During the brief era of Donald Trump, black people have been living in trepidation and silent outrage, grappling with the meaning of a man who took office largely on the promise to nullify or reverse whatever America’s first black president, Barack Obama, had accomplished — good, bad or indifferent. That Trump is not just another white politician but one who is spectacularly unqualified to be president makes the setback that much more racially charged, and ominous. His critics and the Democratic Party leadership still stubbornly focus on the economy, on jobs, as the thing that got Trump over. But I find his fumbling of basic black history, and his nonchalance about it, especially dispiriting. This is black marginalization writ large, just as Obama’s time in Washington was black visibility and possibility writ large, or larger than it had been.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 09, 2017 12:01 UTC