Coleman Jr. On Trump: It’s a Mistake to Allow People Who Are Not in Our Community to Become the Arbiters of What Is or Not Black

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
CAPEHART: “And we are looking at live pictures of former President Trump speaking at a rally, in Atlanta. Joining me now, MSNBC legal analyst, foreman brooklyn prosecutor, Charles Coleman Jr., host of win the charles coleman podcast.” thank you for coming back on “the Saturday show.” I wanted to talk about the offending comment at the nabj.”

Trump: “I’ve known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much, and, she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was black until number of years ago when she happened to turn black and”

UNKNOWN: “She has always defined as a black woman. She has gone to a historically black college.”

Trump: “She was Indian all the way, then all of a sudden she made a turn in, she became a black person.”

CAPEHART: “Charles, the floor is yours.”

COLEMAN: “So, Jonathan, I think the first thing we have to understand is it’s a mistake for any of us to allow people who are not in our community to allow white people to allow others to begin to become the arbiters of what is and what isn’t black. It is important to understand the black experience is incredibly nuanced and incredibly vast, so it does not necessarily fall in any particular stereotype or caption that people might want it to. Donald Trump does not have the space or the ability or the power to try and be the arbiter of blackness anymore than anyone else outside our community can say you do or do not belong to. I think the first mistake some of us have made is allowing that to take root as a conversation. If there’s anything that I would say around the vice president for potential response is that while we have had an opportunity to hear her talk about race I think this may be the point where she may need to lean into the notion of how racism is an attack being used against her. We’ve heard critics talk about her as vice president, whether America was a racist country. Now given everything she is facing might be the ideal opportunity to revisit that comment and reframe it in terms of how she wants to talk about race and its impact on the election.”