Trump's History of Racism and the GOP Base

Laughably and lying as always Donald Trump recently told an audience of "black conservatives" that "I have spent my entire life working hand in hand with Black Americans to create jobs, build buildings, invest in our communities and expand opportunities and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, color."  Like everything flowing from Trump's mouth, the statement is a lie that is easily dispelled by looking at Trump's track record on racial matters as is done in a column in the Washington Post. And that review doesn't even include Trump's open embrace of white supremacists and neo-Nazis to whom he has worked to make mainstream, if you will. Add in the fact that Trump added three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who are hostile to affirmative action and the picture that emerges is the opposite of what Trump falsely claims.  Yet I believe that it is this very racism, even if denied by rank and file Republicans, what makes Trump so popular among the GOP's aging white base and rural whites who view blacks and especially Hispanics, as a threat to their privilege and historic dominance over the rest of American society.   Here are highlights from the Post that looks at the real facts:

During his presidency, Trump often claimed he had done more for Black Americans than any other president — or, he sometimes might concede, since Abraham Lincoln. Historians scorned his claim. Many cited Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was Johnson, the historians said, who after Lincoln was the president who made the most lasting impact on the lives of African Americans.

To make his case, Trump would cite achievements like a low Black unemployment rate, increased funding for historically Black colleges and universities (a congressional initiative, not an executive branch one) or passage of an opportunity zone program.  “Trump’s so-called accomplishments will not even be noticed by historians five years from now,” said H.W. Brands, historian at the University of Texas at Austin, in 2020.

Trump recited those claims yet again when he addressed a group of Black conservatives last week, even if the talking points have become woefully out of date.

Black unemployment under Biden has fallen even further. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate under Trump hit a low of 5.3 percent in August 2019, but had inched up to 6.1 percent before the pandemic struck in March 2020. Under Biden, the Black unemployment rate dipped to as low as 4.8 percent in April 2023; it was 5.3 percent in January.

Trump’s reference to his career as a real estate builder who supported Black people prompted us to take a walk down memory lane. Trump’s troubled history with Black people was covered when he first ran for president in 2016, but it’s time for a refresher course now that he is seeking the presidency again.

You could begin the story in the 1950s, when Trump’s father, Fred, became the subject of a protest song, “Old Man Trump,” written by one of his tenants, folk singer Woody Guthrie, who objected to the all-White environs of his apartment complex.

Trump’s first appearance in the New York Times was under the headline “Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City.” The front-page article detailed how the Justice Department had brought suit in federal court against Trump and his father, charging them with violating the 1968 Fair Housing Act (another LBJ bill that helped Black people) in the operation of 39 buildings through their Trump Management Corporation. . . . White people could easily get a rental but Black people were told nothing was available. A DOJ subpoena revealed that Black applications were marked with a “C,” for “colored.”

Elyse Goldweber, a Justice Department lawyer who brought the suit, recalled in 2019 that Trump remarked to her during a coffee break: “You know, you don’t want to live with them either.”

Two years later, in 1975, Trump settled the suit without admitting wrongdoing. Under the settlement, the company was required to furnish the New York Urban League with a list of all apartment vacancies, every week, for two years and advertise in the Amsterdam News, a Black newspaper.

Two weeks after five Black and Latino teenagers were implicated in a brutal attack on a White woman jogging in New York’s Central Park on April 19, 1989, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for “criminals of every age.” While the ad did not explicitly say the youths should be executed, the implication was clear.

All five initially confessed after long interrogations, but they later recanted their statements, saying they had been coerced by police. The suspects were convicted of violent offenses including assault, robbery, rape, sodomy and attempted murder — and they received sentences that ranged from five to 15 years in prison.

But in 2002, they were exonerated by DNA evidence. Trump then told the New York Daily News that their $41 million wrongful-conviction settlement was a “disgrace.” He added that “settling doesn’t mean innocence.”

Former Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino president John R. O’Donnell, in the 1991 book “Trumped,” alleged that Trump once said that “laziness is a trait in blacks.” He also claimed Trump said of his accountants: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”

There’s also this Trump observation, from 1989: “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market … If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.''

Why anyone, but especially blacks and other racial minorities, believes Trump is mind numbing.