North American Division President G. Alexander Bryant issued a reflection on Martin Luther King day making several gratuitous and controversial statements:
A paradox of our time is that there has been racial progress and yet it is obvious to most that we have a long way to go. On the one hand, we have sent a Black man to serve in the highest position in the land, and now we’re just a couple of days from sending the first Black woman to serve as vice president. On the other hand, we have watched George Floyd and other Black men murdered by those who were sworn to uphold and protect with rapidity [sic].
George Floyd was not murdered. He died of a drug overdose, as I will explain in a separate article. But even assuming, arguendo, that Floyd died as a result of police brutality, there is no evidence the incident involved racism. The four officers involved in Floyd’s arrest were racially diverse, and included one black officer and one Hmong officer (the Hmongs are an Asiatic race who live mostly in Indochina). Elder Bryant seems to be assuming that any time there is a negative outcome in an interaction between police and black people, racism is to blame.
Another paradox is that on the one hand, the state of Georgia sent a Black man and a Jewish man to the U.S. Congress for the first time in the history of the South; but on the other hand, on the very next day, the U.S. Capitol was attacked because a significant number of whites feel they are losing their country and must take it back by force, and they felt like the presidential election was stolen.
“A significant number of whites feel they are losing their country”? So the capitol incursion is now a racial incident? Where did that come from?
Elder Bryant allows that “they felt like the presidential election was stolen.” But the problem is not just that the presidential election was stolen—quite obviously so—it is that no one was willing to hear the evidence of election fraud “on the merits” and provide a remedy, as we lawyers like to say. Most of the law suits were thrown out on things such a “ripeness, “mootness,” and “standing,” which are invoked only by courts that prefer to avoid hearing, and ruling on, the merits of a case, never by judges who want to weigh in on an issue.
Elections are central to our system of self-government and ordered liberty; they are how we decide who legitimately governs. Election fraud has to be addressed, investigated, and rooted out immediately; a failure to deal with election fraud leads inevitably to a catastrophic breakdown in the system. A government taking power as the result of election fraud has no legitimacy; it is simply reigning by force (which is why they need 25,000 troops to install the incoming regime—a far larger military contingent than this nation’s capital has ever seen, even during the Civil War, when Robert E. Lee’s 70,000-man army was camped 50 miles to the south). As much as we may deplore it—and I certainly do—an illegitimate regime ruling by force will eventually provoke violence in response.
Parenthetically, there is much we could say here about the “great controversy” theme, and how God’s government is based upon love, not force:
“Earthly kingdoms rule by the ascendancy of physical power; but from Christ’s kingdom every carnal weapon, every instrument of coercion, is banished.” (Acts of the Apostles, p. 12)
The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God’s government; He desires only the service of love; and love cannot be commanded; it cannot be won by force or authority.” (The Desire of Ages, p. 22)
But this great theme must not detain us now. We return to Elder Bryant’s statement that “the U.S. Capitol was attacked because a significant number of whites feel they are losing their country.”
Elder Bryant’s bizarre statement notwithstanding, the capitol incursion was not motivated by racism, race, or racial concerns. Sadly, the NAD president gives evidence of having uncritically imbibed the Democratic Party’s crude and viciously false slur against President Trump. The president is not a racist and the MAGA movement was never a racist movement.
Frankly, it seems elder Bryant just wants to talk about the capitol incursion, regardless how inappropriate and inapposite such mention is to reflections on Martin Luther King Day.
It shouldn’t be necessary to reiterate President Trump’s achievements on behalf of the black race, which I outlined here, but I guess it is.
Much of President Trump’s domestic program—restricting illegal immigration, raising tariffs to repatriate manufacturing jobs, cutting the corporate tax rate to make America an attractive business location, and incentivizing the return of offshore capital—has been designed to raise the wages of the working class, including the wages of black Americans. It has worked: as of last year (before the Wuhan Flu shutdowns), the black unemployment rate was 5.5%, the lowest level ever recorded since that data began to be collected in the 1970s. Additionally, the African-American poverty rate reached 18.8% in 2019, the lowest level recorded since they started tracking that number in the 1960s.
President Trump has also promoted “opportunity zones” that confer tax advantages on developers who build in poorer, heavily black neighborhoods. Capital gains taxes can be deferred on money invested in opportunity zones, or avoided completely if the asset is held for at least five years.
President Trump was also able to achieve bipartisan agreement on, and passage of, the “First Step Act,” a federal prison and sentencing reform law that, among other things, reduces federal mandatory minimum sentences that tend to disproportionately affect blacks.
Even before the First Step act passed, Trump, to draw attention to harsh mandatory sentences and the need for reform, commuted the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a Memphis cocaine trafficker who had been sentenced to life without parole, and had served 21 years in prison (he later fully pardoned her).
President Trump has also insisted that black heroes be recognized. He upgraded Sgt. Maj. John L. Canley’s Navy Cross for heroism during the battle of Hue, Vietnam, to a Congressional Medal of Honor. He honored 100-year old Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee at his February, 2020, State of the Union address. The U.S. Navy recently announced that a Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier to be launched in 2028 will be named after Dorie Miller, the black mess attendant who, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, manned an anti-aircraft gun, fired it until he ran out of ammunition, and rescued several other sailors as his ship, the West Virginia, sank.
President Trump has supported historically black colleges and universities, signing a bipartisan bill that will permanently provide more than $250 million a year to the nation’s HBCUs, along with dozens of other institutions that serve large shares of minority students. “When I took office, I promised to fight for HBCUs, and my administration continues to deliver. A few months ago, funding for HBCUs was in jeopardy. But the White House and Congress came together and reached an historic agreement.”
Although President Trump has used his pardon power sparingly (historically so), many of his pardons and commutations have benefited blacks. Trump posthumously pardoned black boxing champion Jack Johnson who, in 1912, had been convicted in a racially motivated prosecution under the Mann Act. He also pardoned Jon Ponder who, after multiple convictions and a “miraculously short” 2005 sentence for bank robbery, founded a nonprofit organization called “Hope for Prisoners,” which is devoted to helping other former inmates re-enter daily life. "Jon's life is a beautiful testament to the power of redemption," Trump said.
In 2017, President Trump intervened on behalf of three black UCLA basketball players who had been detained for shoplifting in China, speaking directly to Xi Jinping. Trump also intervened on behalf of the black rapper A$AP Rocky (Rakim Mayers), who was arrested and tried in Sweden after his bodyguard beat up two Muslim men who had been harassing Rocky and his entourage. Trump tweeted: "Sweden has let our African American Community down in the United States. I watched the tapes of A$AP Rocky, and he was being followed and harassed by troublemakers. Treat Americans fairly! #FreeRocky." The U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, Ambassador Robert O’Brien, wrote to Swedish prosecutors urging them to release Rocky. "The government of the United States of America wants to resolve this case as soon as possible to avoid potentially negative consequences to the U.S.-Swedish bilateral relationship," wrote O'Brien.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is black and who worked closely with President Trump on several initiatives, said Trump had accomplished more for blacks than any president in the last “40 or 50 years.”
Trump’s efforts on behalf of blacks were rewarded by a 50% increase in his share of the black vote. In 2016, he got 8% of the black vote, but in 2020, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research, Trump got 12% of the black vote (broken down by gender into 18% of black men and 6% of the black women). Given the enormous peer pressure on blacks to vote Democratic (and hence to lie to exit pollers), I would guess that the real number was closer to 14%.
The MAGA movement is not and never was a racial or racist movement. That’s a fact. Elder Bryant discredits himself and the Seventh-day Adventist Church by arguing that it is. It was a needless and pointless false assertion.