Donald Trump is a Racist

1. You agree that there was racial bias in the Trump business. The fact that it was led by Fred Trump at the time doesn’t matter since after the lawsuit Donald could have still admitted there was racial bias and apologized for it. One does not have to defend the racist discriminatory activities of their father (or their employees). Furthermore, Donald became president of his father’s organization in 1974 when the lawsuit was ongoing. He was president years later when the terms of the settlement were violated. Donald, being in a position of power, definitely had responsibility. 2. You agree that Trump’s role in the birther movement was inspired by Obama’s ties to foreign countries. I argued that Obama’s race and relationships with Muslims were also in the mix. Most people understand that none of Obama’s connections invalidate his birth certificate. We could just say that Trump believes in absurd conspiracies for no reason, but usually conspiracy theories pander to underlying biases. The birther movement panders to racist and xenophobic ideas. In regards to your rebuttal about other black candidates, none of them actually won a presidential election (the birther movement reached its peak after Obama was elected) and so they didn’t get the same treatment from Trump. Additionally, as already stated, Obama had other factors that made him the target of xenophobic attacks (I regard xenophobia as essentially a form of racism). 3. As I stated in my original point, Trump does not want more Mexican immigrants, legal or otherwise. If Trump were truly pro-immigration as you argue, he would try to make it easier to migrate to the United States legally. This means reducing the amount of paperwork and easing up on migration restrictions. However, increasing legal immigration was never Trump’s goal, he wants to reduce the total number of Mexicans coming over. The crime statistics you bring up are disputable, but I’m not going to talk about that since it’s not very relevant to this debate (Trump’s original statements were not based on statistics at all, only later did his campaign scour the globe for any information that might bolster Trump’s position). While Trump said that some illegal immigrants are good people, his framing betrays his biases. He described illegal immigrants as a group of criminals with some [he assumes] good people. A person without Trump’s biases would have described them as a group of good people with a sizable number of criminals amongst them. In this instance, Trump was talking strictly about Mexicans, and no listener was left with the impression that Trump would have wanted those same immigrants to be there if only they had the correct paperwork. 4. In the second to last sentence of your rebuttal for part 4 you take for granted that Hispanics dislike Trump. The fact is that not only do Hispanics dislike Trump because of his racism (see above), but Trump realizes this. If the true motivation for Trump’s immigration policies were to reduce crime as you argue in your opening argument, Hispanic Americans should be just as enthusiastic about those policies as anyone else. When Trump sites his own policies as reasons why Hispanics don’t like him, it’s as if he’s saying “of course Hispanics hate me, I’m racist against them”. The incident is significant mostly because it blows away Trump’s cover. Additionally, I maintain that it is racist to say that someone is disqualified because of their race, which is exactly what Trump did to Gonzalo Curiel. 5. Trump clearly supports discrimination against Muslims, most notably by banning their entry into the United States. Your entire rebuttal consists of trying to downplay Trump’s other statements. I’ll be generous and grant you that Trump did not pursue the three proposals besides the Muslim ban. However, at the very least, he gave them serious consideration. Someone who is not bigoted against Muslims wouldn’t take these ideas seriously as they violate fundamental principles. These ideas also wouldn’t work as genuine counter-terrorism strategies since one can lie about their religion. Then again, counter-terrorism is just the cover and not the goal. I will repeat that bigotry against a religious group is still racism, if it weren’t then one could argue that the Holocaust was not racist since it was waged against Jews. 6. Trump’s candidacy led to a wave of enthusiasm amongst racists unseen in any mainstream candidate. Hillary received some support amongst racist Democrats in 2008 when she was running against Obama, but it was not comparable to the support that Trump is getting and it was not because of her ideology. Refer back to Rick Tyler’s “Make America White Again” campaign. He writes on his website: “In our present political season the dominant presence of Donald Trump has served to open us channels of discourse and dialogue that have previously been off limits. His advocacy of a ‘temporary ban’ on Muslim immigration and the construction of a wall on the Southern border have created a climate conducive to conversation relative to the elephant in the living room no one wants to talk about...namely, the urgent and vital subject of race.” (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com...) Again, Trump isn’t responsible for these people, but it’s very revealing that racists see an ally in Trump because of the language he uses and the policies he supports. Also, Trump has done conspicuously little to distance himself from his racist supporters, implying that they probably aren’t misinterpreting his message.