Son of Segregated South Shows Enduring Power of Black Voter

Each of his impeachment resolutions revolved around Trump’s verbiage, but the congressman insists his true aim was the thin line between the president’s Twitter posts and executive orders.

“The tweets are policies. So, when he talks about trans in the military, that tweet, well, that’s policy,” Green said. “That’s bigotry and policy.”

Two Tiers and 'a Very Clear Understanding'

Often pointing to his undertaking of criminal-justice reform — achievements magnified by the involvement of celebrities like Kanye and Kim Kardashian West — Trump predicts that the black vote for him this November will be “historic.”

As the political science department chair at the historically black Howard University sees it, however, voters of color are shrewd enough to stack such rhetoric against their experience with what has long been a two-tiered system of justice hinging on race, education and socioeconomic status.

“Black people have a very clear understanding of this president, and the acquittal vote didn’t matter so much,” professor Ravi Perry said in an interview.

Whether it was former leader of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke’s endorsement in 2016 or housing discrimination claims filed against Trump in the 1970s, Perry said black voters know that fair representation is often a catch-22.

“They know progress is happening, but they also know so much more is happening,” Perry said. “It’s the paradox of having to choose to participate in a system that they know was not meant to include them.”

Green, who was elected to Congress after 26 years as a Harris County justice of the peace, recalled a case he presided over involving a white defendant who was worried he would not receive a fair trial in a court where all the jurors in the case were black, as was Green and the prosecution.

Green said he instructed the bailiff to find “additional persons for that panel of different hues, different ethnicities.”

“Then we put all the names in a hat and then shuffled and reshuffled the jury so that he would have people in the jury pool who looked like him,” Green said.

Green pointed out that the law did not always require such maneuvering. It was not until the Supreme Court ruled in the 1986 case Batson v. Kentucky that a “prosecutor’s use of a peremptory challenge in a criminal case — the dismissal of jurors without reason — cannot be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race.”

At Trump’s Senate trial, where the Republican majority barred impeachment managers from submitting new evidence or testimony from key witnesses, the president won acquittal by a majority of his peers. According to a 2020 profile from Congressional Research Service, the 116^th Congress has a record number of black members at 10.4%. The Senate meanwhile is 93% white.

Green explained that the inequities that Trump’s acquittal laid bare could underline greater questions around the concept of justice for all for voters.

“People will remind you: you’re not going to be fair to me, so why should I be concerned about who or what you’re looking for in the community? … Why would I help you with an investigation? You’re not going to be fair to a person — I mean that’s the mentality,” Green said.

In 2016, Trump courted black voters by asking: “What the hell do you have to lose?”

Exit polls from that election put black support for Trump at 8%. According to Gallup, those numbers have held steady.

Though the political action committee BlackPAC also reported disapproval of Trump in a poll last week, it found that the black community is also dissatisfied with the Democratic Party.

What Remains?

Green, who was re-elected Tuesday, said he “never came to Congress to impeach a president.”

Instead, his focus is on passing anti-discrimination legislation like the Housing Fairness Act of 2019, which cleared a key hurdle last week.

He said resetting the congressional bar of justice and applying it to belligerent rhetoric unfitting of presidential office might be cause to impeach a second time.

Then, there are still questions from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election that Green says remain "unaddressed."

In Green’s view, the Justice Department made its decision long before the Mueller probe that if impeachable acts were found, charges would never be brought due to guidelines preventing a sitting president’s indictment.

Those are the "protocols," Green said.

But there are many days left until November and lawmakers and voters, especially those voters who represent the very base that drives the opposition to Trump's second term, have much to consider.

“I think as we review these things, if the president has committed an impeachable act, then we have to impeach him — he easily could be the first president impeached twice,” Green said. “But after this election, I think people may refocus on some of these things that are pretty important, that are unfinished business.”

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Email *

Submit