Book Review/Heather Seggel

The High Stakes of Today

The cognitive dissonance we’ve become accustomed to under a Trump presidency can leave one feeling as though their inner ear is full of Jell-O. It’s important to reset ourselves almost daily to avoid being capsized or succumbing to vertigo. To refute the BS and hold the line against the erosion of our liberties means repeating the mantra: This is not normal, we will respond, we must resist. What the Hell Do You Have to Lose? Trump’s War on Civil Rights (Public Affairs Books) is a focused reminder of what’s at stake and how much effort and energy went into securing these gains.

Author Juan Williams brings a keen, wide lens to this project. A host on the Fox News network show The Five, he’s also the author of Eyes on the Prize, the immersive history of the civil rights movement. He divides this book into six specific topics: Voting rights, education, public accommodations, black voices, employment, and housing. Brief mention is given to the rhetoric and actions of the Trump administration and how they seek to reverse progress, but the majority of each section is taken up with a profile of someone central to the major progress made in gaining a right or being heard on an issue. It has the duel effect of clarifying the danger Trump poses while minimizing his presence, a slight that would surely infuriate him if he read the book.

The section on Black Voices notes that virtually every Republican president has had at least a few trusted black advisers to help enlarge their understanding. Trump prefers the company of guys like Seb Gorka and Stephen Miller, and will find the one black person at a rally to single out as “my African-American.” He has brought African-Americans to the White House and Trump Tower for meetings, but they were largely entertainers, and nobody left those meetings with anything of substance to say about policy matters. Conversely, in the early 1960s, when it seemed to many as though civil rights were finally advancing in leaps and bounds, author James Baldwin wrote to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and excoriated him for doing far too little to promote full equality. Kennedy wasn’t happy about this, but he invited Baldwin to his home and asked to hear more. President Obama was willing to hear from his detractors and have his positions challenged, but it’s impossible to imagine such a thing happening now.

The book’s title was familiar to me, but I misremembered it as being taken from a campaign speech Trump made to a Black crowd when in reality no such event took place. It was at a stop in Dimondale, Mich., in 2016 that he spoke to some hypothetical African-Americans not in attendance, saying, “… Look, you’re living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. 58% of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?” His astonishing ignorance of history allows him to ignore the hard-fought progress (an understatement; many people lost their lives to secure the right to vote alone) he’s undermining at every turn.

Appointing retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development when he has no experience and seems content to strip the program of funding is a giant gift to those who favor housing segregation. Long thought to be a matter of cultural preference, where and among whom we live has almost always been a matter of political design. That this dismantling is being overseen by an African-American man is a bitter irony to swallow. (The Washington Post recently reported that Carson hired and promoted people who worked on his and Trump’s respective presidential campaigns, and who have no experience in housing or urban development, to some of the highest-paid positions in the department.)

As recently as this year, Randolph County, Ga., proposed closing most of its polling places, a suggestion that could only happen in the wake of the Supreme Court removing critical protections from the Voting Rights Act. (The suggestion was ultimately rejected.) Work, housing, education, being heard and listened to, having a say at the voting booth; these rights have never been more important or more imperiled. Donald Trump asked the question with a smirk, but Williams answers by showing us that what’s at stake is, quite simply, our democracy itself.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2018

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