A MAGA Plan for Black Success

with John McWhorter

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Sweeping government programs designed to alleviate poverty and dysfunction in struggling black neighborhoods have, for the most part, failed. Sunday’s guest post from Clifton Roscoe highlights some of the problems: lagging academic performance, unemployment and underemployment, out-of-wedlock birth rates, and so on. I say “and so on” because none of this is new. These are the problems that have bedeviled black communities for decades. As subscriber Pat Rimmel points out, none of the programs—most of them initiated by liberals—designed to fix these problems have made a dent. There’s success at the margins, but we need more than marginal improvements.

Trump has come into office promising, once again, to “Make American Great Again.” So I say, why not make succeeding where liberalism has failed a top priority? A MAGA-led anti-poverty, pro-education, pro-work, pro-family agenda need not focus exclusively on black communities—there are plenty of majority-white communities suffering from the same problems.

Tackling these problems and actually making headway could be appealing to Trump in at least two ways. First, success measured in higher test scores, higher high school graduation rates, lower out-of-wedlock birth rates, lower incarceration rates, lower unemployment, and higher net wealth for African Americans would effectively end liberals’ claim that they alone represent black interests. Second, Trump would surely insist on MAGA branding on whatever measures he might take. Come election season, voters whose lives have been materially improved by Trump policies would remember who’s got their backs. He’s already made headway among black men, but he didn’t come close to winning a majority of them.

But, you may object, Trump doesn’t really care about black people. He just sees them as pawns in a larger political game. To which I would reply: so what? You think Democrats are any different, never mind their poe-faced declarations of solidarity? One of the few things Trump really cares about is winning elections, and that’s something Black America can help him do. He is transactional, so let’s get transactional. Black leaders who are in a position to cut deals funding local initiatives with track records of success (and there are such initiatives) ought to tell Trump they’re willing to work with him.

I know that sounds like a mercenary approach to a set of sensitive social issues. In order for it to work, some people are going to have to hold their noses and shake hands with a guy who disgusts them. And there’s no guarantee Trump would go for such a plan. But if he signals that he is willing to talk, and black leaders aren’t willing to sacrifice a little cred in order to improve their constituents’ lives, they’ll have demonstrated they’re not fit for office. Trump fancies himself a dealmaker. Let’s make a deal.

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