Trump is not a racist according to you.
Read this - and come back in a week when you finally get to the end.
Trump has a long history of racist controversies
- 1973:The US Department of Justice — under the Nixon administration, out of all administrations —suedthe Trump Management Corporation for violating the Fair Housing Act. Federal officials foundevidencethat Trump had refused to rent to Black tenants and lied to Black applicants about whether apartments were available, among other accusations. Trump said the federal government was trying to get him to rent to welfare recipients. In the aftermath, he signed an agreement in 1975 agreeing not to discriminate to renters of color without admitting to previous discrimination.
- 1980s:Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, accused another one of Trump’s businesses of discrimination. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Brownsaid. “It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.”
- 1989:In a controversial case that’s been characterized as 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 City. Trump immediately took charge in the case, runningan ad in local papersdemanding, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” The teens’ convictions were later vacated after they spentseven to 13 years in prison, and the city paid $41 million in a settlement to the teens. But Trump in October 2016saidhe still believes they’re guilty, despite the DNA evidence to the contrary.
- 1991:Abookby 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 want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump later said in a1997 Playboy interviewthat “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”
- 1992:The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casinohad to pay a $200,000 finebecause it transferred Black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.
- 1993:In congressional testimony, Trumpsaidthat some Native American reservations operating casinos shouldn’t be allowed because “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 aseries of adssuggesting the tribe had a “record of criminal activity [that] is well documented.”
- 2004:In season two ofThe Apprentice, TrumpfiredKevin Allen, a Black contestant, for being overeducated. “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything,” Trump said on the show. “At some point you have to say, ‘That’s enough.’”
- 2005:Trumppublicly pitchedwhat was essentiallyThe Apprentice: White People vs. Black People. Hesaidhe “wasn’t particularly happy” with the most recent season of his show, so he was considering “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”
- 2010:In 2010, there was a huge national controversy over the “Ground Zero 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,” andoffered to buy outone of the investors in the project. OnThe Late Show With David Letterman, Trumpargued, referring to Muslims, “Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.”
- 2011:Trump played abig rolein pushing false rumors that Obama — the country’s first Black president — was not born in the US. He claimed to send investigators to Hawaii tolook into Obama’s birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate, calling Trump a “carnival barker.” Theresearchhas found a strong correlation between birtherism, as the conspiracy theory is called, and racism. But Trump hasreportedly continuedpushing this conspiracy theory in private.
- 2011:While Trump suggested that Obama wasn’t born in the US, he also argued that maybe Obama wasn’t a good enough student to have gotten into Columbia or Harvard Law School, and demanded Obama release his university transcripts. Trumpclaimed, “I heard he was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”
For many people, none of these incidents, individually, may be damning: One of these alone might suggest that Trump is simply a bad speaker and perhaps racially insensitive (“politically incorrect,” as he would put it), but not overtly racist.
But when you put all these events together, a clear pattern emerges. At the very least, Trump has a history of playing into people’s racism to bolster himself — and that likely says something about him, too.
And, of course, there’s everything that’s happened through and since his presidential campaign.
As 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 as president:
- Trump launched his campaign in 2015 bycallingMexican immigrants “rapists” who are “bringing crime” and “bringing drugs” to the US. His campaign was largely built on building a wall to keep these immigrants out of the US.
- As a candidate in 2015, Trumpcalledfor a ban on all Muslims coming into the US. His administration eventually implemented asignificantly watered-down version of the policy.
- When asked at a 2016 Republican debate whether all 1.6 billion Muslims hate the US, Trumpsaid, “I mean a lot of them. I mean a lot of them.”
- He argued in 2016 that Judge Gonzalo Curiel — who was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit — should recuse himself from the case because of his Mexican heritage and membership in a Latino lawyers association. 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 messages from white supremacists and neo-Nazis during his presidential campaign.
- Hetweeted and later deletedan image that showed Hillary Clinton in front of a pile of money and by a Jewish Star of David that said, “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” The tweet had some very obvious anti-Semitic imagery, but Trumpinsistedthat the star was a sheriff’s badge, andsaidhis campaign shouldn’t have deleted it.
- Trump hasrepeatedly referredto Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as “Pocahontas,” using her controversial — andlater walked-back— claims to Native American heritage as a punchline.
- At the 2016 Republican convention, Trump officially seized the mantle ofthe “law and order” candidate— an obviousdog whistleplaying to white fears of Black crime, even though crime in the US ishistorically low. Hisspeeches, comments, and executive actionsafter he took office have continued this line of messaging.
- In apitch to Black votersin 2016, Trumpsaid, “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”
- Trumpstereotypeda Black reporter at a press conference 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 set up the meeting — even as she insisted that she’s “just a reporter.”
- In the week afterwhite supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, Trumprepeatedly saidthat “many sides” and “both sides” were to blame for the violence and chaos that ensued — suggesting that the white supremacist protesters were morally equivalent to counterprotesters who stood against 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 SpencerpraisingTrump for “defending the truth.”
- Throughout 2017, Trumprepeatedly attackedNFL players who, by kneeling or otherwise silently protesting during the national anthem, demonstrated against systemic racism in America.
- Trumpreportedly saidin 2017 that people who came to the US from Haiti “all have AIDS,” and he lamented that people who came to the US from Nigeria would never “go back to their huts” once they saw America. The White Housedeniedthat Trump ever made these comments.
- Speaking about immigration in a bipartisan meeting in January 2018, Trumpreportedly asked, in reference to Haiti and African countries, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He then reportedly suggested that the US should take more people from countries like Norway. The implication: Immigrants from predominantly white countries are good, while immigrants from predominantly Black countries are bad.
- Trumpdeniedmaking the “shithole” comments, although some senators present at the meetingsaidthey happened. The White House, meanwhile,suggestedthat the comments, like Trump’s remarks about the NFL protests, will play well to his base. The only connection between Trump’s remarks about the NFL protests and his “shithole” comments is race.
- Trump mocked Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign, again calling her “Pocahontas” in a 2019tweetbefore adding, “See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!” The capitalized “TRAIL” isseemingly a referenceto the Trail of Tears — a horrific act of ethnic cleansing in the 19th century in which Native Americans were forcibly relocated, causing thousands of deaths.
- Trumptweetedlater that year that several Black and 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 catastrophe” and that they should “go back” to those countries. It’s a common racist trope to say that Black and brown people, particularly immigrants, should go back to their countries of origin. Three of the four members of Congress whom Trump targeted were born in the US.
- Trump has called the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.” The World Health Organization advises against linking a virus to any particular region, since it can lead to stigma. Trump’s adviser, Kellyanne Conway, previously described the term “kung flu” as “highly offensive.” Meanwhile, Asian Americans have reported hateful incidents targeting them due to the spread of the coronavirus.
- Trumpsuggestedthat Kamala Harris, who’s Black and South Asian, “doesn’t meet the requirements” to be former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s 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 again, there’s a pattern of racism and bigotry here that suggests Trump isn’t just 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’s not necessarily racist, because the Muslim and Mexican people he often targets don’t actually comprise a race.
Disgraced journalist Mark Halperin, for example,saidas much when Trump argued Judge Curiel should recuse himself from the Trump University case because of his Mexican heritage, making the astute observation that “Mexico isn’t a race.”
Kristofmade a similar pointin the New York Times: “My view is that ‘racist’ can be a loaded word, a conversation stopper more than a clarifier, and that we should be careful not to use it simply as an epithet. Moreover, Muslims and Latinos can be of any race, so some of those statements technically reflect not so 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. It’s essentially probing the question: Is Trumpracistor is hebigoted? But who cares? Neither is a trait that anyone should want in a president — and either label essentially communicates the same criticism.
Another issue is that race is socially malleable. Over the years, AmericansconsideredGermans, Greeks, Irish, Italians, and Spaniards as nonwhite people of different races. That’s changed. Similarly, some Americans today consider Latinos and, to a lesser degree, some people with Muslim and Jewish backgrounds as part of a nonwhite race too. (As a Latin man, I certainly consider myself to be of a different race, and the treatment I’ve received in the course of my life validates that.) So under current definitions, comments against these groups are, indeed, racist.
This is all possible because, asJenée Desmond-Harris explained for Vox, race is entirely a social construct with no biological basis. This doesn’t mean race and people’s 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 time.
But really, whatever you want to call it, Trump has made racist and bigoted comments in the past. That much should be clear in the long lists above.
Trump’s bigotry was a key part of his campaign
Regardless of how one 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.
One paper, published in January 2017 by political scientists Brian Schaffner, Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta,foundthat voters’ measures of sexism and racism correlated much more closely with support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction, after controlling for factors like partisanship and political ideology.
“These findings indicate that responses to the racial cue varied as a function of feelings about Donald Trump — but not feelings about Hillary Clinton — during the 2016 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, asDylan Matthewsandresearchers Sean McElwee and Jason McDanielpreviously explained for Vox.
Simply put, racial attitudes were a big driver of Trump’s election — just as they long have been for general beliefs about politics and policy. (Much more on all the research inVox’s explainer.)
Meanwhile, white supremacist groups have openly embraced Trump. AsSarah Posner and David Neiwert reported at
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 not be ready for the Ku Klux Klan yet, but as anti-white hatred escalates, they will.”
And at the 2017 white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, David Duke, the former KKK grand wizard,saidthat 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. As much as his history of racism shows that he’s racist, perhaps who supported him and why is just as revealing — and it doesn’t paint a favorable picture for Trump.
