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Jones: Is Trump's nod to black universities genuine or a deceitful ploy?

TUESDAY NIGHT, President Trump delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress, and the Left wrung its hands, fearful that the president's agenda would somehow be validated when he appeared in such hallowed space.

TUESDAY NIGHT, President Trump delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress, and the Left wrung its hands, fearful that the president's agenda would somehow be validated when he appeared in such hallowed space.

In reality, though, the national agenda set by Trump is not America's biggest problem. His focus on undocumented immigrants, his determination to target Muslims, his fixation on taking health care from millions of Americans, and even his petty squabbles with the media, are smokescreens. They cover the ugly truth that undercuts Trump's promise to bring jobs back to America.

The truth is simply this: The manufacturing jobs Trump touted on the campaign trail are not coming back. No matter how many trade deals are scuttled, no matter how many immigrants are deported, no matter how many walls are built, American manufacturing as we knew it is no more. Automation eliminated many of those jobs. Business owners such as Trump - whose companies manufacture products overseas - took care of the rest.

If Trump is to create jobs for the miners and factory workers who say they were left behind in the economic recovery, it will mean retraining them for high-tech jobs, steering them toward service-industry jobs, or mounting a massive infrastructure project funded by deficit spending.

However, with all his talk of a record boost to the military budget (funded, of course, by cuts to domestic programs), I suspect Trump will follow the tried and true path of the conservative presidents who came before him.

He'll start a war. War, after all, is good for business. It creates lots of jobs. Unfortunately, people also die. So building an economy through war is never the wisest choice.

Of course, if Trump truly wants to create jobs, he could take another tack that he's bandied about for the past few days. He could invest in education, and he could do it in the black community.

The Trump administration has indicated that it wants to significantly invest in historically black colleges and universities. A large commitment of federal dollars would be nice, but the cynic in me wonders whether such an investment would serve a dual purpose.

Investing in HBCUs, which were created because racism kept black kids out of all-white colleges and universities, does nothing to address the original problem. It also does nothing to help get more black kids into primarily white institutions. And maybe that's the point.

Maybe the Trump administration, which was swept into office on a wave of racial animus, will happily fund HBCUs if it means perpetuating a separate school system that rose out of the ashes of slavery and the Civil War. Maybe the Trump administration truly believes what new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said - that HBCUs are an excellent example of school choice. Or maybe they're just too naïve to know that HBCUs were the black community's reaction to the kind of bigotry and division Trump perpetuated on the campaign trail.

But even if his underlying motivation is to appear to support black education while in reality perpetuating black separation, the truth is this: HBCUs have graduated some of our finest scholars.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. graduated from Morehouse College. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison and Empire star Taraji P. Henson attended Howard University. Oprah Winfrey attended Tennessee State University.

The list goes on and on.

If Trump, who ran on racism, proves wise enough to invest in black educational opportunities, what are the Democrats willing to do?

I've heard Democrats talk about creating diversity in the building-trades unions that have backed the party for years. Yet I haven't seen anything change. Skilled-trade unions still largely exclude black people, and Democrats still get them government-funded work using our tax dollars.

I've heard Democrats talk about fairly funding schools for years. Yet my home state, Pennsylvania, boasts a Democratic governor and the country's largest spending disparity between rich and poor school districts.

I've heard Democrats talk about affordable housing for years. Yet I've watched as my city, Philadelphia, has clung to tax abatements that defund our schools in order to give property-tax breaks to wealthy people who push people of color out of their neighborhoods.

Perhaps it's time for the Left to stop wringing its hands over Trump's bluster. Perhaps it's time for liberals to stop talking and start doing. Perhaps it's time for Democrats to work for the equality they promised.

If not, Donald Trump might just swoop in and beat them to the punch.

Solomon Jones is the author of 10 books. Listen to him mornings from 7 to 10 on WURD (900-AM).

sj@solomonjones.com

@solomonjones1