose to spew divisive rhetoric rather than enact concrete change, and use welfare payments as tools to maintain the economic status quo.



Instead of handouts and slogans, black America needs structural reforms and access to greater opportunity. President Trump has pushed for these changes in his ongoing fight to bring back the American jobs lost to outsourcing and restore genuine economic potential to low-income communities, and he will undoubtedly make his success on that front a focal point of his rally in Greenville on Wednesday.



For decades, the establishment elites exported American jobs overseas and imported cheap foreign labor. Working Americans of all colors paid the price, forced to support their families with dwindling chances for real advancement. American wages remained stagnant, unemployment stayed high, and economic growth slowed to a crawl.



African American communities bore a disproportionately heavy portion of the burden, enduring persistently high poverty, unemployment, and crime rates because so many opportunities had been taken away by elitist greed.

The Democrat politicians who claim to speak for African Americans have offered us little more than the crumbs from their table. Instead of addressing the hostile economic conditions holding black Americans back, Democrats always try to deflect criticism from their own failed policies by calling conservatives racists. Many black “leaders” actively participate in this deception, exploiting our suffering to enrich themselves and win phony praise from America’s upper crust.



All the while, America’s ruling class has cynically used the rich legacy of the Civil Rights Movement to advance its own elitist agenda, leveraging heroic protests such as the Greensboro sit-in — which I proudly took part in — to pass transgender bathroom bills.



Thanks to President Trump’s America First economic policies, though, a new day has dawned, and African Americans are finally being offered genuine opportunity rather than more dependency politics.



Instead of paying off the people who have been hurt by globalization with government welfare checks, as the Democrats often promise to do, President Trump has taken on elite interests and completely rewritten the rules of the game. With President Trump, working Americans have a champion in Washington who will defend their interests and give them the fair deal they so desperately need.



Black Americans have already begun to see the gains, achieving our lowest unemployment rate ever recorded and benefiting from the rejuvenated wage growth that Trump’s pro-growth policies have brought about. The progress African Americans have made under the Trump administration has proven Frederick Douglass correct: we don’t need Democrats to take care of us, we need to be left alone.



“Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune,” Douglass once advised political leaders who were debating what to do with the soon-to-be-emancipated slaves. “They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and succeed best by being let alone.”



African Americans don’t need Democrats turning us into victims. Though we may have suffered grave injustices in the past, we don’t need white liberals to take care of us. We’re perfectly capable of making a better future for ourselves; we just need the freedom and the opportunity to take care of ourselves and our own. President Trump’s policies, which are designed to unleash the full potential of the American people, are enabling the African American community to stand tall on its own two feet.



Democrats see that the Trump economy has provided success and opportunity to people whose votes they have long taken for granted, and they’re clearly starting to get worried. In response, they have ramped up the racially-divisive rhetoric in order to create irrational fear of Donald Trump among the very people who are benefiting the most from his policies. We can’t let the left foil the president’s plans to guide the American economy to even greater heights, and that means calling them out for their despicable race-baiting and name calling. While Democrats often claim to speak for black America, they’re really motivated solely by their own interests.



When he visits North Carolina, a place that played a critical role in the historic beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement, President Trump will celebrate the new possibilities that his policies are opening up for all Americans. In doing so, he offers the promise of a new shared future, realizing the goals that the Civil Rights Movement only dared to dream. Under this president’s leadership, American workers pursue their dreams with confidence that their government puts them first, irrespective of their race or creed. Under these conditions, black Americans can look forward to a future of accomplishment and prosperity.



Clarence Henderson is president of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of North Carolina, which champions conservative values.





Comments