Donald Trump’s Racism has No Place in Our America

There is only one race, the human race, and our skins have many gorgeous and different shades of color.

Our nation’s founding aspirations were as follows: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Declaration of Independence 1776

After the fight for our independence, our founders stated: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Preamble to the United States Constitution 1787

In his Gettysburg Address President Lincoln said “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.” “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

After the close of the long and bloody Civil War from 1860-65 to sustain the union and free black men and women from slavery, the nation adopted three historic amendments.

· 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, 1865 “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”.

· 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, 1868 “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”.

· 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, 1870 “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to guarantee blacks the right to sue, serve on juries, testify as witnesses against whites, and enter into legal contracts. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 forbade racial discrimination in all public places.

After a 80 year long hiatus during which blacks were lynched, their homes burned, and they were discriminated against in nearly every aspect of American life, the Supreme Court finally took action to ensure the rights of citizenship to black Americans. In Shelley v. Kramer, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/334/1/, the Court held that racially restrictive covenants in housing could not be enforced. In Brown v. Board of Education, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/347/483/, the Supreme Court held segregated public schools unconstitutional. In Loving v. Virginia, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1, the court struck down state statutes prohibiting inter-racial marriages.

In the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, Congress overcame Southern Democratic filibusters and barred discrimination in public accommodations, voting rights, public education, and employment. In the Fair Housing Act of 1968 Congress barred discrimination in the sale, rental or financing of houses.

Our nation was born with two original sins. We stole the lands of the Native Americans who lived here and massacred them for nearly three hundred years, thereafter. We enslaved Africans and forced them to work the plantations of the Southern states for two hundred and fifty years, then we allowed segregation to flourish virtually unchecked for another one hundred years. Our treatment of Mexicans, Chinese and Japanese in the past have been unspeakably deplorable.

We have not, as lawyers and judges and legislators, always lived up to the massive accomplishments of and appointed mission from our nation’s founders and its early leaders. In the Dred Scott[1] decision leading up to the Civil War, the Supreme Court held that African American slaves and their descendants were not and could not ever be citizens and were therefore not entitled to any of the protections of the US Constitution, including the right to sue in federal court. For good measure, they went on to strike down the Missouri compromise as unconstitutional, thus holding that slavery was legal throughout the United States. After the Civil War, the Supreme Court and the Southern state legislatures eviscerated the Civil War Constitutional amendments and the Reconstruction legislation. In the Slaughterhouse cases[2] of 1872 narrowing the reach of 14th Amendment, in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883[3] overturning the public accommodations protections of the Civil Rights Act 1875, and in the separate but equal decision in Plessy v. Ferguson[4] allowing segregation in public transport, the Supreme Court gave its blessing to the Jim Crow laws coming out of the Southern states after the Civil War.

President Trump had a long and ignominious history of racism before he ran for public office.[5]

· In 1973, the Trump organization was charged with violating the federal Fair Housing Act by refusing to rent apartments to black tenants– a practice they settled in 1975.

· In 1988, Donald Trump was the chief cheerleader for the prosecution and death penalty of 5 innocent black and Latino teenagers charged with rape of a white woman. They were wrongfully convicted, exonerated and released.

· “1992: The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred Black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.

· “1993: In congressional testimony, Trump said that 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 a series of ads suggesting the tribe had a “record of criminal activity [that] is well documented.”

· “2011: Trump played a big role in pushing [birtherism] false rumors that Obama — the country’s first Black president — was not born in the US.”

As a candidate for President in 2016, he repeatedly played the race card.[6]

· “Trump launched his campaign in 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” who are “bringing crime” and “bringing drugs” to the US.

· “As a candidate in 2015, Trump called for a ban on all Muslims coming into the US.

· “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.

· “Trump regularly retweeted messages from white supremacists and neo-Nazis during his presidential campaign.

· “He tweeted an 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!”

· “Trump has repeatedly referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as “Pocahontas”.

· “At the 2016 Republican convention, Trump officially seized the mantle of the “law and order” candidate — an obvious dog whistle playing to white fears of Black crime, even though crime in the US is historically low.”

Upon being sworn into office, the racist comments accelerated, now using the bully pulpit and authorities of the Presidency of the United States as his megaphone and his enforcement troops.[7]

· He started his Presidency with the Muslim ban and the Mexico wall.

· Trump tweeted on January 14, 2017 “Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested.”[8]

· “After white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, Trump repeatedly said that “many sides” and “both sides” were to blame for the violence and chaos that ensued. He also said that there were “some very fine people” among the white supremacists.

· “Throughout 2017, Trump repeatedly attacked NFL players who, by kneeling or otherwise silently protesting during the national anthem, demonstrated against systemic racism in America.

· “Trump reportedly said in 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.

· “Speaking about immigration in a bipartisan meeting in January 2018, Trump reportedly asked, in reference to Haiti and African countries, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

· “Trump mocked Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign, again calling her “Pocahontas” in a 2019 tweet.

· “Trump tweeted later 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. Three of the four members of Congress whom Trump targeted were born in the US.

· Trump tweeted on July 27, 2019 that Congressman Elijah Cummings’ Baltimore-area district is a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. … If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”[9]

· “Trump has called the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.”

· “Trump suggested that Kamala Harris, who’s Black and South Asian and was born in Oakland California, “doesn’t meet the requirements” to be former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s running mate — yet another example of birtherism.”

· Lately, Trump has focused on keeping black and brown children and their families from living in suburban communities,[10] and defending the Confederate Army’s battle flag.[11]

In upholding the convictions of socialists protesting the draft during World War I, in Schenk v. United States (1919), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes memorably warned us of the dangers of “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater”.[12] President Trump is doing everything he can to inflame our nation’s unresolved and still festering racial tensions to the very greatest danger of all American citizens of every shade of color. As a retired lawyer and grandfather of six, I want to personally and unequivocally decry this ceaseless racism that threatens to tear our beloved nation apart.

Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin,

Founder, Insure the Uninsured Project

Steering Committee Member, Lawyers Defending American Democracy

Dated: 9/16/20

[1] Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)

[2] 83 U.S. 36 (1873)

[3] 109 US 3 (1883)

[4] 163 U.S. 537 (1896)

[5] Lopez, Donald Trump’s Long History of Racism (Vox, Aug. 13, 2020) at https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/14/us/politics/john-lewis-donald-trump.html