John James Feels the Sting of Racism, but Is Silent on Trump

Mr. James’s response is simply that he is an American. But other answers haven’t come so easily. He said his impulse after seeing the Floyd tape was to call his father and head to a Black Lives Matter protest. But then he decided against protesting, reasoning he could do more to help through his campaign. Recently, when he and his wife tried to explain the protests to their 5-year-old son, the boy didn’t understand. “I thought Martin Luther King fixed that,” Mr. James recalled his son as saying.

Many Black Americans say there has never been a time when the answers are so clear and the lines so bright. And Mr. Trump’s offenses against them are legion. He has defended white supremacists and the Confederate flag; spread racist content on social media; rolled back efforts to reform police departments with a history of discrimination; attacked Black athletes as dumb and unpatriotic; and initially refused to disavow an endorsement from David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

“At some point, John is going to have to separate himself and demonstrate a stronger voice, an independent voice,” said Jimmy Greene, a businessman in Saginaw who has helped raise money to support Mr. James.

Mr. Greene pointed to a commercial playing on heavy rotation in Michigan in which Mr. James, who says in the ad that he will be a “unifier,” condemns the killing of Mr. Floyd as a “cowardly act of evil.” Then, in the next breath, Mr. James calls out the rioting and looting that took place during some of the protests, which were largely peaceful, as “criminal” — a talking point that Republicans have poll-tested and believe gives their candidates a more palatable way to express support for the demonstrations while also nodding to disapproving white conservatives.

Mr. Greene said it was gratuitous to draw attention to isolated instances of violence.

“That was terrible,” he said, adding that there were certain things like Mr. Floyd’s killing and Mr. Trump’s racism that couldn’t be papered over with ambiguity. “Call it what it is,” he said. “Put periods at the end of things. Don’t use semicolons and commas and parentheses and ‘buts.’”

Asked to describe Mr. James’s predicament, Republicans have used phrases like “in a bind,” “walking a tightrope” or “against a wall.”