Is Donald Trump’s New Deal for the Black Community A RAW DEAL?

During his campaign for the 2016 Presidential Election Donald Trump promised to give the Black community a new deal. Jobs, safe streets, and an alleged new beginning for the blighted urban centers where they’ll finally be cleaned up once and for all. However, this New Deal could just be a raw deal that screws black people over the same way the Welfare state did back in the 1970s and so-called Gentrification did in the 1990s.

Donald Trump is a businessman. And what most Black people don’t understand about business is that no one does anything for free. If someone has to do something for you, they’re going to expect something in return for it. Unfortunately, most Black people are so Spellbound by the attention they’re getting from a rich White man they aren’t asking what price they’ll have to pay for his New Deal.

Every time Black folks make a deal with White people to “fix” their communities they alter the deal and Black folks wind up with a Raw Deal years later. After Democrats established a welfare state that brought crime and drugs turned Black comminities into urban war zones in the 1970s, many Black folks didn’t ask what the price was when Democratic politicians, many of them Black started their so-called Gentrification plans for inner city areas like Harlem and the South Bronx in the 1990s. And that deal cost many residents their homes and their neighborhoods. Yeah, a lot of corporations and wealthy landlords got tax breaks and tax credits at Black people’s expense, but most poor residents got forced out of their homes when those same business owners and landlords started raising their rents to appeal to middle class Whites and nonblacks to turn those blighted urban areas into trendy spots for hipsters and their ilk.

And eighteen years after those business owners got their tax breaks and tax credits from things like Bill Clinton’s Empowerment Zones, businesses like PathMark, Rite Aid, The Body Shop, Krispy Kreme, Hue-Man bookstore and the Chevrolet/Cadillac/Saturn of Harlem that were supposed to improve the quality of life for Black people are now shuttered and the areas are back on their way back to being blighted. At the end of 18 years, they created huge holes in the economic infrastructure of inner city neighborhoods when small businesses were forced out for big chains stores. Big chain stores that left the neighborhood when they went bankrupt, the tax credit money ran out, or when they proved to underperform when compared to other locations in the region.  

The Clinton era Empowerment Zones proved to be nothing more tham tax shelters for White liberals and big business. Yeah, they created low-wage jobs for a handful of residents (If big business could get a tax credit on their salaries) but didn’t improve the quality of life for most inner-city residents long term. Blacks became poorer as nonblack and foreign businesses built wealth with Black dollars and the last vestiges of Black-owned businesses left the community. And outside of most of those foreign-owned businesses in those so-called Gentrified areas of Harlem the same criminal elements such as junkies, prostitutes and drug addicts remained stand outside of those businesses getting high or begging for change.

Is Trump’s New Deal going to be a tax credit haven for big business? Or an actual fresh start for poor Black people in Black communites? And do we really need Donald Trump to give Black people a New deal? When it comes to this New Deal with Trump, are Black people gonna go out like Lando Calrissian on after he made the deal with Darth Vader and the Empire to protect Cloud City?

The way I see it, the power was always there for Black people to do what Trump is promising to do. So was the money. Brownstones in places like Harlem’s Sugar Hill and 125^th Street were going for under $20 in the early 1970s and 1980s. I always found it funny how Black folks like bus drivers and postal workers who lived in the projects could find money to pay for brand-new Mercury Cougars, Cadillacs Eldorados, Jeep Cherokees, and Air Jordan sneakers, but could never find the money to invest in Black business or buying up old abandoned brownstones into affordable housing for other Black people. Even with all the money flowing from the Rap game, Pro athletes and even the illegal money from crack cocaine. Why do we need a White man like Donald Trump to give Black people a new deal for the Black community when the Black man could have made his own deal on his own terms?

The resources and tools were always there to rebuild a strong Black community. Unfortunately most Black folks were too busy chasing social currency to create social change in their communities.

Most Black folks don’t understand that when it comes to this New Deal they’re not coming from a position of strength, but a position of weakness. Trump’s new Deal like Bill Clinton’s Empowerment Zones won’t be a deal on our terms, it’ll be a deal on his terms. And when a deal is on Donald Trump and the Government’s terms it’s not going to be a deal to benefit the average Black layperson. Those streets aren’t going to be cleaned up without a cost. Sadly most Spellbound Black folks aren’t asking how much the price is.

When it comes to Trump’s New Deal it’s just the same game with a new political party. Black Pastors, Black politicians and other social and political parasites and scavengers are going to help turn that deal into a Raw deal. And once they alter the deal, most Black folks will be praying they don’t alter the deal any further.

Most Black folks still don’t understand when someone does something for you, they aren’t doing it for your benefit, but their own. And when you ask someone to do something for you that you won’t do for yourself, you are giving away your personal, economic and political power and putting them in control over your life. Black folks need to stop asking the government to do things for them and start doing things for themselves. A lot of this stuff is easier to do than we think.