By The Editorial Board |The Wall Street Journal
African-Americans
were front-and-center at the State of the Union. Image: Curtis Compton/Zuma
Press
The media have focused on the Nancy Pelosi-Donald Trump
feud on display at Tuesday’s State of the Union address. But for our money the
most notable part of the evening, and perhaps the most politically
consequential, was President Trump’s pitch for African-American support.
Progressives cast all Republican politicians as avatars
of racial resentment, and Mr. Trump has sometimes made himself an easy target.
He once trafficked in birther conspiracies about Barack Obama, and he botched
the response to the Charlottesville white-supremacist march in 2017. Joe Biden
dines out on this campaign theme in every speech.
Yet Mr. Trump is working hard to defy this Democratic
narrative, and good for him. The Trump campaign spent half of its $10 million
Super Bowl ad-buy highlighting Mr. Trump’s commutation of a black woman’s life
sentence for a drug offense. Then on Tuesday African Americans were
front-and-center.
Some of Mr. Trump’s appeals were symbolic, such as
recognizing 100-year-old Charles McGee, who served in the all-black Tuskegee
Army Air Force unit in World War II, and his great-grandson, who wants to be an
astronaut. He mentioned Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther
King Jr. in his appeal to American greatness.
Beyond the inclusive tone, Mr. Trump emphasized policies
that address real inequities in American life. Perhaps the most compelling was
Mr. Trump’s extended brief for school choice. The quality of many urban
government schools is a national disgrace, and African-American children suffer
most.
Mr. Trump highlighted a black youngster whose “future was
put further out of reach when Pennsylvania’s Governor vetoed legislation to
expand school choice,” and he called for Congress to expand opportunities for
scholarships to attend alternative schools.
This has become a sharp dividing line between the two
parties, as Democrats have abandoned choice under pressure from unions. In 2018
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won a close race thanks to the votes of
African-American women who supported him out of proportion to other GOP
candidates. One likely cause was his school-choice platform. Mr. Trump should
campaign around the country highlighting charter, private and parochial schools
that help children of all races escape rotten union schools.
Mr. Trump also highlighted sentencing reform, which he
signed into law over the objections of some on the right. The extent that black
voters want to soften the criminal-justice system is sometimes exaggerated—they
are often the victims of violent crime—yet nonviolent offenders are sometimes
sentenced for longer than society requires to remain safe. Mr. Trump’s
willingness to buck political convention on this issue is making a difference
for young black men especially.
Then there are the “opportunity zone” tax incentives
championed by GOP Senator Tim Scott aimed at funneling investment into
low-income areas. Mr. Trump recognized a black man, Tony Rankins, who had
turned his life around after prison and is a tradesman in an opportunity zone.
We’re more skeptical of the overall economic impact of this tax incentive, but
the late Jack Kemp would have approved of this attempt to bring capital to
places where there hasn’t been enough.
Mr. Trump also hammered the dividends that faster
economic growth is delivering for black Americans, with declining poverty and a
near-record low jobless rate (5.9%). Prosperity tends to ease intergroup
suspicion and hostility as everyone sees more opportunity.
***
Mr. Trump won about 8% of the black vote in 2016, and
Beltway sages (including some conservatives who fancy themselves experts) sneer
that he won’t do any better in 2020. But policy results matter, especially when
they are accompanied by sincere and persistent outreach. In any case more
two-party competition for black voters is good for the country.
When parties are racially sorted, conflicts are
magnified. As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his great
concurrence in Holder v. Hall, racial redistricting reduces “any
need for voters or candidates to build bridges between racial groups or to form
voting coalitions.” Democrats flog racial tensions to drive minority turnout,
while Republicans ignore the black vote and stress white turnout.
Partisan identities are sticky, and perhaps Mr. Trump’s
efforts won’t overcome the Democratic and media’s political stereotyping by
race. But the GOP needs to try, and Mr. Trump deserves credit for doing so.
