Leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus emerged from a meeting Wednesday at the White House to say they found some areas of agreement with President Trump on helping minority communities but still are not convinced he’s not a racist.
CBC Chairman Cedrick L. Richmond said that many of their constituents urged them to not attend the meeting because of their hostility toward the president. But he said the black lawmakers wanted to offer an “opportunity to engage” Mr. Trump, who aggressively courted black voters during the campaign and vowed to make urban neighborhoods a priority for his administration.
When asked by reporters, however, the Louisiana Democrat refused to say that the face-to-face meeting with the president convinced him Mr. Trump was not a racist, a bigot or stirring up white supremacists, as was repeatedly alleged during the campaign.
“You would have to talk to the people who made those allegations,” he told reporters at the White House. “I would say that he is the 45th president of the United States, and we talked about issues that were critically important to the African-American community.”
He said they spoke with the president about “the divisive rhetoric that hurts African-Americans and may cause more divide in this country.”
He said they presented Mr. Trump with a list of his policies that would hurt minority communities entitled “What we have to loose,” the question Mr. Trump repeatedly posed to black voters during the campaign.
Mr. Richmond’s remarks underscored the difficulty Mr. Trump encounters when attempting to embrace inner city and minority communities that overwhelmingly opposed him at the polls in November.
Mr. Trump has struggled to remove the label of racist that was applied to him during the campaign. The charge has followed him to the White House, appearing on protest signs along the president’s motorcade routes.
Mr. Trump has moved to make good on his campaign promises to minorities, including raising the profile of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and keeping funding for those schools level in a budget blueprint that made dramatic cuts in domestic spending.
Black leaders who have met with Mr. Trump have been subjected to slurs.
After joining dozens of other HBCU leaders at the White House, Howard University President Wayne A.I. Frederick was taunted with graffiti on the Washington, D.C., campus. One message spray-panted across a campus sidewalk read: “Welcome to the Trump plantation. Overseer: Wayne A.I. Frederick.”
Emory University political science professor Andra Gillespie said black Americans just don’t trust him — and maybe never will.
“He’s still got a long way to go to build trust,” said the race and politics scholar. “It is going to take a lot of sustained effort.”
She said Mr. Trump regularly sets the wrong tone when addressing minorities, such as referring to rampant crime in black neighborhoods or appearing uninformed when touring the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture for Black History Month.
“In the times when he has reached out to African-American communities, he has also made comments that lots of people will interpret as being offensive,” said Ms. Gillespie, who also is a fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
However, she said that making HBCUs a priority and meeting with the CBC were worthy efforts.
Mr. Trump hoped the meeting with the CBC would begin to improve his relationship with the lawmakers and their constituents.
“We’re going to have a lot of meetings over the years, and I very much appreciate your being here,” he said at the top of the meeting in the Cabinet room before reporters were escorted out.
“Throughout my campaign I pledged to focus on improving conditions for African-American citizens. This means more to me than anybody can understand,” he said. “You know every American child has a right to grow up in a safe community, to attend great schools, to graduate with access to high-paying jobs.”
The president has insisted that his economic, tax, education and immigration agendas will uplift inner city and minority communities.
Mr. Richmond said they agreed on the goals and some of Mr. Trump’s policies, such as supporting his call for a massive infrastructure program, but that they disagreed on the policies to achieve most of the goals.
For instance, Mr. Trump wanted more policing to keep neighborhoods safe. The CBC pushed for better re-entry programs for ex-cons coming back to the neighborhoods as part of brand justice reforms.
They also warned that Mr. Trump’s $1.1 trillion budget blueprint, which boosted defense spending by $54 billion and slashed domestic spending, would be “devastating” to poor Americans of every color.
Rep. Gwen Moore, the CBC whip, said they stressed to Mr. Trump that his policies would hurt his white supporters as well as black Americans.
“We did point out to President Trump that a lot of the policies that he’s proposing will also have a greater impact on those folks who voted for him who thought in desperation that they needed him to address their economic insecurity,” said Ms. Moore, Wisconsin Democrat.
“We were very, very forward in suggesting to him that there are many Trump supporters who will suffer.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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