Civil Rights Hero Clarence Henderson: The future is bright for Black North Carolinians, Just Not With ‘Do Nothing Democrats’

(Clarence Henderson is a civil rights activist and recipient of the 40th Anniversary Sit-In Participant Award. He also serves as a member of the Black Voices for Trump coalition advisory board. He writes below on a bright future, lest North Carolinians and Americans let Democrats dim it.)

Since President Trump took office, North Carolina has prospered. His pro-growth economic agenda and focus on creating opportunities for African Americans has led to a bright future for the Tar Heel State.

In 2018, North Carolina was voted the best state in which to do business for the second year in a row. Business investment continues to pour into the state, leading to rapid job creation and robust wage growth — between July 2018 and July 2019 alone, North Carolina created more than 75,000 new jobs thanks to President Trump.

Wage growth has also increased evenly across different pay grades, instead of being concentrated among white collar professionals as it has in the past. President Trump’s economy is creating the high-paying blue collar jobs that are essential to upward mobility, and empowering the formerly-forgotten men and women who had been neglected by do-nothing Democrats. African Americans, in particular, are making unprecedented gains in the Trump economy.

Black unemployment is at an all-time low, and the unemployment gap between white and black Americans is smaller than it has ever been. Since President Trump took office, total African American employment has increased by more than one million new jobs. President Trump is proving Frederick Douglass correct: we don’t need the Democrats or their policies to take care of us, we just need to be left alone and given the opportunity to pursue our own interests.

The President has also taken innovative steps to solve the problem of underinvestment and economic stagnation in low-income communities. The “Opportunity Zones” initiative created by the President’s tax cut law will drive a projected $100 billion worth of new investment to economically distressed neighborhoods. There are 252 officially-designated Opportunity Zones in North Carolina alone, including in many predominantly-black communities.

These investments will create new manufacturing, technology, and retail establishments within those communities, providing African Americans living in Opportunity Zones with real opportunities to build generational wealth, instead of perpetuating a state of dependence.

Do-nothing Democrats want to erase these gains and advance a big-government socialist agenda. They’re not interested in treating blacks as independent Americans capable of standing on our own two feet. That’s the exact opposite of what I and so many others fought for as part of the Civil Rights movement. We want equality under the law and the chance to provide for our families, not the insulting paternalism of disingenuous liberals.

African Americans are prospering thanks to President Trump’s economic policies. That may not be a big deal to elitist Democrats, who would gladly sacrifice our well-being in pursuit of their own political ambitions, but it means a lot to black people!

That’s why I am excited to join Black Voices for Trump to help spread that message of “Promises Made, Promises Kept” throughout the African American community. The progress we’ve made under President Trump has been incredible, and there’s a lot more prosperity yet to come over the next five years. 

Clarence Henderson is a civil rights activist and recipient of the 40th Anniversary Sit-In Participant Award. He also serves as a member of the Black Voices for Trump coalition advisory board.