In Trump’s Feud With John Lewis, Blacks Perceive a Callous Rival - The New York Times

"Days before his inauguration, President-elect Donald J. Trump is engaged in a high-profile feud with some of the country’s most prominent African-American leaders, setting off anger in a constituency already wary of him after a contentious presidential campaign.



Mr. Trump’s criticism of Representative John Lewis of Georgia, a widely admired leader of the civil rights movement, has prompted a number of Democratic lawmakers to say they will not attend his inauguration on Friday.



Blacks around the country have reacted to Mr. Trump’s remarks with fury, and the subject has dominated social media and discussions among black activists. Mr. Trump said on Saturday on Twitter that Mr. Lewis, who asserted last week that Mr. Trump was not a “legitimate president,” should focus on his district and “the burning and crime infested inner-cities.”



The angry reaction is driven not only by Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts but by what many blacks say they reveal about the president-elect’s lack of understanding of the reverence with which the civil rights movement and its leaders are viewed by African-Americans.



“I don’t think we have ever had a president so publicly condescending to what black politics means,” said Mark Anthony Neal, an African and African-American studies professor at Duke University.



Mr. Neal added that while other presidents, like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, may have imposed policies that hurt black communities, they were more sensitive to issues of race. Mr. Trump, through Twitter, is giving the world access in real time to his unvarnished thoughts, which Mr. Neal called “raw, unsophisticated, ignorant and uninformed.”



“He doesn’t care that people think the civil rights movement was important,” Mr. Neal said. “He doesn’t feel the need to perform some sort of belief that it is important.”



Mr. Trump’s talk is especially striking as it comes during the transition period, when, typically, incoming presidents are focused on trying to bring the country together.



Mr. Trump has also not made any public announcement of plans to commemorate Martin Luther King’s Birthday, a tradition observed by most Republican and Democratic politicians. A plan for him to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Monday has been scrapped."





In Trump’s Feud With John Lewis, Blacks Perceive a Callous Rival - The New York Times