African-Americans Hear Trump Loud and Clear

Featured at Roll Call

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It’s so refreshing to know that Donald Trump cares about me. I was in that Charlotte crowd when he made one of his first outreach efforts to African-Americans. Because the supportive Trump fans gathered in the portioned-off section of the convention center included few actual African-Americans, he could very well have been talking just to me when he said Democrats and Hillary Clinton have totally taken African-American votes for granted. “What do you have to lose by trying something new?” he asked.

That appearance set the tone and backdrop for the Republican presidential nominee’s practice of talking about African-Americans to predominantly white audiences. Though I was joined by members of a local black church that has endorsed Trump, and we were all carefully watched by a diverse group of unsmiling security personnel whose glances I tried to avoid so I would not meet the same fate as an Indian-American Trump supporter tossed out of a rally when he was profiled as a potential troublemaker.

 

Read the rest atRoll Call
Aug292016 TAGS: , ,

Trump’s Recent Pitch to Minority Voters

Featured at WCCB Rising


CHARLOTTE, NC — Donald Trump has been working to sway minority voters in recent days, and that includes backing off of his hard line immigration policy. WCCB Political Contributor Mary C. Curtis discusses the new approach Donald Trump has been taking and whether it will be effective in this long run.

Read the rest atWCCB Rising
Aug242016 TAGS: , ,

The Latest With NC Voter ID Laws and the Upcoming Election

Featured at WCCB Rising


CHARLOTTE, NC — North Carolina’s Voter ID Law is in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Mecklenburg County residents are learning they could have less time to cast an early ballot in this year’s election.

WCCB Political Contributor Mary C. Curtis is weighing in on these voter issues and what they could mean as the election draws closer.

Read the rest atWCCB Rising
Aug172016 TAGS: , , , ,

The Latest Possible Move to Oust Donald Trump

Featured at WCCB Rising


CHARLOTTE, NC — A petition is being circulated that is calling on the Republican National Committee to hold a special meeting to discuss replacing Donald Trump as the GOP Presidential Nominee. WCCB Political Contributor Mary C. Curtis weighs in on all of the twists and turns in Trump’s race for the White House.

Read the rest atWCCB Rising
Aug102016 TAGS: , ,

Will Donald Trump Meet with Minority Journalists?

Featured at Garnet News

If he really wanted to boost his brand, to continue what put him on top, Republican presidential nominee Trump missed a prime opportunity this past weekend, turning down two invitations that surely had the potential to change the conversation far better than an economic address that was short on details that don’t quite add up.

Read the rest atGarnet News
Aug092016 TAGS: ,

President Obama Is Nobody’s N-word, Despite Trump’s Putin Dog Whistle

Featured at NBC News

PHILADELPHIA – Since the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama’s opponents have tried to make him something he is not: an angry black man and/or some foreign “other” not entitled to claim the American story as his own.

President Obama, with his Democratic National Convention speech on Wednesday night, answered back. He both endorsed Hillary Clinton and defended America—and himself—against all the insult thrown in Cleveland by Republicans last week.

Again, he thwarted Republican nominee Donald Trump, who had commandeered all the headlines with his latest outrage, all with the simple act of repeating America’s founding principles and reminding listeners of its promise and triumphs in the face of challenges.

“That is America. That is America. Those bonds of affection; that common creed. We don’t fear the future; we shape it, we embrace it, as one people, stronger together than we are on our own,” Obama said.

Read the rest atNBC News
Jul282016 TAGS: , , , ,

Hillary Clinton’s ‘Law and Order’ Problem

Featured at Roll Call

PHILADELPHIA – In politics, nuance is often a negative, particularly in the middle of a cutthroat presidential campaign. So while Hillary Clinton’s position — supporting and sympathizing with both police officers and the mothers of African Americans killed in encounters with police — is a reasonable one, it doesn’t quite fit on a bumper sticker. It’s about criminal justice and race and trust and perceptions it would take a pile of history books to start to untangle.

On the other hand, “law and order,” the mantra often repeated by GOP nominee Donald Trump in Cleveland at the Republican convention, fits just fine.

 

Read the rest atRoll Call
Jul242016 TAGS: , , , ,

The Unconventional Republican National Convention

Featured at WCCB Rising

CHARLOTTE, NC — The RNC may have gotten off to a rocky start but an anti-Hillary Clinton theme seems to be bringing the party together. WCCB Political Contributor Mary C. Curtis weighs in on the events so far in Cleveland and what could be ahead as we move closer to November.

Read the rest atWCCB Rising
Jul202016 TAGS: , , , ,

Melania and Michelle: Sisters in the American Dream

Featured at Roll Call

It is embarrassing that portions of Melania Trump’s opening night speech repeated not only the themes but the very words spoken by Michelle Obama in 2008 at the Democratic National Convention — not, however, for the reason most would think. (Though you should expect at least one sloppy speechwriter’s head to roll.) No, the real reason the campaign’s public gaffe stings is that it contradicts the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s message that America is a “divided crime scene .”

If the African-American first lady whose journey took her from the South Side of Chicago to Princeton to Harvard Law and the White House and the Slovenian-American immigrant , model/designer and perhaps future first lady have so much in common, that means the Trump candidacy has little reason to exist. We don’t need a “law and order” candidate to get us in shape. Maybe we aren’t at each other’s throats after all.

 

Read the rest atRoll Call
Jul192016 TAGS: , , ,

Spotlight Elections: What’s Next America?

Featured at Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

When Barack Obama gave the speech that made him famous at the 2004 Democratic National Convention – and doesn’t that seem like a lifetime ago – it wasn’t just America that noticed. The words he spoke, the sentiment he expressed provided hope for the world: “Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy; our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over 200 years ago: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…’”

Obama’s campaign for president, with the message of “Hope and Change,” was felt not only in the US but was truly international. In Germany in 2008, Obama closed a main thoroughfare when he appeared. The French president all but endorsed him.

It was also what Barack Obama, who would become the first African-American U.S. President, represented. Obama was and is a man of the world. In his example and election, not once but twice, America set an example to aspire to, a country stumbling to find its better self – eventually. In travels, other countries marveled, and had to ask – with an obvious answer — if a member of a discriminated minority closer to home could rise so far.

What a difference eight years make.

Read the rest atFriedrich Ebert Stiftung
Jul182016 TAGS: , , , ,
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