US President Donald Trump has long, controversial history when it comes to views about race relations
Trump’s four decades in the public eye began with a discrimination lawsuit against young Donald and his father, New York City developer Fred Trump
Last summer, when Donald Trump’s comments about Mexicans and Muslims led to widespread accusations that he harboured racist attitudes, the candidate pushed back, insisting: “I am the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered.”
As evidence, Trump cited an endorsement he had received from a weekly newspaper published in Ohio by Don King, the legendary African-American boxing promoter.
“Now, Don King knows racism probably better than anybody,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post. “He’s not endorsing a racist, OK?”
But how would Trump persuade those who believed he was a racist that wasn’t the case?
“I’m not concerned,” he replied. “Actually, I’m not concerned because I don’t think people believe it.”
From his first public controversy in the 1970s, when the federal government sued Trump and his father over discriminatory rental practices in their New York real estate empire, to the opening salvo in his 2016 presidential campaign, when he said that Mexicans entering the US were criminals and “rapists”, Trump has regularly fanned the flames of racial controversies.