Donald Trump is going after the black vote with his newly formed coalition “Black Voices for Trump”. The group intends to increase support of the Trump campaign among African-American voters.
First on the agenda, Vice President Mike Pence will be hosting an event for the group in Atlanta on Friday, Nov. 8. According to the Trump campaign, there is a significant amount of support from black people in Atlanta, which is why the address will take place there.
Trump managed to muster up 8% of the black vote during the presidential election of 2016. He would go on to win the election with 304 electoral votes and nearly 63 million popular votes, while his opposition Hillary Clinton lost with 227 electoral votes and 65+ million popular votes.
According to the Pew Research Center, the black voter turnout decreased with only 59.6% of eligible voters actually casting a ballot, whereas 65.3% of white eligible voters voted. The highest black voter turnout was during Barack Obama’s campaign when a record 66.6% of black voters participated, surpassing the number of white people that voted for the first time in history.
Other races increased in their voter turnout numbers. The Latinx vote slightly increased in 2016, growing from 11.2 million voters in 2012 to 12.7 million in 2016. The Asian community increased from 3.8 million in 2012 to 5 million in 2016.
While spectators believe that Trump will never have a significant percentage of black people supporting him, they do believe that by garnering more support from the black community he can detract from his Democratic competitor.
Trump has his work cutout for him. His history of racism has been documented and harbored by those who want him out of office. The Twitter happy president has a history of recruiting top advisers who are known for being racially biased or discriminative, such as Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon and Steve Mnuchin, to name a few.
Trump detractors have also attributed the spike in hate crimes and incidents to Trump’s hateful rhetoric towards the Latinx, Muslim and gay communities. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, about 900 hate crimes somehow associating the president were committed directly following the election of Trump.
Then, there’s the infamous refusal of Trump to rent his properties to black people and his Central Park witch hunt that accused innocent black men of committing crimes, which was all documented by the Justice department.
The idea of Trump being able to increase support from black people seems far-fetched when history shows there is a definite divide, but if his buddy Kanye West is able to gain the support of black people right after his shenanigans, then Trump has a fighting chance.
