At his rally in Toledo, Ohio, on Thursday, Donald Trump used the politically incorrect term "ghetto" as a placeholder for "inner city," which is itself racially charged.
"We’re gonna work on our . . . ghettos," Trump said, searching recklessly for the right turns of phrase. "You take a look at what's going on, where you have pockets of — areas of land, where you have the inner cities and you have so many things, so many problems. So many horrible, horrible problems — the violence, the death, the lack of education, no jobs."
"We're gonna work with the African-American community and we're gonna solve the problem of the inner-city," he added. "We're gonna bring back jobs to the inner cities; we're gonna bring proper education, including school choice; and we're gonna bring safety back."
He never talks abt "trailer parks" with white folks so...somebody PLEASE tell Donald Trump that WE DON'T ALL LIVE IN THE GODDAMN "GHETTO?" pic.twitter.com/m9YZQM3hU4
— Kid Dynomike (@justmike74) October 27, 2016
Trump described the ghetto hellscapes where "you can't walk down the street" without "getting shot."
"So we're gonna work very strongly with the African-American community," he reiterated. "And remember this: the Democrats have been talking about this for years."
Maybe Trump should put his faith in Hillary Clinton, in that case. In 2011, Trump praised his Democratic opponent as a champion of the group he lovingly refers to as "the blacks."
"Here's two people, Hillary and Bill Clinton, who really devoted a lot to African Americans," Trump told the New Hampshire Union Leader, in remarks unearthed by CNN's KFILE. "They did probably as much as anybody."
Sen. Bernie Sanders got into similar trouble during the Democratic presidential primaries. During a debate in Flint, Michigan, Sanders said, "When you are white, you don’t know what its like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor."
“What I meant by that is, I think that many white people are not aware of the kinds of pressures and the kind of police oppression that sometimes takes place within the African-American community,” he later attempted to clarify. “In the African-American communities, you have police officers abusing people, and that is the point that I tried to make.”
This story has been updated.
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