Is Trump A Racist?

Contrary to popular mainstream media wisdom, Trump’s populist, anti-free trade, anti-immigrant message may bring the GOP candidate an unprecedented bounty of African American votes, maybe as high as the 25% I expect him to get of the Latino vote.

For the media to brand him particularly racist within the context of the Republican Party is hypocritical, intellectually sloppy and ignores the last half century and more of American history.

In the same way the Democrats glommed onto the Irish immigrants right off the boat, the Dems also rounded up the nation’s African American voters in the wake of the Civil War, their efforts aided by the 20th Century, post-George Wallace GOP’s manifestly anti-urban policies.

The racial entrenchment of both parties has been cemented by the vile Gerrymandering engineered by congressional incumbents hellbent on holding their plush 'safe' seats in D.C.

The so-called ‘Southern Strategy’ of the GOP was nothing but an appeal sometimes overt, sometimes more subtle to white resentment over the civil rights movement.

Trump should have rejected the tragically undeniable short-term political benefit of failing to denounce the reprehensible David Duke. But he didn't invent the racial polarization of American politics. Indeed, with his so-called 'New York Values', the @realdonaldtrump is probably among the more racially tolerant politicians around.