Trump Accuses Minorities of Crimes Agains Whites

If you ask President Donald Trump, he isn't racist. To the reverse, he's repeatedly said that he'due south "the least racist person that you've ever encountered."

Trump'south bodily record, however, tells a very dissimilar story.

On the entrada trail, Trump repeatedly fabricated explicitly racist and otherwise bigoted remarks, from calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, to proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the The states, to suggesting a judge should recuse himself from a case solely because of the approximate'southward Mexican heritage.

The tendency has connected into his presidency. From stereotyping a Blackness reporter to pandering to white supremacists after they held a vehement rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to making a joke about the Trail of Tears, Trump hasn't stopped with racist acts later his 2022 election.

Most recently, Trump has called the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus the "Chinese virus" and "kung flu" — racist terms that tap into the kind of xenophobia that he latched onto during his 2022 presidential campaign; Trump's ain adviser, Kellyanne Conway, previously chosen "kung flu" a "highly offensive" term. And Trump insinuated that Sen. Kamala Harris, who's Black, "doesn't meet the requirements" to run for vice president — a echo of the birther conspiracy theory that he perpetuated nigh former President Barack Obama.

This is zippo new for Trump. In fact, the very beginning time Trump appeared in the pages of the New York Times, back in the 1970s, was when the US Department of Justice sued him for racial discrimination. Since and then, he has repeatedly appeared in newspaper pages across the world as he inspired more similar controversies.

This long history is important. It would be i thing if Trump misspoke one or 2 times. But when y'all take all of his deportment and comments together, a clear pattern emerges — ane that suggests that bigotry is not just political opportunism on Trump'southward part merely a real element of his personality, grapheme, and career.

Trump has a long history of racist controversies

Here's a breakdown of Trump'southward history, taken largely from Dara Lind's list for Vox and an op-ed past Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times:

• 1973: The US Department of Justice — under the Nixon administration, out of all administrations — sued the Trump Management Corporation for violating the Fair Housing Human activity. Federal officials institute evidence that Trump had refused to rent to Black tenants and lied to Black applicants near whether apartments were available, among other accusations. Trump said the federal government was trying to get him to rent to welfare recipients. In the backwash, he signed an understanding in 1975 agreeing non to discriminate to renters of colour without albeit to previous bigotry.
• 1980s: Kip Dark-brown, a quondam employee at Trump's Castle, accused another one of Trump's businesses of bigotry. "When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would gild all the black people off the floor," Chocolate-brown said. "It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put usa all in the back."
• 1989: In a controversial case that's been characterized equally a modern-day lynching, four Black teenagers and one Latino teenager — the "Central Park Five" — were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York Urban center. Trump immediately took accuse in the case, running an ad in local papers demanding, "BRING BACK THE Capital punishment. BRING BACK OUR Law!" The teens' convictions were later vacated after they spent seven to 13 years in prison, and the urban center paid $41 one thousand thousand in a settlement to the teens. Just Trump in October 2022 said he still believes they're guilty, despite the Deoxyribonucleic acid evidence to the opposite.
• 1991: A book by John O'Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump's criticism of a Black accountant: "Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I desire counting my money are short guys that clothing yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it'due south probably not his error, considering laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. Information technology's non annihilation they can control." Trump later said in a 1997 Playboy interview that "the stuff O'Donnell wrote about me is probably truthful."
• 1992: The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred Black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a large-time gambler'south prejudices.
• 1993: In congressional testimony, Trump said that some Native American reservations operating casinos shouldn't be immune considering "they don't look like Indians to me."
• 2000: In opposition to a casino proposed by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, which he saw as a financial threat to his casinos in Atlantic City, Trump secretly ran a series of ads suggesting the tribe had a "record of criminal activeness [that] is well documented."
• 2004: In flavor 2 of The Amateur, Trump fired Kevin Allen, a Black contestant, for beingness overeducated. "Yous're an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and y'all haven't washed anything," Trump said on the show. "At some point yous have to say, 'That'due south plenty.'"
• 2005: Trump publicly pitched what was essentially The Amateur: White People vs. Black People. He said he "wasn't particularly happy" with the most recent season of his evidence, so he was because "an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a squad of successful whites. Whether people similar that thought or non, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world."
• 2010: In 2010, there was a huge national controversy over the "Ground Naught Mosque" — a proposal to build a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Trump opposed the project, calling it "insensitive," and offered to purchase out one of the investors in the project. On The Late Testify With David Letterman, Trump argued, referring to Muslims, "Well, somebody's blowing us up. Somebody's blowing up buildings, and somebody'due south doing lots of bad stuff."
• 2011: Trump played a big role in pushing false rumors that Obama — the country's first Black president — was not built-in in the US. He claimed to ship investigators to Hawaii to await into Obama'due south birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate, calling Trump a "funfair barker." The research has found a strong correlation between birtherism, as the conspiracy theory is called, and racism. But Trump has reportedly continued pushing this conspiracy theory in private.
• 2011: While Trump suggested that Obama wasn't built-in in the US, he also argued that maybe Obama wasn't a good plenty student to have gotten into Columbia or Harvard Law Schoolhouse, and demanded Obama release his university transcripts. Trump claimed, "I heard he was a terrible educatee. Terrible. How does a bad pupil go to Columbia and and then to Harvard?"

For many people, none of these incidents, individually, may be damning: Ane of these alone might advise that Trump is merely a bad speaker and perchance racially insensitive ("politically incorrect," as he would put it), but non overtly racist.

But when you put all these events together, a clear pattern emerges. At the very to the lowest degree, Trump has a history of playing into people'southward racism to bolster himself — and that probable says something well-nigh him, too.

And, of course, there's everything that's happened through and since his presidential campaign.

Every bit a candidate and president, Trump has made many more racist comments

On top of all that history, Trump has repeatedly made racist — often explicitly so — remarks on the campaign trail and equally president:

• Trump launched his campaign in 2022 by calling Mexican immigrants "rapists" who are "bringing crime" and "bringing drugs" to the US. His campaign was largely congenital on edifice a wall to keep these immigrants out of the U.s.a..
• Every bit a candidate in 2015, Trump called for a ban on all Muslims coming into the US. His administration eventually implemented a significantly watered-downwardly version of the policy.
• When asked at a 2022 Republican contend whether all 1.6 billion Muslims hate the U.s.a., Trump said, "I mean a lot of them. I mean a lot of them."
• He argued in 2022 that Estimate Gonzalo Curiel — who was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit — should recuse himself from the instance considering of his Mexican heritage and membership in a Latino lawyers clan. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who endorsed Trump, later called such comments "the textbook definition of a racist comment."
• Trump has been repeatedly slow to condemn white supremacists who endorse him, and he regularly retweeted letters from white supremacists and neo-Nazis during his presidential campaign.
• He tweeted and later deleted an image that showed Hillary Clinton in front of a pile of money and by a Jewish Star of David that said, "Near Decadent Candidate Ever!" The tweet had some very obvious anti-Semitic imagery, just Trump insisted that the star was a sheriff's badge, and said his campaign shouldn't take deleted it.
• Trump has repeatedly referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as "Pocahontas," using her controversial — and later walked-back — claims to Native American heritage every bit a punchline.
• At the 2022 Republican convention, Trump officially seized the mantle of the "police force and gild" candidate — an obvious canis familiaris whistle playing to white fears of Black criminal offense, fifty-fifty though offense in the The states is historically depression. His speeches, comments, and executive deportment later he took office take continued this line of messaging.
• In a pitch to Black voters in 2016, Trump said, "You're living in poverty, your schools are no skillful, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?"
• Trump stereotyped a Black reporter at a printing briefing in February 2017. When April Ryan asked him if he plans to meet and work with the Congressional Black Caucus, he repeatedly asked her to prepare the meeting — fifty-fifty as she insisted that she's "just a reporter."
• In the week after white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, Trump repeatedly said that "many sides" and "both sides" were to arraign for the violence and chaos that ensued — suggesting that the white supremacist protesters were morally equivalent to counterprotesters who stood confronting racism. He also said that there were "some very fine people" among the white supremacists. All of this seemed like a dog whistle to white supremacists — and many of them took it as one, with white nationalist Richard Spencer praising Trump for "defending the truth."
• Throughout 2017, Trump repeatedly attacked NFL players who, past kneeling or otherwise silently protesting during the national anthem, demonstrated against systemic racism in America.
• Trump reportedly said in 2022 that people who came to the US from Haiti "all have AIDS," and he lamented that people who came to the United states of america from Nigeria would never "go dorsum to their huts" once they saw America. The White Firm denied that Trump ever made these comments.
• Speaking nearly clearing in a bipartisan coming together in January 2018, Trump reportedly asked, in reference to Haiti and African countries, "Why are nosotros having all these people from shithole countries come here?" He then reportedly suggested that the United states of america should take more people from countries like Norway. The implication: Immigrants from predominantly white countries are proficient, while immigrants from predominantly Blackness countries are bad.
• Trump denied making the "shithole" comments, although some senators present at the meeting said they happened. The White House, meanwhile, suggested that the comments, like Trump's remarks nigh the NFL protests, volition play well to his base. The simply connection betwixt Trump'due south remarks about the NFL protests and his "shithole" comments is race.
• Trump mocked Elizabeth Warren'south presidential entrada, again calling her "Pocahontas" in a 2022 tweet before calculation, "Encounter you on the entrada TRAIL, Liz!" The capitalized "TRAIL" is seemingly a reference to the Trail of Tears — a horrific deed of indigenous cleansing in the 19th century in which Native Americans were forcibly relocated, causing thousands of deaths.
• Trump tweeted later on that year that several Black and chocolate-brown members of Congress — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — are "from countries whose governments are a complete and total ending" and that they should "go back" to those countries. It's a common racist trope to say that Blackness and brown people, peculiarly immigrants, should go back to their countries of origin. 3 of the 4 members of Congress whom Trump targeted were born in the The states.
• Trump has chosen the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus the "Chinese virus" and "kung influenza." The World Health System advises confronting linking a virus to whatever particular region, since it can lead to stigma. Trump'southward adviser, Kellyanne Conway, previously described the term "kung flu" equally "highly offensive." Meanwhile, Asian Americans have reported mean incidents targeting them due to the spread of the coronavirus.
• Trump suggested that Kamala Harris, who'southward Black and South Asian, "doesn't meet the requirements" to exist former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden'southward running mate — yet another example of birtherism.

This list is not comprehensive, instead relying on some of the major examples since Trump announced his candidacy. But once over again, there's a blueprint of racism and bigotry hither that suggests Trump isn't simply misspeaking; it is who he is.

Are Trump's actions and comments "racist"? Or are they "bigoted"?

One of the common defenses for Trump is that he'south not necessarily racist, because the Muslim and Mexican people he oft targets don't really contain a race.

Disgraced announcer Marker Halperin, for example, said as much when Trump argued Judge Curiel should recuse himself from the Trump University case considering of his Mexican heritage, making the astute observation that "Mexico isn't a race."

Kristof made a similar point in the New York Times: "My view is that 'racist' can be a loaded give-and-take, a conversation stopper more a clarifier, and that we should be conscientious not to use it simply equally an epithet. Moreover, Muslims and Latinos can exist of whatever race, so some of those statements technically reflect non and then much racism as bigotry. It's also true that with any single statement, it is possible that Trump misspoke or was misconstrued."

This critique misses the point on two levels.

For one, the argument is tremendously semantic. Information technology's substantially probing the question: Is Trump racist or is he narrow-minded? But who cares? Neither is a trait that anyone should want in a president — and either characterization substantially communicates the same criticism.

Some other issue is that race is socially malleable. Over the years, Americans considered Germans, Greeks, Irish, Italians, and Spaniards as nonwhite people of different races. That's changed. Similarly, some Americans today consider Latinos and, to a lesser caste, some people with Muslim and Jewish backgrounds as function of a nonwhite race also. (As a Latin man, I certainly consider myself to be of a different race, and the treatment I've received in the class of my life validates that.) So nether current definitions, comments against these groups are, indeed, racist.

This is all possible considering, as Jenée Desmond-Harris explained for Phonation, race is entirely a social construct with no biological footing. This doesn't hateful race and people'south views of race don't have real effects on many people — of course they do — but it means that people's definitions of race can change over fourth dimension.

Only really, any yous want to phone call it, Trump has made racist and bigoted comments in the past. That much should be articulate in the long lists above.

Trump'southward discrimination was a fundamental part of his campaign

Regardless of how ane labels it, Trump's racism or bigotry was a big part of his campaign — by giving a candidate to the many white Americans who harbor racial resentment.

I paper, published in January 2022 by political scientists Brian Schaffner, Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta, institute that voters' measures of sexism and racism correlated much more than closely with back up for Trump than economic dissatisfaction, after controlling for factors like partisanship and political ideology.

Brian Schaffner, Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta

Another study, conducted by researchers Brenda Major, Alison Blodorn, and Gregory Major Blascovich presently before the 2022 election, constitute that if people who strongly identified as white were told that nonwhite groups will outnumber white people in 2042, they became more likely to support Trump.

And a study, published in November 2022 past researchers Matthew Luttig, Christopher Federico, and Howard Lavine, found that Trump supporters were much more likely to modify their views on housing policy based on race. In this report, respondents were randomly assigned "a subtle paradigm of either a blackness or a white man." And then they were asked virtually views on housing policy.

The researchers plant that Trump supporters were much more probable to exist impacted by the image of a Black homo. After the exposure, they were non merely less supportive of housing help programs, merely they also expressed higher levels of anger that some people receive government assist, and they were more than likely to say that individuals who receive assistance are to arraign for their situation.

In contrast, favorability toward Hillary Clinton did non significantly change respondents' views on any of these issues when primed with racial cues.

"These findings indicate that responses to the racial cue varied as a part of feelings virtually Donald Trump — but non feelings about Hillary Clinton — during the 2022 presidential election," the researchers concluded.

There is also a lot of other research showing that people's racial attitudes can change their views on politics and policy, as Dylan Matthews and researchers Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel previously explained for Vox.

Simply put, racial attitudes were a big driver of Trump'southward ballot — merely as they long accept been for general beliefs about politics and policy. (Much more on all the inquiry in Vox's explainer.)

Meanwhile, white supremacist groups have openly embraced Trump. Equally Sarah Posner and David Neiwert reported at Mother Jones, what the media largely treated as gaffes — Trump retweeting white nationalists, Trump describing Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and criminals — were to white supremacists existent signals approving of their racist causes. One white supremacist wrote, "Our Glorious Leader and ULTIMATE SAVIOR has gone full-wink-wink-wink to his most aggressive supporters."

Some of them even argued that Trump has softened the greater public to their racist messaging. "The success of the Trump campaign just proves that our views resonate with millions," said Rachel Pendergraft, a national organizer for the Knights Party, which succeeded David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. "They may non be gear up for the Ku Klux Klan yet, only as anti-white hatred escalates, they will."

And at the 2022 white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, David Duke, the one-time KKK thou magician, said that the rally was meant "to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump."

So while Trump may deny his racism and bigotry, at some level his supporters seem to get it. Every bit much every bit his history of racism shows that he's racist, perhaps who supported him and why is but as revealing — and information technology doesn't pigment a favorable picture for Trump.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history

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