You’re No Abe Lincoln
If there’s one thing you can give Trump credit for, it’s chutzpah. OK, it’s easy to laugh at his claim to be the best president for blacks since Abe Lincoln. But some of his specific claims are being taken more seriously.
The federal government funds Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) in many ways. The mechanisms are so complicated I couldn’t find a simple comparison of how this funding has varied over the years. However, it seems to go back decades, and seems to have increased during the Obama administration and probably during previous administrations as well.
In 2019, Nancy Pelosi said that Senate Republicans blocked $255 million to continue MSI funding. Eventually the money was restored, and Trump signed the bill. So to the extent that Trump “saved” HBCU’s, what he did was save them from his own party! Hurray Republicans! Actually what he saved was one funding stream, which he saved by NOT ENDING. The great emancipator!
Overall, one source described a “mixed” Trump administration record on HBCU’s, with some significant positive moves on funding (as well as some negative ones).
I’m guessing that many of the same people who hail Trump’s support for HBCU funding would also describe such funding as hurting blacks by “enslaving them” to federal funding, but that’s another matter.
Trump has also taken credit for police reforms, trying hard to portray Biden as both a tool of anti-cop radicals and a rightist law-and-order zealot. In reality, the Obama administration generated a number of initiatives to reduce excessive sentencing for non-violent crime and to help police departments interact with people of color in a more constructive way.
The Trump administration made policy changes that hurt African Americans and other minorities in a wide range of contexts. Civil rights enforcement plummeted under Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions’ Department of Justice pulled back from fighting efforts to make it hard for minorities to vote. Under Obama, the EPA made an effort to help poor and minority communities, which are often the ones most directly affected by pollution. Trump’s EPA cut back on investigating complaints of environmental racism, though it is hard to tell if it was more opposed to protecting people of color or protecting the environment.
Many of Trump’s claims to black saviorhood rest on his contention that his administration has been good for the economy. Whether the continuation into Trump’s term of modest economic progress in Obama’s second term had anything to do with either president will probably be debated forever. It would be interesting to see a careful look at how each administration affected issues of particular importance to many African Americans. I couldn’t find one with a little bit of internet searching but I am sure there’s something out there.
Top image from https://community.aarp.org/t5/Politics-Current-Events/White-Priviledge-Fortified-Under-Trump/td-p/1988533.