Newsflash: Trump’s a Racist (But in a New Way)
Donald Trump has made bigoted, inflammatory comments against just about every group of people you can imagine during his 15 month campaign. Muslims, Hispanics, women, African Americans, disabled people, Jews. But he has a very dubious history with one group that hasn’t been a focus during this campaign: Native Americans.
Yes, Trump’s periodic referral to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” (a reference to a controversy wherein Warren supposedly listed herself as Cherokee on job applications) has raised some eyebrows, but Trump has made a habit out of demonizing and slandering Native Americans for much of his career.
Trump’s quibbles with Native Americans are intertwined with his casino enterprises. Gambling and casinos have provided many Native tribes with economic independence and even prosperity they hadn’t seen for centuries as a result of the apartheid policies that the U.S. government had implemented against Natives. In some of the poorest communities in this country, casinos have allowed tribes to provide social services and education that had been lacking in comparison to the rest of the country.
So, naturally, Trump saw this solely as competition for his casino business, leading to his extensive lobbying against expansions of Indian gaming. In 1993, Trump testified before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Native American Affairs. In his raucous, classically-Trumpian testimony, Trump stated that many Indian casino licenses to people who supposedly “didn’t look Indian,” even adding that “many people are laughing” about the government’s supposed willy-nilly flinging of licenses.
This was part of a heated debate with Rep. George Miller, a Democrat from California, who excoriated Trump for what he categorized as applying a “look-test” for casino licenses. Miller compared Trump’s ideas to a history of African Americans and Jews being denied mortgages and bank loans based on their identity, which Trump ignored.
He then went on a belligerent tirade implying that Native Americans were receiving special treatment from the government and went on to make unsubstantiated claims that organized crime is rampant on Indian reservations, a claim disputed by reports from the FBI, the IRS, and the Justice Department.
Miller would later say, “In my nineteen years in Congress, I’ve never heard more irresponsible testimony.”
Trump also attempted to halt Indian gaming from coming to the Catskills by bankrolling a 2000 ad campaign that utilized racist, fear-mongering imagery and language. The ad featured ominous imagery of needles and drug paraphernalia, which was accompanied by false and slanderous accusations against the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, which sought to open a casino in Monticello, New York, of having a documented history of criminal activity, asking “Are these the new neighbors we want?”
These ads were supposedly funded by an organization called the New York State Institute for Law and Society, but it was revealed later that — you’ll never guess — Trump had bankrolled the ads. He and his associates were forced to pay a $250,000 fineand issue an apology, but the damage was done.
It’s fairly obvious that Trump’s reasoning for opposing Indian gaming is because it would eat into the profits of his own casinos. He feared that New Yorkers would much more readily travel to the Catskills to gamble in a Native American casino than to Atlantic City to gamble in his casino.
He’s a tremendous businessman, after all, and tremendous businessmen look after their tremendous businesses at any cost, but this is only a small piece of the pie that is Trump’s history of stoking racial resentment for his personal gain.
Everything he has done throughout his life has shown that he has no regard for anyone other than himself. There is nothing suggesting his behavior will change in the White House.
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