Ta-Nehisi Coates: Trump Won Because Whites Can't Stand Obama's 'Good Negro Government'

townhall.com ^ | 9/25/2017 | Tyler O'Neil

[rktman]

The black liberal who argued for reparations and called President Donald Trump America's "first white president" is at it again — but this time he is comparing Trump's election to the birth of post-Civil War white supremacy. This argument can fan the flames of unrest and lead to more racial violence in America. To realize just how explosive this claim really is, and to effectively debunk it, Americans have to understand his view of white supremacy at the heart of America and his deep pessimism about life itself.

"What this country really fears is black respectability, Good Negro Government," writes Ta-Nehisi Coates in his forthcoming book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (which releases on October 3). Coates compares President Barack Obama's eight years in power to the brief period following the Civil War in which black leaders served in government, before whites kicked them out.

While Coates gets Trump tragically wrong, he gets most of his history right. After the Civil War, the Union imposed a period of Reconstruction on the defeated Southern states, and part of that program was ensuring that black people could vote and run for office. But Reconstruction ended, and when it did, angry whites did indeed prevent blacks from voting and running for office. Following the Civil War, black people really were "eight years in power."

[Altura Ct.]

That’s right double down Mr. African American.