Yesterday, I was asked by a friend: "What are President Trump's chances in getting re-elected?  Do you think he could overcome the racial stigma from the black community?"

Many have been convinced that African-Americans, holding a demographic and political leverage — of the estimated 330 million Americans, 12.7% of them are of African origin — will make the difference in Donald Trump's defeat by Joe Biden in November.  Trump's classification  as a racist — if any recent U.S. president was a racist, it was Barack Hussein Obama, who had been formed by his personal friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright; the latter's preaching frequently slandered whites, Jews,  and America itself — has been exploited by the left as a result of the George Floyd murder and the police handling of the riots.  Even though President Trump ordered the Justice Department and FBI to investigate within two days of Floyd's death, the impression communicated by the mainstream media is that the black community, along with sympathetic white Americans and others classified as "minorities," is fed up with the president.

The truth of the matter is that according to the latest Rasmussen tracking poll, 41% of black Americans more or less approve of the president's overall all job performance; it was 40% in the fall of 2018.  As reported by the Washington Examiner, according to a Monmouth University poll:

• 72% of African-Americans are satisfied with their local police departments;
• 21% of African-Americans are very satisfied with the local police;
• Only 17% of the public says that the actions of protesters, including the burning of a police precinct, sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, are fully justified;
• 37% say they are partially justified.

It must be acknowledged, as per a June 9 article in the Wall Street Journal, that African-Americans were finally finding some financial stability.  Unemployment had reached record lows, and their wages had begun rising modestly.  Just like for Hispanics, employment had been the highest in more than half a decade.

Yet the left-wing crusade is to crush President Trump in painting him as a protagonist of racial discrimination.  This cannot be farther from the truth, as explained by those who know him best, such as former president of Manhattan Borough Andrew J. Stein.

In a piece he wrote in the Hill in 2019, "Donald Trump's No Racist, as Past Acts and Presidential Record Prove" (2019), Stein stated:

Donald Trump is no racist[.] ... When I was Manhattan Borough president and president of the New York City Council, I asked him numerous times to help black or Hispanic groups, and he always came through, many times without publicity.  When a hurricane ravished [sic] Puerto Rico in the mid 1980s, I asked many big companies to give various forms of assistance — but the problem was how to get all of this aid down to Puerto Rico.  I called Donald Trump, and he provided us with a 727 jet to take all of the donated material down to the island, and he didn't ask for any publicity for that generous act.

Stein added:

One day I met an African American woman on the street with her two adorable young kids.  She was homeless, and I gave her some money — and then asked Donald to get her into some low-income housing in Queens.  He came through, and did so without any fanfare.

He also pointed out that the president had pushed through criminal justice reform and has created empowerment zones that help economically distressed communities — and their poorer residents — through tax incentives and grants.  In short, he has done more for minorities in three years than President Obama did in eight, and he deserves credit instead of rebuke.

The "minority community" can in fact be the deciding factor in November, which is why the left is trying to convince minorities that they would be better off casting their ballots for the Democrats.  Not just liberals, but so-called conservatives have jumped on the anti-Trump bandwagon.  Senator Mitt Romney has said he will not support Trump's re-election bid; former secretary of state Colin Powell stated that he will vote for Joe Biden.  Some conservative online journals have gone so far as to already declare Biden the winner.  Well, not so fast!

As House representative Vernon Jones (D-Ga.) said: "Why has my party become so anti-Trump [that] they've become pro-nothing?  Why are they so actively rooting for America's failure?  Our unemployment rate is on the decline.  This is something to celebrate, not diminish.  Thank you @realDonaldTrump," wrote Vernon Jones, referring to President Trump's Twitter handle. 

In April, the black American lawmaker tweeted: "I'm a Georgia state representative and lifelong Democrat.  But in this election, I'll be casting my vote for @realDonaldTrump.  I didn't leave the Democratic Party.  The Party left me."  And he is not the only one — there are numerous other former black Democrats who will be casting their ballots for Trump.

Perhaps Jones and so many other Americans of African descent were not shocked when Joe Biden questioned their "blackness" if they did not support him when he said last month: "If you don't vote for me, you ain't black!"  As an American of Italian and Latin descent, I find it repulsive that race is made an issue.  Our being good Americans does not depend on the color of our skin or our ethnic origins, but on the upholding and promotion of the freedoms our Founding Fathers provided.  And this is what is at stake.

President Ronald Reagan once said:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

In the end, those who vote for Trump will not necessarily vote for him so as to not give their vote to Biden.  They will hopefully do so based on what he has done for the United States: the lowest unemployment rate (before the COVID-19 pandemic), being the first Western leader to halt flights from China to keep the coronavirus from entering the U.S., fighting against abortion, filling the federal courts with well-balanced conservative justices, taking on rogue regimes like Iran, not taking America to war as his predecessors have done, etc. 

Trump is not perfect because no one but God is perfect.  Nevertheless, notwithstanding any misgivings, as we all have as human beings, his reelection becomes more vital than his election victory in 2016.