Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump has yet again put his foot in his mouth in another failed attempt to address issues affecting people of color.
The Trump campaign has been aiming to increase their “outreach efforts” to the African-American community as the election draws near, but one of Trump’s latest proposals is yet again doing more to drive Black voters away than appeal to them.
WANT MORE FROM ESSENCE? Subscribe to our daily newsletter for the latest in hair, beauty, style and celebrity news.
Speaking during a town hall meeting on Wednesday, the GOP front runner responded to an audience question about his plans for addressing violence in Black communities by suggesting that New York’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” practice be implemented across the country.
“One of the things I’d do, Ricardo, is I would do stop-and-frisk,” Trump said. “I think you have to. We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically.”
The stop-and-frisk practice, championed by former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, involved targeting people for searches by police based solely on their appearance. The policy was heavily criticized by NYC residents, many of whom described it as blatantly racist and discriminatory against people of color. Several well-documented incidents connected to the stop-and-frisk practice also proved that it increased the already-high instances of racial profiling of African-Americans in NYC.
Oh, not to mention the practice was ruled unconstitutional in 2013.
According to Think Progress:
According to the ruling, the department carried out searches in a “racially discriminatory manner” and disregarded individuals’ right to privacy, and the judge ordered remedies and a federal monitor to oversee the department.
But even before it was banned, the practice was far from successful. Over a period of ten years, approximately 5 million people, largely African Americans and Latinos, were stopped by the NYPD. Roughly nine out of 10 walked away without an arrest or a ticket.
Bloomberg and other New York officials justified the policy by claiming it would reduce crime, specifically shootings, and would help the police department recover guns. But according to a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union, in more than 5 million stops, police recovered a gun less than 0.02 percent of the time.
Trump championing stop-and-frisk as the answer to solving problems of violence in African-American communities just proves how out of touch he is with Black voters yet again.