Tavis Smiley: "Something tells me that if Donald Trump is indeed the Republican nominee..."

"... it might be a miscalculation for Democrats to assume that black voters are a lock for their nominee...."

[T]he number of everyday black voters who we assume will dismiss Trump because of his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attacks might well be inflated. While I certainly have had my say about Trump being a “religious and racial arsonist” (and he responded quickly on Twitter), not everyone in black America agrees with me. I have been taken by myriad conversations I’ve had with black folk who don’t find those comments by Trump necessarily or automatically disqualifying.... [T[here have been plenty of... occasions where the interests of black and brown voters didn’t exactly align...

[And] it’s telling how quiet the black elite have been, those who travel in social circles with Trump.... [T]he relative silence of the black establishment class has been chilling. Recently, I read a national newspaper feature about Trump and his relationships with notable high-profile black Americans. Interestingly, nobody really wanted to go on record criticizing The Donald.

"Tragically, it seems the president feels boxed in by his blackness."

"It has, at times, been painful to watch this particular president’s calibrated, cautious and sometimes callous treatment of his most loyal constituency... African-Americans will have lost ground in the Obama era."

Email from Tavis Smiley to NYT reporter Jodi Kantor, quoted in "For President, a Complex Calculus of Race and Politics."