New York Times SundayReview | O P - E D CO L U M N I S T

Nicholas Kristof JULY 23, 2016

Is Donald Trump a
Racist?
(adapted from

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-racist.html)

HAS the party of Lincoln just nominated a racist to be president? We shouldnt toss around such
accusations lightly, so Ive looked back over more than 40 years of Donald Trumps career to see what
the record says.
One early red flag arose in 1973, when President Richard Nixons Justice Department not exactly the
radicals of the day sued Trump and his father, Fred Trump, for systematically discriminating against
blacks in housing rentals. Ive waded through 1,021 pages of documents from that legal battle, and
they are devastating. Donald Trump was then president of the family real estate firm, and the
government amassed overwhelming evidence that the company had a policy of discriminating against
blacks, including those serving in the military.
To prove the discrimination, blacks were repeatedly dispatched as testers to Trump apartment
buildings to inquire about vacancies, and white testers were sent soon after. Repeatedly, the black
person was told that nothing was available, while the white tester was shown apartments for
immediate rental. A former building superintendent working for the Trumps explained that he was told
to code any application by a black person with the letter C, for colored, apparently so the office would
know to reject it. A Trump rental agent said the Trumps wanted to rent only to Jews and executives,
and discouraged renting to blacks.
Donald Trump furiously fought the civil rights suit in the courts and the media, but the Trumps
eventually settled on terms that were widely regarded as a victory for the government. Three years
later, the government sued the Trumps again, for continuing to discriminate. In fairness, those suits
date from long ago, and the discriminatory policies were probably put in place not by Donald Trump
but by his father. Fred Trump appears to have been arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1927; Woody
Guthrie, who lived in a Trump property in the 1950s, lambasted Fred Trump in recently discovered
papers for stirring racial hatred. Yet even if Donald Trump inherited his firms discriminatory policies,
he allied himself decisively in the 1970s housing battle against the civil rights movement.
Another revealing moment came in 1989, when New York City was convulsed by the Central Park
jogger case, a rape and beating of a young white woman. Five black and Latino teenagers were
arrested.Trump stepped in, denounced Mayor Ed Kochs call for peace and bought full-page newspaper
ads calling for the death penalty. The five teenagers spent years in prison before being exonerated. In
retrospect, they suffered a modern version of a lynching, and Trump played a part in whipping up the
crowds. As Trump moved into casinos, discrimination followed. In the 1980s, according to a former
Trump casino worker, Kip Brown, who was quoted by The New Yorker: When Donald and Ivana came
to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor. They put us all in the back.
()
The recent record may be more familiar: Trumps suggestions that President Obama was born in
Kenya; his insinuations that Obama was admitted to Ivy League schools only because of affirmative
action; his denunciations of Mexican immigrants as, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists;
his calls for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States; his dismissal of an American-born
judge of Mexican ancestry as a Mexican who cannot fairly hear his case; his reluctance to distance
himself from the Ku Klux Klan in a television interview; his retweet of a graphic suggesting that 81
percent of white murder victims are killed by blacks (the actual figure is about 15 percent); and so on.
Trump has also retweeted messages from white supremacists or Nazi sympathizers, including two from
an account called @WhiteGenocideTM with a photo of the American Nazi Partys founder. Trump
repeatedly and vehemently denies any racism, and he has deleted some offensive tweets. The Daily
Stormer, a neo-Nazi racist website that has endorsed Trump, sees that as going full-wink-winkwink.()

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. Its also true that
with any single statement, it is possible that Trump misspoke or was misconstrued.
And yet Here we have a man who for more than four decades has been repeatedly associated with
racial discrimination or bigoted comments about minorities, some of them made on television for all to
see. While any one episode may be ambiguous, what emerges over more than four decades is a
narrative arc, a consistent pattern and I dont see what else to call it but racism.

HUFFINGTON POST - THE BLOG

No, Donald Trump Isnt

a Racist
06/11/2016 03:27 pm 15:27:13 | Updated Jun 11, 2016
Jon Deutsch Founder, Capital D Strategies; Brand & Messaging Strategist;
Digital Experience Leader
Adapted from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-deutsch/no-donald-trump-isnt-a-ra_b_10417888.html

Contrary to popular belief, Donald Trump is not a racist. According to Google,

the definition of racist is a person who believes that a particular race is
superior to another.
Trumps charge that Judge Curiel cannot fairly adjudicate the Trump
University lawsuit is based on his belief that Curiels Mexican heritage
creates a natural bias against a presidential candidate that wants to build a
wall between the judges born nation and nation of his family ancestry. While
the merits of this charge are certainly debatable (they seem to have
earned precious little merit in the court of public opinion), there has been no
statement from Trump that indicates that he actually feels superior to Judge
Curiel based on the judges Hispanic descent. Rather, its just another
example of Trump demonstrating that he is an unapologetic nationalist.
In fact, counter to the racism charge, Trump is actually telegraphing to the
nation, through psychological projection, that he would most likely behave
the same wayas the judge given the same situation. This is not racism. This
is Trump reminding us that his entire life has been defined by winning, at any
cost.
But, you may be asking, isnt it racist when he talks about banning Muslims
from entering the U.S. and saying that illegal Mexican immigrants are rapists
and criminals? Nope. Why? Because:

Muslims arent a race

Mexico isnt a race

Yes, many of Trumpss statements seem racist, but its just a plain fact that
theyre not.
Why does linguistic accuracy matter? Because theres an actual danger for
those who inaccurately impugn someones character: it can backfire and
damage the accusers credibility. Also, it misdiagnoses the problem many

have with Donald Trump as a political candidate. If we misdiagnose our

candidates, then well be voting for or against them for the wrong reasons.
()