Donald Trump is pushing forward several proposals that seem to totally contradict his outreach to the African-American community.
Donald Trump has just put forward a proposal that is probably not going to make him a whole lot of friends in the black community — not that he had a whole lot of support there to begin with. In the midst of his outreach to African-Americans, the Republican presidential nominee says that he wants to expand “stop and frisk” nationwide, a controversial policy in New York City that many say racially profiles African-Americans.
During a Fox News town hall that aired this week, Trump said he would deal with “violence in the black community” by allowing police officers to stop and pat down anyone they think might be carrying weapons or drugs. He said the program did “incredibly well” in New York and would help cut down on crime.
That stance will certainly not help his pitch to African-Americans, who largely view the policy as discriminatory against them. He has also slammed African-American communities as being in the “worst shape that they’ve ever been in before,” and even said those communities were more dangerous than places in Afghanistan.
Trump has also called to increase the number of police offiers in inner cities at a time when tensions between the African-American community and the police are at all-time highs, saying that police should be given even more latitude to do what they want.
Civil liberties groups have slammed stop and frisk as a practice that racially profiles without producing results. The New York attorney general produced a repor tin 2013 that showed that just 3 percent of stop and frisk stops resulted in convictions over a three year period, and guns were recovered less than 0.02 percent of the time out of 5 million stops.
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