Donald Trump sure doesn’t make it easy to be a black Republican these days.
Despite the president’s decision to blame both sides for this weekend’s deadly clash at a rally organized by white supremacists, many African-American members of the GOP say they still support him.
In more than a dozen interviews, black Republicans across the nation blamed Trump’s much maligned response to the Charlottesville, Va. events on his inexperience as a politician. They recall that even Democrat Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, didn’t utter the perfect statement after every tragedy.
“President Trump suffers from a style that many Americans are turned off by,” said Ward Connerly, who has led campaigns against affirmative action for years. “People should give him a chance.”
And they accuse Americans of holding Trump to a different standard than others.
“They’re not going to be satisfied no matter what he says,” said Brian Bledsoe,who served as a Texas delegate at the 2016 GOP convention. “For them, their narrative is he is this racist or has these white supremacists in his administration. To them, he has to prove this, that he’s not this racist. He has to go far and beyond…but they’ll never be satisfied with what he says.”
There is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame on both sides
President Donald Trump
Many of those who still support Trump voted for him last year because of his plans to create jobs, reduce regulations and find much-needed money for crumbling roads and bridges. These black Republicans urge Americans to judge the president on what he does, not on his blunt talk or his abrasive personality.
Jill Upson, the first black Republican woman elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates, recalls a voter slamming the door in her face last year while she was campaigning after she said she was backing Trump. “He was sent there to be different,” she said.
Trump vowed during the 2016 presidential campaign that “I will do more for the African-American people in one year than Barack Obama has done in his seven years, soon to be eight years” and boldly predicted that he would win 95 percent of the black vote. In the end, he captured only 8 percent of the black vote.
“He has a tough job to do,” said former State Rep. Mike Hill of Florida. Hill said Trump had done an “outstanding job” standing up to North Korea and reviving the Keystone XL Pipeline. “I don’t expect everyone I come across, including the president, to be gracious all the time.”
The sentiment is not unanimous. Raynard Jackson, a black Republican political consultant and pundit, who said he supports the president on many policies, can’t understand why fellow black Republicans continue to stand up for Trump.
“To see black folks who claim to be Republicans or claim to be friends of the president try to make sense out of this stuff and expect the American people to believe them is offensive as hell,” he said. “And this is why people ignore black Republicans because they never, ever come out and take a principled stand when a Republican does something wrong.”
Only seven percent of black Americans identify with the GOP, and African-American Republicans already face questions about how they can be in a party that critics say opposes diversity and cuts programs for the neediest. Trump’s recent remarks have prompted more questions for African-Americans who stick with the party — and stick with Trump.