Is Trump a Racist?

Last night I stayed up until 2:30 AM watching a remarkable documentary: Hitsville — The Making of Motown, which covered the years between the record company’s beginning in 1958 and its move to Los Angeles in the 1970’s.

What comes out of the movie, intended or not, is the degree to which this country, with the exception of South Africa, was the most racially segregated country in the Western world until the last several decades.

What made the white-black division so strong was not the laws per se, or perhaps I should say the lack of laws, but rather, the size and extent of the population which was kept segregated by customs and laws.

When I went to Europe for the first time in 1969, the only blacks I saw in France and England were American GI’s. When I visited London for the first time in 1970, the area occupied by immigrant from India was larger and more populated than the neighborhood consigned to the blacks.

I was born and raised in Washington, D.C. and attended a segregated school until the 5th grade. This wasn’t a private school — this was the public school system which was segregated until the integration was ordered after the Supreme Court pronounced Brown v. Board in 1953.

One of the black families which moved into our neighborhood was headed by a man who had been the only black commander of a warship…