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Donald Trump hosting a Black History Month celebration at the White House, packed with shallow symbolism over substance?
I expect nothing less from Trump — but the reaction from the mostly Black audience in the East Room of the White House? That was embarrassingly disconnected from recent history.
Trump walked on stage with legendary Black golfer Tiger Woods, who once told Oprah Winfrey he described himself as “Cablinasian,” and he spent a good deal of his time on stage shouting out the Black Republicans in the audience.
But those East Room Black People were either in deep denial or deep REM sleep in recent months.
No one in the audience questioned why Trump’s Secretary of Defense canceled Black History Month events at the Pentagon or removed a Tuskegee Airmen video from Air Force training.
No one complained about Trump revoking the 1965 executive order that banned racial discrimination in government employment and by government contractors.
As long as they got to smile in front of the white man in the White House, the East Room Black People were all good.
No one objected to Trump’s recent attempt to blame a tragic airplane crash on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or his administration’s ban on DEI throughout the federal government.
And no one mentioned Trump’s ongoing effort to repeal the 14th Amendment, which gave Black people birthright citizenship in 1868.
As long as they got to smile in front of the white man in the White House, the East Room Black People were all good.
The East Room Black People never dared to challenge Trump when he diminished the Black scholars who put together “The 1619 Project,” which traced the history of the first enslaved Black people brought to the colonies by the British.
“The last administration tried to reduce all of American history to a single year, 1619,” Trump lied to the Black History Month crowd.
Nope, that’s not what happened. The Biden-Harris administration didn’t write or invent “The 1619 Project”; they just acknowledged its importance in American history.
And none of the East Room Black People appeared to raise an eyebrow when Trump told them he wanted immigrants to come to the U.S., as long as they came here legally, while never discussing his racist new federal policy that allows only white South Africans to come to America but punishes Black people in that country.
No one even checked him when he lied that he won 40% of the Black vote in 2024, instead of the 13% that he actually got. Never mind the 95% of the Black vote he promised he would get eight years ago.
No one asked why he just eliminated an environmental justice program that provided 40% of the benefits from federal climate investments to Black and Brown communities.
No one seemed bothered that he just pardoned two police officers convicted in the murder of a Black man in Washington, D.C., and gave clemency to 1,500 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Trump’s only Black cabinet member, HUD Secretary Scott Turner, told the East Room Black People, “Every day I’ma lay it down for the people of America.”
I wish that were true, but at his confirmation hearing in January, he couldn’t even lay it down for the Black people facing racial discrimination in home appraisals. And just this week, a new report indicates HUD is actually cutting the program that fights home appraisal bias.
“We are in the presence of the greatest president of all time,” Black Trump supporter Leo Terrell told the crowd.
It’s like the East Room Black People live in an alternative universe, where Trump didn’t just spend the last year lying about the first Black vice president’s racial identity or making up ridiculous allegations that Haitian immigrants were eating dogs and cats.
The East Room Black People have somehow created a miraculous cognitive dissonance that allows them to believe that the most racist president in modern American history is actually, somehow, their hero, just because he let them come into the White House.
That’s a shockingly low bar.
“Four more years!” they chanted. Nope. No, thanks. It’s only been four weeks, and that’s already long enough.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
