Fiery, but Mostly Peaceful Sara

Now that I’ve researched the propagandized claim that “Donald Trump was convicted of racial discrimination in New York,” I must dispute it, not only because it is patently false, but also because it was a lawsuit against Trump Management when Donald’s father, Fred Trump, was in charge, occurring merely five years after the 1968 Fair Housing Act was enacted—for various reasons, I wouldn’t consider the lawsuit among that which I consider paint an accurate representation of Donald Trump’s personal feelings towards black people, especially in the fully desegregated days of the 1990s to now.

Before I dive into the facts behind the racial discrimination conviction claim, I want to squash that misinformation from the start for those of you who don’t read past the first couple of paragraphs—Donald Trump has NEVER been convicted of racial discrimination or any wrongdoing regarding racially discriminatory acts, even in the 1973 New York lawsuit against Trump Management.

The Justice Department sued Trump Management in 1973 for claims of discrimination against black folks who were attempting to rent Trump Management owned properties. In the lawsuit, they did list Trump Management, Trump’s father, Fred Trump, as the company’s chairman, and a 20-something year old Donald Trump, as the recently appointed president of the company, as the defendants in the suit.

The Trumps, in turn, countersued the Justice Department for $100 million for defamation, and insisted that they weren’t guilty of any racial discrimination. They claimed that the government was actually using this lawsuit in attempts to try and force them to accept welfare participants as renters of Trump Management properties. The Trumps asserted the government had seemingly just done that with another big New York property management company through a similar discrimination lawsuit, and that the government had no proof of any wrongdoing on the part of the Trumps because it wasn’t true that they were committing racially discriminatory acts against potential renters.

After two years of fighting the Trumps in New York courts, apparently the government was, in fact, unable to prove Trump Management was discriminating against blacks trying to rent Trump properties, just like the Trumps had insisted would be the inevitable outcome of what they called a frivolous and defamatory lawsuit. By this time, the Trumps were tired of trying to fight this endless, financially draining, time consuming, and apparently unwinnable battle in the courts and gave up, agreeing to sign a consent decree to finally put a stop to the years long court battle.

This is where the propagandized claim greatly differs from the truth, and what actually happened in reality. The Trumps agreed to sign a CONSENT DECREE to put an end to the seemingly endless lawsuit; THE TRUMPS WERE NOT CONVICTED OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION NOR ADMITTED TO ANY WRONGDOING.

A consent decree is a legal agreement whoch is signed by both parties in a lawsuit that resolves a dispute between the two parties WITHOUT any admission of guilt or liability on the part of the defendants; therefore there’s NO conviction involved in the resolution of the lawsuit.

To be crystal clear—neither Donald Trump, Fred Trump, nor their property management company Trump Management were EVER convicted of racial discrimination in New York like the aforementioned allegation asserted.

Attached is a screenshot of the New York Times Article detailing the situation [remember, the NYT are NOT fans of Donald Trump’s and do NOT write articles in attempts to sugarcoat things to make him look better; if anything, they do exactly the opposite], and in their article they mention, “while there is no evidence that Mr. Trump [Donald] personally set the rental policies at his father’s properties, he was on hand while they were in place, working out of a cubicle…” and go on to admit, “there has been no suggestion of racial bias towards prospective residents in the luxury housing that Mr. Trump focused on as his career took off in Manhattan in the 1980s.”

A couple of notably important facts can be derived from that snippet of that New York Times article: firstly, while it’s true that a young Donald Trump was beginning to be made a part of the Trump Management business as of the 5 years prior to the 1973 lawsuit; he was NOT Fred Trump, the maker of policy for Trump Management.

Secondly, seemingly, Donald Trump was a cubicle-dwelling paper pusher at the time of the lawsuit, likely unaware of any acts of racial bias towards prospective black residents, if anything untoward did actually occur, because he simply wouldn’t have been in the position of an employee whose job it would be to be interacting with any folks inquiring about vacancies in the Trump Management properties.

However, thirdly, since the 1980s when he got his own property management business up and running—accusations of racial discrimination have not only never been hurled at him through legal means, but racially discriminatory acts has NEVER even been suggested to be occurring either by his company or under his charge!

To me, that conveys that if there was any level or form of racial discrimination happening within Trump Management in 1973, it was entirely due to FRED Trump, and his ante-Civil Rights, segregation era business practices carrying over into the next decade of a newly, more racially integrated America; NOT the fault of the young Donald Trump learning the ropes at his father’s business.

Though, with all of that being said, I still personally don’t believe that the veracity of the 1973 lawsuit claim would have necessarily been indicative of Donald Trump’s ultimate personal feelings towards black people in 1973, or during the 1990s, when he was the first private country club in Palm Beach, FL to accept Jews and blacks as members, or now as president of the United States.

From everything I’ve read about the 1990s Mar-a-Lago incident, both contemporaneously in newspaper archives to more recent accounts, especially from sources who’ve become irrationally vehemently against President Trump in everything that he does over the past decade, I now intransigently believe that it, in fact, all happened exactly as I originally understood and precisely how I wrote about it.

After further research, I still believe:
☆Trump was the first private country club in Palm Beach, FL to openly accept Jews and blacks as members,
☆the city of Palm Beach attempted to dissuade him from allowing blacks and Jews to become members by enacting ridiculous, unjust restrictions solely on Mar-a-Lago,
☆Trump, through his attorney, sent the members of the city council each two classic movies, originally based on books, about discrimination: “A Gentleman’s Agreement,” about a journalist who pretends to be Jewish to expose anti-Semitism, and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” about a white couple’s reaction to their daughter bringing home a black fiancé,
☆Trump repeatedly engaged in various lawsuits with the city of Palm Beach over the matter, refusing to be bullied into disallowing anyone based on their skin color or religious beliefs.
☆As a result, his unwavering fight against racial and religious discrimination at Mar-a-Lago resulted in great changes in the entire city of Palm Beach, FL, as it caused other Palm Beach private country clubs to eventually also open their doors and membership to the blacks and Jews they had previously refused admission to.

Some say Donald Trump doesn’t deserve any credit for his actions and the resulting good that came out of it all because they insist he was solely doing it all as a business move to make more money. Others praise it as his noble crusade to fight for the acceptance of Jews and blacks, and against the unjust ways of upscale country clubs of the still segregated South.

Honestly, I don’t know if it was altruism or business savvy behind his decision to spearhead that fight against racial discrimination, and I’ll never be a mind reader to learn the truth about why he did it.

Fortunately, I don’t feel the need to attribute motive to it for me to appreciate him making the choice to enter that fight, especially when he wasn’t affected by the discrimination as a white Christian man, therefore he clearly wasn’t obligated to take a stand on behalf of others, and he could have made his life simple, uncomplicated, and undemanding by not participating any of that unnecessary, irrelevant fight.

Nor do I feel it necessary to ascribe motive to his actions for me to admire his choice to take a stand on the matter, and to find I’m now more fond of and have more respect for him for having had the heart and the cojones to do it.

I reckon it’s rather important for folks to genuinely understand it wasn’t his fight, and his life would have been unchanged irrespective of whether or not Jews and blacks could be members of private country clubs in Palm Beach.

Sources:
☆https://web.archive.org/web/20160829035807/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/politics/donald-trump-housing-race.html
☆https://web.archive.org/web/20160828194028/http://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/13/archives/realty-company-asks-100million-bias-damages-no-names-or-addresses.html
☆https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/politics/donald-trump-housing-race.html
☆https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB862335923489989500
☆https://web.archive.org/web/20200622075826/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/01/trump-claims-no-one-has-done-so-much-for-equality-as-he-has-citing-his-private-club/
☆https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/01/trump-claims-no-one-has-done-so-much-for-equality-as-he-has-citing-his-private-club/