Trump’s Racist Dad and Donald’s Racist Beginning in NY’s Real Estate

=Blizzard Edition=

The following article was written by NATHAN TEMPEY IN ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT (Gothamist).

 as we wait for the blizzard we might get a little hot under the collar to learn about the rotten apple that fell from the rotten tree,

Woody Guthrie was no fan of fascism. (Public domain)

Folk icon Woody Guthrie, like many valiant New Yorkers before and after him, hated his landlord. Among the legions of aggrieved tenants, Guthrie is unique in that a) he was a pretty handy writer of songs and agitprop b) in the early 1950s he put some of that gift towards griping about his landlord's greed and racism and c) that landlord was Donald Trump's dad and silver spoon provider Fred Trump.

A Gawker contributor recently paid a visit to Guthrie's archives in Oklahoma and uncovered a trove of Trump-bashing lyrics inspired by the troubadour's time at Trump's lily-white Beach Haven development in Gravesend, Brooklyn. 

As Gawker explains, the bard lived for two years in the middle-income development, backed by a Federal Housing Administration that, as part of its middle-class-building project following World War II, had become an ardent propagator of racial segregation. The elder Trump would later be investigated for over-billing on public contracts, but during his time as a tenant, Guthrie's chief concern was the racism of his neighbors and the exclusion of black people from "a decent place to get pregnant in and to have your kids raised up in." 

At the time of the 1950 Census, the tract that contained Beach Haven was home to 1,804 people, all but two of whom were white. The census takers did not record the races of the ultra-minorities in the neighborhood.

To an imagined African-American couple, Guthrie wrote in his notebook, "I’m yelling out my own welcome to you."

There were also these little ditties:

I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project

And, to the tune of "I Ain't Got No Home":

Beach Haven ain’t my home!
I just cain’t pay this rent!
My money’s down the drain!
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven looks like heaven
Where no black ones come to roam!
No, no, no! Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!

 The segregation at Beach Haven is one of many instances of overt and alleged bigotry attributed to the Trumps, spanning a period from Fred Trump's youth all the way to his son's current run for the country's highest office on a platform of naked racism and xenophobia. For example:

A man with Fred Trump's name and address was, according to a New York Times articlepublished in June 1927, arraigned after 1,000 Ku Klux Klan members attacked police in Queens. Donald Trump denied the man arrested was his father to the Times, then in the same interview seemingly confirmed it, saying, "It’s unfair to mention it, to be honest, because there were no charges."

A 1978 Village Voice investigation chronicled the fight over alleged systematic discrimination against black renters by the Trumps, and how they leveraged political connections to make millions. (Village Voice)

In the early 1970s, when Donald Trump was in his late 20s and beginning to play an executive role in his father's real estate empire, the federal government sued the Trumps, saying their company refused to rent to black people, and was throwing black apartment-seekers off by instructing supers and agents to claim units were no longer available, represent rents at higher than actual prices, and send them to an office to apply while white renters were given applications on site.

The Donald told the Times the charges were "absolutely ridiculous" and Trump Management sued the U.S. government for $100 million. A judge threw out that lawsuit, and in 1975 the Trumps settled, agreeing to send the Urban League a list of apartment vacancies weekly and let the organization send qualified applicants for one of every five listings for two years. After the agreement expired, the feds sued again, saying Trump Management was back to violating the Fair Housing Act.

Throughout the battle, Donald claimed that his company was being persecuted for refusing to house welfare recipients who couldn't afford apartments, which had no apparent basis in the allegations.

In 1983, the state's Division of Housing and Community Renewal said that two Trump Village developments in Coney Island were at least 95 percent white.

In 1989, the Trump of Our Time told SPY magazine that white people bear the brunt of discrimination these days, saying, "If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage."

The magazine also reported that a Trump Organization executive instructed a temp agency not to send black temp workers. A company spokeswoman denied the allegation, saying, "We have a new [black] gal [and] I think we have another one still with us."

In 1991, Trump the younger was accused by a former Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino president of saying "laziness is a trait in blacks" and "Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day." Trump later told Playboy that the former employee's book was "probably true," but that "the guy's a fucking loser. A fucking loser."

There was also, famously, the full-page ads Trump took out in newspapers during the prosecution of the Central Park Five calling for their execution over their alleged role in the rape of a white jogger. Following the exoneration of the five, Trump has been unapologetic, telling the Daily News: 

They should be very thankful I wasn’t mayor because they wouldn’t have gotten a dime. They owe the taxpayers of the city of New York an apology for taking money out of their pockets like candy from a baby.

The more recent the racial and nationalistic provocations, the more familiar—for instance, Trump's howling for President Obama to produce his birth certificate—but throughout it all, Trump says he has followed in the footsteps of Papa Fred.

This summer, Trump told the Washington Post, "My legacy has its roots in my father’s legacy."

The Trump legacy of racism doesn't just live on in the candidate's calls for President Obama's birth certificate, or his proposal that we destroy millions of immigrant families, or his calls to register Muslim-Americans. The Brooklyn zip code of Woody Guthrie's former home is still two-thirds white, according to census data, and has an African-American population of just 4.2 percent. The tract containing Beach Haven is even whiter, with 3,701 people of European ancestry living there, 81 percent of the total population, compared to just 142 African Americans, or 3 percent.