Poll Finds More Americans Think Trump Is Biased Against Black People
After President Donald Trump reportedly disparaged Africa and Haiti early this month, more and more Americans don’t take the president seriously when he says he’s the “least racist person”—especially when it comes to black people.
In a new poll by the The Washington Post and ABC News published this week, the number of those who strongly believe Trump has a bias against black people lept from 36 to 40 percent since the question was asked in a similar poll last November.
The survey sampled the views of 1,005 adult Americans from January 15 to 18, after The Post reported that several sources told the paper Trump wondered aloud during an Oval Office meeting early this month why the U.S. takes in immigrants from “shithole countries” in Africa, and others like Haiti and El Salvador.
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The new poll shows that the number of Americans overall who believe Trump is biased rose from 50 to 52 percent.
African Americans appear to already believe the president is biased, with 79 percent saying he is biased compared to 45 percent of white people in the recent poll.
During the first year of his presidency, Trump took aim at many African Americans, chastising black NFL players who kneel during the national anthem before games in a civil right protest against police violence, and stirring racial tensions by saying there were “very fine people on both sides” after a white supremacist march involving that KKK in Charlottesville last August.
Last November the president engaged in a feud with LaVar Ball, the father of an American basketball player who was incarcerated on suspicion of shoplifting in China, after Trump mocked Ball for not thanking him for securing his son’s release.
Last October the president also quarreled with the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, an African American soldier killed during an ambush in Niger, as well as Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson after they said he wasn’t respectful during a condolence call.
“I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you,” Trump told reporters at his Florida golf club in his defence January 14 after the The Post reported he disparaged a number of nations with predominantly black populations.
Earlier this month Trump touted low unemployment numbers among African Americans and said his approval rating among black Americans has doubled.
But black Americans aren’t buying it. Last month a Quinnipiac University poll that asked respondents about Trump’s treatment of people of colour saw 86 percent of black Americans say that he doesn’t have the same respect for them as white people.
When Trump visited the unveiling of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in December, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which helped lead the African-American civil rights movement, condemned him.
Trump’s “statements and policies regarding the protection and enforcement of civil rights have been abysmal,” they said in a statement, calling his attendance “an affront to the veterans of the civil rights movement.”