Is Donald Trump’s defiant anti-politically correct message dangerous for Black folks?
I could make a valid argument that Trump’s verbal assault on political correctness leads to violent racial attacks, like the physical assault on Black activist Mercutio Southall, who was shoved, tackled, kicked in the chest and stomach and punched in the face by white Trump supporters over the weekend during a rally for Trump in Birmingham, Alabama.
And, Southhall said, someone even tried to choke him. (A woman in the video can be heard shouting, “Don’t choke him, don’t choke him, don’t choke him.”)
Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the presidential race, clearly is not part of the solution on race issues in America, and frankly, he appears to be part of the problem.
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During the altercation in Alabama, Southhall said he was repeatedly called the N-word and “monkey” as racist supporters of Trump seemed to be following Trump’s orders to remove Southhall from the rally.
“Get him the hell out of here, will you please?” Trump shouted. “Get him out of here. Throw him out!”
And even after Trump learned of this racist response to Southhall’s demonstration, here was Trump’s response:
“Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing,” Trump said Sunday morning on Fox News.
So what was so disgusting? Southhall was yelling “Dump the Trump” and “Black Lives Matter.” He was expressing his right to protest publicly and peacefully.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign released a statement saying Trump doesn’t condone violence, but what about Southhall being called the N-word and “monkey?”
Why didn’t the Trump campaign address the racial aspect of this altercation? So is Trump condoning racist behavior on the part of his supporters?
Trump’s anti-politically correct rhetoric seems to fuel racist sentiments among some of his supporters while Trump just ignores the racism.
Southall, who said his grandparents crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, compared the attack at the Trump rally to facing a “lynch mob.”
“This is the ugly truth of America. It was there like literally and figuratively in Black and white,” Southhall told CNN. “We saw it. We see it daily,” Southall said. “It shows what kind of America we live in now and what kind of America it will be with Trump at the helm.”
Trump has vowed never to let members of “Black Lives Matter” disrupt his rallies the way they took over a rally for Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate.
“That will never happen with me,” Trump said last month.
And where is Katrina Pierson on this issue?
Pierson, an African-American woman, is the new face of the Trump campaign. Trump hired Pierson, a Tea Party loyalist, as his high-profile surrogate, to appear on national television news programs and to be his defender.
“He’s sort of not politically correct,” Pierson told POLITICO recently. “He sort of calls it like he sees it. I’m kind of that way, too.”
But how does she feel, as a Black woman, about white supporters of Trump kicking and punching a Black man while calling him the N-word?
Trump and Pierson are of like minds on the issue of political correctness. But at what point does Trump’s political correctness become dangerous? I believe it’s when his rhetoric incites people to violence.
But Trump, presently the leading Republican presidential contender, continues to incite his impressionable crowds.
What do you think?
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