Recently it was reported that Stephen Miller would be writing an upcoming speech for President Trump on race relations. While it's not known if the speech will actually happen, the Washington Post's Paul Waldman speculated about how such a speech might play out.
"What exactly would Trump have to say on the subject of race at this moment in our history? The president is often called upon to help the country make sense of crises. But could he do anything other than make things worse?" Waldman asks.
According to Waldman, Trump sees himself as a "generous ruler bestowing his largesse upon supplicant blacks," mostly because of the low unemployment rate he inherited from former President Barack Obama -- giving Trump an excuse to say that he “has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln.”
Ultimately, Waldman writes, a major theme of a Trump speech on race would be self-praise.
"Trump might discuss America’s history, but in doing so he’d tell a very particular story, one favored by conservatives," Waldman writes. "In that story, racism is largely a thing of the past — a problem that has been solved save for the lingering ill will of a few reprobates."
"What Trump certainly would not do is ask Americans to think less about individuals and more about structures — about the fact that racism resides within systems of discrimination and oppression, systems that white people continually benefit from and that don’t depend on any particular person with power having a Klan hood hidden away in their closet," he continues.
Read the full op-ed over at The Washington Post.
