[Editor's Note: In honor of Election Day, here's an article from over five years ago detailing Trump's history of racism and bigotry. This campaign was not an act; he is a reprehensible human being.]
By Marcus Baram:
But Trump has been called out several times for racial insensitivity by former co-workers and civil rights activists. In 1991, Trump was accused of making racial slurs against black people in a book written by John R. O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, called “Trumped!” O’Donnell wrote that Trump once said, in reference to a black accountant at Trump Plaza, “laziness is a trait in blacks.” He also told O’Donnell: “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.”
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After the rape of a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989, Trump aroused controversy in New York’s black community when he took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for the African-American teenage suspects — who were all later exonerated. One of the defendant’s lawyers, Colin Moore, compared Trump’s stance to the racist attitudes expressed in the 1930s during the infamous “Scottsboro Boys” case. Trump tried to mend relations by visiting a black woman who had been raped and thrown off the roof of a building in the hospital, promising to pay her medical expenses, according to several news reports.
Later that year, Trump caught flack for his comments attacking affirmative action on NBC’s two-hour special “The Race,” telling host Bryant Gumbel: “If I was starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black because I really do believe they have the actual advantage today.” That remark was derided by Orlando Sentinel columnist David D. Porter, who opined: “Too bad Trump can’t get his wish. Then he’d see that being educated, black and over 21 isn’t the key to the Trump Tower. You see there’s still that little ugly problem of racism.”
Yet the most damaging episode in the saga of Trump’s fractured relationship with the black community came in 1973, when his family’s real-estate company, Trump Management Corporation, was sued by the Justice Department for alleged racial discrimination. At the time, Trump was the company’s president. Just last month, at Trump’s Comedy Central roast, Snoop Dogg referenced the case by joking about Trump’s potential 2012 run for the White House: “Why not? It wouldn’t be the first time he pushed a black family out of their home.”
The Full Story (April 29, 2011)
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