In 1989, Trump stirred up racial controversy when he published a full-page ad in the New York Times, calling for the death penalty for five innocent teenagers, all Black or Hispanic, who had been accused of raping and beating a jogger in Central Park. According to Eugene Puryear of Justice First, Trump was using racist discourse about Black thugs, criminals and Black animals roaming the park to racialize the incident. The five youths were convicted, but later acquitted after a sixth man confessed to the crime. Even after the acquittal, Trump was unrepentant. A recent message on Twitter asked: “What were they doing in the park, playing checkers?”
In the mid ‘90s admitting his racist tendencies, Trump told John O’Donnell, president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, that he hates “Black guys counting my money!”
He added that “the only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” To Trump, “laziness is a trait in Blacks.” Several years later, Trump didn’t bother to deny it: He admitted, “The stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”
Donald Trump was the person who brought Barack Obama’s birthplace into question. Ironically, it wasn’t because he really thought Obama was not eligible to be president of the United States, it was done to appeal to the GOP voter base and set the stage for a 2016 presidential bid. During an interview on the Today Show he was asked if he had people in Hawaii researching Obama’s birth records.
He responded: “Absolutely and they cannot believe what they are finding. I’m serious.” The truth is Trump never requested a copy of Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii or any other country. As late as May 4, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Trump tried to shift the blame for the birther movement to Hillary Clinton. Trump: “You know who started the birther movement? You know who started it? Do you know who questioned his birth certificate, one of the first? Hillary Clinton. She’s the one that started it. She brought it up years before it was brought up by me.” That was a blatant bold faced lie. Trump’s rhetoric belies his underlying motives.
Trump doubled down on his assessment of Mexicans as drug dealers, rapist and murderers. He says he is going to build a wall to keep Mexicans out of America and has no such plans for a wall barring Canadians and Europeans.
Trump, along with his water boy Rudy Giuliani, has called the founders of Black Lives Matter criminals and has inspired a move to have them labeled as terrorists. Trump does not believe in the 1st Amendment as it pertains to “Black Lives Matter.”
Trump is the champion of the 2nd Amendment as it relates to White persons only. He supports police who shoot and kill Black men who have legal permits to carry firearms.
In Trump’s appeal to for votes, he presents a positive plan for organizations such as Veterans and non-college, blue-collar Whites. To all other groups he promises negatives.
For Mexicans, he promises deportation, decimation of families, and a wall to keep them separated from America and their American families.
For “Muslims” (Middle Easterners) he promises a ban on travel and extreme vetting.
For young Black men, he, along with his puppet Giuliani, promises them “Law and Order,” a dog whistle to this voter base (non-college, blue collar White males) and a police controlled neighborhood with orders to shoot to kill in any and all confrontations. In Trump’s opinion, America will not be safe until it is rid of its dangerous young Black males.
In the eyes of the Trumps of the world, every neighborhood that is predominately non-White is an area riddled with crime drugs and dangerous killers. He with his proposed Attorney General, Rudy Giuliani, will invade these neighborhoods with their “Storm Troopers” and rid America of these dangerous criminals.
In Trump’s appeal for the Black vote, he didn’t promise to secure funds for better schools, demolish dilapidated buildings, pave streets, improve garbage collection, create alternatives for criminal activity for survival, provide training subsidies for the un-employed, create and enforce police reform and police/community relations or monitor police activity in the Black communities. He promised “Law and Order.”
Here are some of the things Trump can do if he wants a relationship with the Black community.
1. Admit to and apologize to the Black community for housing discrimination.
2. Invite the “Central Park Jogger Five” to Trump Tower for an apology.
3. Publish a full page Ad in NYC’s African American newspapers apologizing for advocating the death penalty for the five young men.
4. Apologize to Barack Obama for his birther rhetoric.
5. Apologize to Mexicans and other non-White American citizens for his insulting characterization.
6. Apologize to African Americans for the insulting remarks made in West Bend, Wis., in his characterization of Black neighborhoods and his dog whistle promise of “Law and Order.”
7. Apologize to America’s Muslim community for insulting and negative characterization of the family of a fallen U.S. soldier.
8. Apologize to African Americans for the voter suppression procedures implemented by members of the Republican party and resolve to protect voting rights for every American citizen.
9. Admit that he is now, always has been, and will continue to be a racist as long as he believes that America belongs to people of European decent especially those from the United Kingdom.
Trump’s presidential campaign mirror national elections since 1864. The campaign rhetoric has always been a tug of war between supporters and opponents of African American issues. Since the days of FDR, the Black vote has been with the Democratic Party.
In the aftermath of previous elections, Blacks realized little or no progress or rewards for their votes. Police brutality is the primary issue facing African Americans today, yet group protests against killing of unarmed young Black men by White police officers is considered criminal activity and is not a major focus of those who seek our vote.
America’s political system is in need of change especially as it pertains to its Black citizens. Our issue of police brutality needs resolution, but Trump and Giuliani are not the ones to do it.
What do we have to lose? Every civil rights gain made in the last five decades.
Register and vote but make sure your vote counts for you!
(Walter Smith is publisher of the New York Beacon)
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