Nick Cannon, Amber Rose, and Trump: Why Loving Black Culture Has Never Meant Loving Black People — A Policy Analysis

Education Is Elevation is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Nick Cannon sat in that car and pointed to individual pardons as evidence that Trump is “good for Black people.” He pardoned one woman and made her a “pardon czar.” And that’s the whole case? That spoke volumes about his politics, because it showed that if Trump can save individual Black folks—even at the expense of harming the collective—he’s good with you. If your pocket’s good and your family’s good, never mind all the Black families being terrorized, losing their jobs, losing access to schools.But see, the numbers tell a different story. Black women lost over 300,000 jobs between February and July of 2025. Three hundred thousand. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Black women’s unemployment rate hit 7.3% by the end of 2025—the highest in four years. That’s equivalent to the unemployment rate white women experienced during the bleakest moments of the Great Recession. Let me say that again for the people in the back: the labor market that Black women are living in right now is what white women would consider the worst economic conditions they’ve ever experienced.And it wasn’t accidental. Black women were disproportionately concentrated in federal jobs—healthcare, education, housing, veterans affairs—the exact sectors this administration gutted. When DOGE came through slashing and Trump started executing those executive orders to dismantle DEI, Black women were the first ones pushed out the door. White women gained 142,000 jobs during the same period. White men gained 365,000. Black women lost 300,000. And you want to sit in a car and tell me he’s “cleaning house”?Yeah, he’s cleaning house. He’s cleaning us out of it.The Democratic Plantation Talking Point Is Tired. And You Know It.Black Free Thinkers like Nick Cannon say, “People don’t know that the Democrats are the party of the KKK.” You feel real smart saying that, don’t you? Here’s what I need you to understand: you can criticize the Democratic plantation without sensationalizing the Republican one. Critiquing liberalism is valid. Democratic policies deserve scrutiny. But you do not have to glaze or push Republican propaganda to do that. And the moment you start reciting Dixiecrat history like you just discovered a cheat code, you tell on yourself.Because here’s my question: if you go to a rally today—right now, in 2026—where are you most likely to see a Klan flag? The Democratic rally or the Republican one? You already know the answer. So why are we playing this game?Trump was endorsed by the KKK in 2016. In 2020. In 2024. What does that say about his politics and how he deploys them? He called the Confederate flag a “proud symbol of the U.S. South.” As somebody who is also proud of being a Southerner, I ain’t never had a Confederate flag around me. Not once. Not ever.And my question to you, Nick Cannon: how in the hell did you go from being a pan-Africanist to aligning yourself with Confederate-flag-toting, white-supremacist-sympathizing politicians? How did Amber Rose go from building political capital with Black women through the SlutWalk—talking about reproductive justice, reproductive freedom—to being a reformed Republican whose logic sounds like that of a white patriarch? You were one of the ones pushing for bodily autonomy. Now you’re supporting a man who is systematically stripping away every mechanism Black women have to say they have rights over their own bodies. And you ain’t said nothing about the Epstein files. Not a word. In that whole car ride. You telling on yourself.The DEI Receipts Don’t LieThey love saying DEI stands for “Didn’t Earn It.” That everybody in these positions is a product of diversity handouts. But the numbers show that white women were the ones who benefited the most from DEI. That’s documented. That’s researched. That’s not debatable. So the real question becomes: who lost the most when Trump dismantled DEI?Black women.Federal DEI funding cuts threatened the work of the few remaining Black farmers in East Texas. My state. Where I’m from. Black farmers who were already fighting for survival now watching their resources evaporate in the name of white Christian nationalism. And you’re aligning yourself with the people doing this?Nick, I know you love the women from the Caribbean islands. The Dominicans, the Cubans, all of that. How do you feel about those communities right now being terrorized by mass deportation policies? How do you reconcile that with “he’s so good for Black people”?You can’t. Because you’re not thinking about it. You’re thinking deeply about shallow s**t.The “Big, Beautiful Bill” and What It Actually DoesTrump was bragging about that “big, beautiful bill.” He was really bragging about it too. But let’s read it together, shall we? That bill left Black communities more vulnerable to predatory lending. His job policies may deepen workplace inequality. His housing policies failed to narrow the racial homeownership gap. He’s criminalizing Black history.Let me pause there. He is criminalizing Black history. The histories I teach, the frameworks I document, the cultural knowledge I preserve—this administration is actively working to erase and distort all of it. And you want to talk about how he was at Russell Simmons’ parties in the 90s?Speaking of which—you brought up Russell Simmons like it was a flex. My brother, I don’t know if you noticed, but Russell Simmons wasn’t exactly cleared in the Epstein files. That was not the gotcha you thought it was. What it showed is that a lot of the creepy predators stick together regardless of race. They want the rhythm, but they damn sure don’t want the blues.The Great Malcolm X Already Told UsMalcolm X said white folks don’t pick the entertainers, the trumpet players, the comedians to be the leaders in their community. And what that car ride showed is that all of those entertainers Trump was rubbing elbows with back in the 90s—they probably had the same politics he did. And I imagine they are all closet Trump supporters. I imagine. Because when you already align yourself with these folks on an ideological level—with their values, with their morals—you trying to sensationalize your skin color don’t mean s**t. You feel me?It was a whole bunch of enslaved folks who also aligned themselves with the people that ran the plantation from an ideological and values level. “They make me feel at home. They don’t even trip. They like family.” It’s game. Yeah, we see you.The comfort you feel in those spaces isn’t because they’re not looking at you like you’re Black. It’s because they need you to not look at yourself like you’re Black. That’s the trade. That’s the transaction. You get access, proximity, a seat at the table—and in exchange, you cosign the violence being done to your own people. You become the illustration. The prop. The proof they point to when someone calls them racist: “But look, Nick Cannon f***s with us.”And when the music stops? When the political winds shift? When they don’t need your endorsement anymore? You don’t inherit the plantation. You never did.Education Is Elevation is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Dismantling Public Education Is the EndgameSince he’s been in office, this man has been working to dismantle public education. Multiple reports documented four administration actions to watch. And do you know how disproportionately Black people are impacted when this happens? Public schools are the backbone of Black communities. They are where our children learn. They are where our teachers work. They are where our histories—however incomplete—are at least partially preserved. And he is tearing it apart.This is personal to me. As an educator, this is not abstract policy. This is the ground I stand on. And every time somebody like Nick Cannon goes on a platform with millions of viewers and says “I f**k with Trump” without a single piece of policy analysis to back it up, it makes the work of educators harder. It gives cover to the people dismantling the very institutions that keep us informed, employed, and connected to our own histories.The Logic of the Car Ride Is the Logic of the PlantationLet me bring this home.The entire car ride was nothing but propaganda. Y’all been around these folks, probably drinking champagne and bumping tea crumpets or whatever the hell, and now you think proximity to power is the same as power itself. It’s not. It never was.When you cherry-pick examples—a pardon here, a party appearance there—and use them to justify a presidency that has measurably and statistically devastated Black communities, you are not being a free thinker. You are not being independent. You are being a tool. Some would even argue a fool and tools get used up.The data is clear. The policies are public. The harm is measurable. And no amount of car rides, no amount of “he was on Fresh Prince,” no amount of “he had Black girlfriends” changes what the receipts say.As somebody who did competitive policy debate, who has built a career on research over me-searching, who believes that education is elevation—I need you to understand that this is not about feelings. This is about what we can prove. And what we can prove is that this man’s policies have devastated Black women in the workforce, gutted Black farmers’ funding, weaponized the dismantling of DEI against the very people it was supposed to protect, criminalized Black history, and accelerated the privatization of public institutions that serve as lifelines for Black communities.Facts over feelings. Receipts over rhetoric. And if you can’t provide them, get out. Somebody got the lights?5 Key Takeaways1. Loving Black culture and harming Black people are not contradictory—they are the architecture of American racism. Trump attending Black parties, dating Black women, and appearing on Black TV shows in the 90s does not inoculate him from the charge of racist governance. Racism has always functioned by commodifying Blackness while subordinating Black people. The rhythm and the blues are not the same thing.2. Black women are bearing the measurable, statistical brunt of Trump’s policies. Over 300,000 Black women lost their jobs in the first half of 2025. Their unemployment rate reached 7.3%—the highest in four years and equivalent to what white women experienced during the worst of the Great Recession. The dismantling of DEI, federal workforce cuts, and DOGE restructuring have disproportionately targeted Black women while white men gained 365,000 jobs in the same period.3. The “Democrats started the KKK” talking point is historically incomplete and politically dishonest. Yes, Reconstruction-era Democrats had ties to the Klan. But the Southern Strategy, the Dixiecrat exodus, and the party realignment of the 1960s are documented history. The question is not who started the Klan in 1865—it’s who the Klan endorses in 2024. That answer has never been ambiguous.4. Individual beneficiaries do not erase collective harm. Pointing to one pardon or one appointment as evidence that a president is “good for Black people” while ignoring mass job losses, gutted education funding, predatory lending policies, and the criminalization of Black history is the logic of someone whose pocket is prioritized over their people.5. Celebrity endorsements of political figures without policy analysis are propaganda. Nick Cannon and Amber Rose have platforms with millions of viewers. When they deploy those platforms to cosign a political agenda without a single policy receipt, they function as instruments of the very machine that is harming Black communities. Malcolm X warned us about entertainers being positioned as leaders. We should have listened harder.A Direct Ask: Become a Paid SubscriberI’m fighting to fill a critical void left by the retreat of public education media. I document and teach the histories, legal frameworks, and cultural knowledge that are being systematically erased or distorted. With no corporate backing or wealthy sponsors, this work depends entirely on readers like you. As a Black educator and researcher my work depends entirely on a community of readers, not corporate sponsors. If everyone reading this became a paid subscriber, we could build a full-time digital sanctuary: a new, independent source of PBS-depth reporting and curriculum, centered on Black expertise. But right now, less than 1% of my followers are paid subscribers.If this article gave you something—if it gave you language, data, framework, fire—I’m asking you directly: become a paid subscriber today. This is how we build independent Black media that doesn’t answer to advertisers, algorithms, or billionaires. This is how we keep the lights on.Education Is Elevation is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Related ReadingsWilson, Valerie. “Black Women Suffered Large Employment Losses in 2025—Particularly Among College Graduates and Public-Sector Workers.” Economic Policy Institute, 2026.Taylor-McGhee, Belle. “Trump-Era Federal Layoffs Hit Black Women Hardest.” Ms. Magazine, February 5, 2026.Walker, Ezekiel J. and Nehemiah Frank. “Black Women Face Record Job Layoffs Under Trump.” The Black Wall Street Times, September 8, 2025.Covert, Bryce. “To Be Black, Female, and Unemployed.” The American Prospect, December 2025.Sowers, Chabeli and Claire Lampen. “Black Women’s Unemployment Has Skyrocketed. Here’s What Happened.” The 19th, January 27, 2026.X, Malcolm. “Message to the Grassroots.” Speech, Detroit, MI, November 10, 1963.Du Bois, W.E.B. “I Won’t Vote.” The Nation, October 20, 1956.Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2010.Maxwell, Angie and Todd Shields. The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.Harris-Perry, Melissa V. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000.Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010’Thanks for reading Education Is Elevation! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe