Rick Bowmer/AP Photo
A view of suburban Salt Lake City
Not if Trump has anything to do with it.
Trump’s support in the polls has been collapsing, especially in the suburbs. So Trump has resorted to one of the oldest racist tricks in the book: Blacks are moving in, and it’s the Democrats’ fault!
In a recent tweet, he ranted:
“At the request of many great Americans who live in the Suburbs, and others, I am studying the AFFH housing regulation that is having a devastating impact on these once thriving Suburban areas,” Trump tweeted Tuesday night. “Corrupt Joe Biden wants to make them MUCH WORSE. Not fair to homeowners, I may END!”
The once-thriving suburban areas, presumably, are on the skids because you know who have moved in.
There are two problems with this. Trump’s HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, has already gutted the Obama fair-housing regulations. And the pace of integration of the suburbs remains glacial. Most lily-white suburbs are still all too lily-white.
Indeed, many once-integrated neighborhoods are becoming whiter due to rising housing costs and gentrification. So Trump’s pitch will fall flat.
Trump’s pathetic appeal to crude racism in suburbia is a mark both of his tin ear at this moment of broadening commitment to racial justice—and his utter desperation.
