Donald Trump informed black Americans that they are currently experiencing their worst living conditions yet during a Tuesday campaign rally in North Carolina.
“We’re going to rebuild our inner cities because our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they’ve ever been in before,” Trump told a crowd in Kenansville. “Ever, ever, ever.”
“You take a look at the inner cities: You get no education. You get no jobs. You get shot walking down the street,” he continued. “They’re worse, I mean honestly, places like Afghanistan are safer than some of our inner cities.”
These comments, which ignore the United States’ ugly history of chattel slavery and state-sponsored racial discrimination, are representative of Trump’s recent outreach to black voters. Trump made several visits to majority minority Midwestern cities in recent weeks as part of his belated effort to make inroads with this demographic group, where he told congregants at black churches that he was there to “listen.”
One pastor in Flint, Michigan wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post that she invited Trump to her church to show him “that this nation is filled with intelligent, wise, black citizens of integrity” who are “braving a manmade catastrophe.” Trump later called her a “nervous mess” and suggested she tried to sabotage him by interrupting his speech on stage to tell him to stop speaking dismissively about Hillary Clinton. She said the address was not supposed to focus on Flint’s water crisis, not politics.
Other African-Americans have said that his assumption that all of the over 42 million black Americans live in crime-plagued inner cities are offensive.
Trump told the Kenansville crowd that his approach was working, however.
“I say to the African-American communities, and I think it’s resonating, because you see what’s happening with my poll numbers with African-Americans. They’re going, like, high,” he said.
The real estate mogul has failed to break out of the single digits among black voters. A Washington Post-ABC News average of poll data from August and September found that Trump earned only 5 percent of support in this demographic.
Which is why the GOP is trying so desperately to disenfranchise black voters?
To help them?
I’m confused, Donnie…
Oh yeah, baby. Things were never worse for black people in America. Never. The “strange fruits” of this moron’s imagination don’t have any relation to any facts or actual history.
Trump: “Jim Crow was better for blacks than Obama’s America!”
Trump: The Blacks are in worst shape, Thanks Obama. I will make sure they don’t get any better. I like Blue Lives Matter.
I think the interpretation that Trump is speaking to African Americans with this screed is off base.
He is speaking to an all or mostly white audience. The words he is using are speaking to his audience’s preconceptions. He isn’t trying to convince black people to vote for him, he is reinforcing racist stereotypes within his already convinced constituency.
This is a strategy (intentional or not) that is intended to reinforce the self perception of white people in his camp that they are superior to blacks and inflame their resentment towards an idealized racial enemy.