By: Sharada Koti
November 12 2020
During an election rally in Dimondale, Michigan in 2016, President Trump said "your schools are no good" while addressing African-American voters.
During an election rally in Dimondale, Michigan in 2016, President Trump said "your schools are no good" while addressing African-American voters.During a rally for the 2016 Presidential elections in Dimondale, Michigan, President Trump asked African American voters to give him a chance. “Tonight, I’m asking for the vote of every single African American citizen in this country who wants to see a better future,” he said. "What do you have to lose by trying something new, like Trump? You’re living in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed, what the hell do you have to lose?” Trump's rhetoric for wooing the African-American community during the 2016 elections emphasized portraying the African-American community as being stuck in the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder and that the community needed a change in leadership for their lives to improve significantly. In one of the rallies in North Carolina, Trump remarked, "Our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they've ever been in before. Ever, ever, ever." The New York Times said: "The unrelievedly dire picture he has painted of black America has left many black voters angry, dumbfounded or both. Interviews with roughly a dozen blacks here turned up no one who found any appeal in Mr. Trump’s remarks. More common was the suggestion that Mr. Trump was trying to appeal to whites who might support him."