13.
“We Thee Abused United States American
Veterans et al (American) “Negro DNA Race”… PLANTIFFS”,
Further state Chief Defendant(s)
Donald John Trump Sr. Discrimination patter and practices direct at African
Americans among other people of color as follows:
Since 2010, nearly 300 United States
residents have applied for jobs at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, but
only 17 were hired.
Meanwhile, Trump pursued more than 500 visas for foreign
workers at the resort, the New York Times reports.
Trump’s fondness for guest workers was
brought to national attention by Reuters last summer, when the news service
reported that the Donald had sought visas for over 1,000 foreign laborers since
2000.
The Times investigation shows that those visas weren’t pursued for a lack
of domestic applicants.
“The only reason they wouldn’t get a
callback is that they weren’t qualified, for some reason,” Trump insisted, in
an interview with the paper. “There are very few qualified people during the high
season in the area.”
But Tom Veenstra, senior director of a
job-placement service in the area, disagrees, telling the Times, “We have
hundreds of qualified applicants for jobs like those.”
14.
“We Thee Abused United States American
Veterans et al (American) “Negro DNA Race”… PLANTIFFS”,
Further state Chief Defendant(s)
Donald John Trump Sr. Discrimination patter and practices direct at African
Americans among other people of color as follows:
NEW YORK — When a black woman asked to
rent an apartment in a Brooklyn complex managed by Donald Trump’s real estate
company, she said she was told that nothing was available. A short time later,
a white woman who made the same request was invited to choose between two
available apartments.
The two would-be renters on that July
1972 day were actually undercover “testers” for a government-sanctioned
investigation to determine whether Trump Management Inc. discriminated against
minorities seeking housing at properties across Brooklyn and Queens.
Federal investigators also gathered
evidence. Trump employees had secretly marked the applications of minorities
with codes, such as “No. 9” and “C” for “colored,” according to government
interview accounts filed in federal court.
The employees allegedly directed
blacks and Puerto Ricans away from buildings with mostly white tenants, and
steered them toward properties that had many minorities, the government filings
alleged.
In October 1973, the Justice
Department filed a civil rights case that accused the Trump firm, whose
complexes contained 14,000 apartments, of violating the Fair Housing Act of
1968.
The case, one of the biggest federal
housing discrimination suits to be brought during that time, put a spotlight on
the family empire led by its 27-year-old president, Donald Trump, and his
father, Fred Trump, the chairman, who had begun building houses and apartments
in the 1930s.
The younger Trump demonstrated the brash,
combative style that would make him famous, holding forth at a news conference
in a Manhattan hotel to decry the government’s arguments as “such outrageous
lies.”
He would also say that the company wanted to
avoid renting apartments to welfare recipients of any color but never
discriminated based on race.
The Trumps retained Roy Cohn, a
defense attorney who two decades earlier had been a top aide to Sen. Joseph
McCarthy (R-Wis.) during his infamous effort to root out communists in
government.
Cohn portrayed the Trumps as the
victims and counter-sued the government, demanding it pay them $100 million for
falsely accusing them of discrimination.
For Trump, whose statements as a
presidential candidate about Mexican immigrants, women and Muslims have drawn
charges of racism and sexism, his role as a defendant in a discrimination case
put him near the center of a civil rights-era struggle over society’s changing
views about race and culture.
The 20-month legal battle marked the
first time Trump became a regular presence on newspaper front pages. It served
as an early look at the hardball tactics he has employed in business and, more
recently, in politics. And its resolution showed how Trump, even in the heat of
battle, is often willing to strike a deal.
This account is based on a review of
more than 1,000 pages of court records, including hearing transcripts and
affidavits that have received little attention in the decades since the case,
as well as interviews with people involved in the case.
Aspects of the case were reported at
the time, and other details, such as the racial coding allegations, gained
notice in a 1979 Village Voice investigation and more recently in a Daily Beast
story.
Trump declined to be interviewed. His
attorney, Alan Garten, said via email that there was “absolutely no merit to
the allegations.”
“This suit was brought as part of a
nationwide inquiry against a number of companies, and the matter was ultimately
settled without any finding of liability and without any admission of wrongdoing
whatsoever,” Garten said.
“Targeting the Trumps”
Donald Trump’s ascent in his family’s
business, after his 1968 graduation from business school, came as allegations
of race discrimination were mounting against landlords across New York City.
Housing bias had become a major policy issue in Congress.
Many whites were relocating to the
suburbs, and minorities often moved in to rent or buy properties. Concern about
the issue peaked following race riots that broke out across the country after
the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Amid growing evidence that landlords
were refusing to rent to minorities, Congress acted one week after the King
assassination by passing the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned such
discrimination.
The Trumps’ company had encountered
allegations of discrimination before Donald Trump arrived.
On at least seven occasions, people
seeking apartments had filed complaints about alleged “discriminatory
practices” with the New York City Commission on Human Rights.
The company resolved the complaints
individually by offering apartments to each minority applicant, but critics in
New York said the patterns of bias continued.
As company president, Donald Trump
took an interest in all levels of the business, according to his own accounts.
He often helped his father with management
chores, including collecting rent, sometimes from unruly tenants.
Civil rights groups in the city viewed
the Trump company as just one example of a nationwide problem of housing
discrimination.
But targeting the Trumps provided a
chance to have an impact, said Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was then chairwoman
of the city’s human rights commission.
“They were big names,” said Norton (D), now
the District’s representative in Congress.
No comments:
Post a Comment