Throughout his time on the public stage, including the time that he campaigned for the presidency and served or is serving as the President of the United States, Donald Trump has made divisive, controversial statements about Black people, about majority-Black cities and about Black African countries. His companies’ actions have also been open to scrutiny. This commentary is to state the facts as reported in media outlets. I leave it to you to decide if Trump is a racist.
Donald Trump and his father, Fred, were sued by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1973 for systematically discriminating against Black Americans in housing rentals. Media stories state that former employees testified that they were instructed to code applications of Black applicants with a “C” for colored and steer them toward specific buildings that were mainly minority. The Trumps filed a $100 million countersuit. (Sounds familiar.) News records indicate that the case was settled by a consent decree with no admission of wrongdoing, but required the company to institute safeguards to ensure the apartments were rented without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Other news media in the 1980s reported that when Donald and his then-wife, Ivana, visited Trump’s casino, the bosses would order all Black people off the floor and put them all in the back.
In 1989, prior to his entrance into politics, he took out ads calling for the execution of the suspects in the Central Park jogger rape case. The five Black and Latino teenagers were wrongly convicted and served between 6 and 13 years in prison before a serial rapist admitted to the crime and his confession was supported by DNA evidence.
Donald Trump first publicly questioned Barack Obama’s birthplace and citizenship in interviews in March 2011 during interviews on ABC News and on The View. Even after the allegation was proven false, Trump continued to promote the false accusation until September 2016 when he finally admitted that Obama was born in the United States. But Trump wasn’t finished questioning the heritage of Black people and questioned the racial identity of Kamala Harris, falsely suggesting that she has misled people about her Black ancestry.
Trump has called prominent Blacks like Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem “sons of a b_tches,” and television host Don Lemon the “dumbest man on television.” He has called Congresswoman Ilhan Omar “a hate-filled, American-bashing socialist,” “garbage,” and “despicable.” He described the country of her birth, Somalia, as a “filthy, dirty” country. Invited to speak at the Black Conservative Federation in 2024, Trump said that his indictments made him more popular with Black voters, “The mug shot… You know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population.” At the beginning of 2026, Trump shared a social media post on Truth Social depicting President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. This was even too much for Tim Scott and others in the GOP. While the video was taken down and blamed on a staffer, Trump refused to apologize.
In a 2016 television debate, Trump said, “Our inner cities, African Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it’s so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot.” In describing the late Elijah Cummings district in Maryland, he said it was “a disgusting rat and rodent infested mess.” In 2018, during a meeting at the White House, Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as “sh__hole” countries and asked why the United States couldn’t have more immigrants from Norway. During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly made false and baseless claims about Haitian immigrants eating pet dogs and cats in Springfield, Illinois.
On January 20, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14151 dismantling all federal DEI initiatives.
In November 2025, Trump promoted the false conspiracy theory that “White genocide” was occurring in South Africa to expand the refugee program for White South Africans while his Department of Homeland Security was attempting to terminate Temporary Protected Status for approximately 350,000 Haitians arguing that conditions in Haiti had improved enough for them to return. Trump then boycotted the G20 summit in Johannesburg. In May 2026, Trump announced plans to admit another 10,000 White South Africans again alleging that they face systemic discrimination and violence in South Africa, claims that the South African government states are baseless. Why is the Trump Administration determined to get more White immigration and limit immigration from majority Black, brown or Asian countries? Demographic reports indicate that the United States will become “majority-minority” between 2044 and 2045. Could that also be the rationale for asking Americans to have more babies? Critics and political observers have argued that this message is targeted toward White, conservative, fundamentalist families.
At a campaign rally in Michigan during the 2016 campaign, Trump asked Blacks this question: “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs. What the hell do you have to lose?” For those Blacks who voted for Trump and for those who still support him, what is your answer now?