BY WALTER CANADY III

In another one of Donald Trump’s latest antics in his presidential campaign he decided to make a pitch of promotion to African Americans.

While speaking in Dimondale, Michigan, Trump made a dicey statement.  He said, “You’re living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. 58% of your youth are unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”

This is a group of people in America that Trump knows he doesn’t have much of an ability of arms to reach out to them because of disrespectful antics such as this one. After asking some of Truman’s own African American students their opinion on the statement and if it appealed to them to vote for Donald Trump, it was very plain to see that his mission was an concordant failure.

Senior, at Truman High School, Amir Woods said “The statement that Trump made was by far inexcusable.  It was very insulting, degrading, and overall disrespectful to the African American race.”

After asking the same question to another student, sophomore, Craig Stewart, the answer was nearly identical  “I think that the statement was very ironic, stupid, and I would never support him, and above all a person like this should never be the president.”

Even in agreeance, I would say that a statement period would not have appealed to African American voters. At this time in America, black people feel under attack, with so many innocent people being murdered without justice being followed behind it. Black people in America are at a point where we feel like prisoners of war behind enemy lines, with the impression that there is no problem, when there’s evidence to suggest that there’s an obscure genocidal war going on. In fact according to the Washington Post  African Americans account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers. Not necessarily saying that everybody in America is against African Americans, but when you hear people like Trump talk and  run in the electoral race with so many followers who believe in his discernment and notions it’s offensive and almost scary. Then to watch the news and see that a terrorist can attempt to kill a mass of people New York and somehow is detained alive, but on the other hand you have African American people like Terrence Crutcher who can’t make it home because their car broke down, and they looked scary. With that being said I think that if Donald Trump or any other electoral candidate wanted to appeal to the mass of African American they would need to propose a systematic type of intense investigation following any type of police negative confrontations with the  African. American community. Or to the very least some type of better systematic training or rules of engagement for officers to follow. I say this, because when running for the election of anything you need to make relevance of your campaign one of the top priorities, and at this time police brutality against African Americans is very relevant. Especially being a president because you are trying to step into the executive branch where you are supposed to make sure that law, policy, and equality are executed to the fullest in this country.