Dear Editor,

Looking historically at demographics, black men in America have for centuries been singled out for the most vicious and dehumanising attacks on their personhood and manhood.

Without delving too deeply into America’s dark past, one need only to read the autobiography of Frederick Douglas to capture a glimpse of the atrocious acts perpetrated against black men that began during slavery and continued unabated with the murders of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and others to understand that the institutional animosity, the stereotyping, and the marginalising is an everyday phenomenon that still defines the day-to-day existence of many black men struggling to survive in America.

Donald Trump continues to perpetuate a guilty-until-proven-innocent mentality that too many in authority still perpetuate. His record of derogatory behaviour towards black men is well documented. To begin, he and his father discriminated against African Americans who wanted to rent Trump apartments in New York.

To add to this record of discrimination, Trump – without hard evidence – asserted that the “Central Park Five” (four young black males and one Latino) were guilty of the brutal rape of a young white woman and asserted that they deserved the death penalty. Even after the accused were exonerated, Trump has consistently refused to apologise. He doubled down on this false accusation during his recent debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris.

When Colin Kaepernick, an National Football League (NFL) free agent, encouraged other players to “take a knee” in protest of unfair treatment within the NFL franchise, Trump’s answer to their grievance was to call the players derogatory names.

Recently, Trump ranted that police officers should become even more aggressive, more abusive, when making arrests. Guess who would bear the brunt of this Jim Crow-era policing? You guessed it: black males.

Trump is a politician who knows how to tamp down his racist rhetoric when he stands to gain from creating an illusion of civility, but someone has wisely stated: “Lipstick on a pig is still a pig.”

Trump’s insulting remarks about black men identifying with him because he now has a “mugshot” represents a new low for this incorrigible man. And marketing gold sneakers is not identifying, it is exploiting.

Benefiting from black Republicans organising “Barbershop Meet-ups” and luring black men to MAGA (‘Make America Great Again’) rallies is nothing but cheap ploys designed to manipulate the uninformed.

To be fair, Trump does not limit his selling of snake oil to receptive black men only. His demagoguery has convinced millions of uneducated, poor white Americans that he is a populist advocating on their behalf. What a joke! The only voters who seem to enjoy Trump’s concern are those who he has called “rich as hell”.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have track records worthy of all American voters – including black males. They are the real “Champions of the People”. Compare their economic agenda with Trump’s and Vance’s Project 2025 blueprint for more “trickle-down economics”.

The stakes in the election are too high to allow showmanship to prevail. The more American voters — of all stripes — study the priorities of these candidates, it will become crystal clear that most white and black voters share more in common than they might realise.

The public record, if thoroughly studied, should cause the overwhelming majority of the electorate to stifle Trump’s pursuit of power and force him to face his day of reckoning.

Michael A Grant

President emeritus

National Bankers Association

USA