Kanye West at an event in Los Angeles, California. (Getty Images)
In the midst of the Kavanaugh madness, a fascinating development passed relatively under the radar Thursday.
Today’s @realDonaldTrump approval ratings among black voters: 35%.
This day last year: 23% https://t.co/mazBCWoIMy @POTUS @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/dVW5J9dzs8
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) October 4, 2018
No matter how you feel about polls, twelve points in one year is significant. This is especially true (and surprising) considering the constant drum beat from the press that Trump is a racist somewhere south of George Wallace.
Somebody isn’t buying it — and it’s not just Kanye West. If this number grows just a little bit, the Democratic Party is in deep trouble. The party relies for its electoral power on overwhelming support from African-Americans, a dependency in itself inherently racist and suffused with reactionary identity politics. Without the black vote, the Dems might as well rename themselves the Celluloid Party and run Hollywood agents for mayor of Malibu. It’ll be their best chance for success.
No wonder Maxine Waters hates Trump so much and no wonder Snoop Dogg has his nose so far out of joint he’s attacked Kanye with that hoary cliché “Uncle Tom.” (C’mon, Snoop, you can do better than that. You’re a creative artist.) Actually, it’s a dead giveaway. Today’s Democrats are the natural heirs of George Wallace: “Segregation now! Segregation forever!” Only their brand of segregation means segregated dorms at Harvard and a blacks-only graduation ceremony. Talk about reactionary. Is that what MLK wanted? Gimme a break.
Who am I to say that as a white man, you might ask? Well, nobody, but I did live in a rooming house owned by MLK’s cousin in Sumter, South Carolina, in 1966, working for, of course, integration as a northern agitator civil rights kid, 22 years old. What happened to the civil rights movement after that became increasingly depressing, increasingly exploitative, and increasingly mired in victimology over the years, in short what happens to so many idealistic movements (cf. Carlyle’s French Revolution).
Bravo, Kanye, for help righting the ship. (Bravo, too, all those truly brilliant black conservatives from Thomas Sowell to Shelby Steele and my friend Larry Elder. There are more. You are true American heroes and the true heirs of Dr. King. You are the best, bar none, of our country.) And bravo, Donald Trump, as well. African-Americans have their lowest unemployment figures in decades. The welfare rolls are down, incomes are up, etc., etc. The times they really are a-changing — and African-Americans, not surprisingly, get it. Hence the rise to 35%.
Integration, the original goal of the civil rights movement when I was in it, is beginning to eke out a small comeback. Segregation, which has held sway for some time, reaching its apotheosis under former attorney general (and wannabe presidential candidate) Eric Holder, is finally on the wane.
The rise of Kanye, and a new generation of African-Americans who aren’t buying the tired Waters message, is one of the most heartening developments in our country in years.
But since the Kavanaugh hearing is on everybody’s mind right now, this o-fay will hazard a guess of what at least some black people might be thinking when they watch this charade. African-Americanas are not strangers to false accusations. No more horrific case exists in our history than the Scottsboro Boys. In 1931, these nine African American teenagers were falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama. And then there was 14-year old Emmett Till, lynched in Mississippi 1955 for looking askance at a white woman in her family’s store.
Obviously there are other cases, but equally obvious is that many black people might view Dr. Ford’s accusations differently than whites.
It will be interesting to see where the black vote will be in 2020.
Roger L. Simon – co-founder and CEO Emeritus of PJ Media – is a novelist and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter.
Source: PJMedia
