Ever since Donald Trump blamed President Obama for the poverty and violence black people face in his “home town” during the Republican National Convention, the GOP candidate has become increasingly obsessed with the city of Chicago.  “We have a situation where we have our inner cities – African Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it’s so dangerous,” Trump said at this week’s presidential debate. “You walk down the street, you get shot. In Chicago, they’ve had thousands of shootings, thousands since January 1. Thousands of shootings. And I say, where is this? Is this is a war-torn country? What are we doing?”  A reasonable person would think that someone who loves to talk about a city as much as this would, in turn, care about it – especially when that person has his name on one of the tallest buildings in that city. But reasonable and Trump are two words that rarely go together.  I can’t believe that Trump’s love of Chicago as a talking point has anything to do with him wanting to make it better for black people. Rather, it seems like an easy way of connecting with the racist assumptions of his supporters.  Chicagoans haven’t forgotten what happened when he touched down in March to attend his first rally in the city, at a university that prides itself on its diversity. After hearing about the crowd of protesters outside the venue, he cancelled the event, claiming police advised him to. Chicago PD, however, stated that they issued no such instruction.  The arena exploded with a mixture of celebration and anger. Trump supporters took out their rage at the cancellation on the minorities who had come to show that they would fight to ensure he didn’t win the election – and being there that day I can tell you “minority” was definitely not the word they used to describe us. The anger seemed to unite them in their support for Trump more than anything he could have on stage. It gave them a clear enemy.  Trump has continued to use that moment in his Chicago-focused rhetoric. He also likes to cite the city’s violent crime and homicide rates, boasting that he could bring them down – and that, for this reason, black people should vote for him. His strategy, he told Bill O’Reilly, would involve the police being “very much tougher” than they are now. He even claimed a “top police officer” had told him that he could fix the problems in “one week”. (Chicago police denied that any member of the senior team had met with him).  Meanwhile, his former campaign manager, when asked why Trump doesn’t discuss these issues with those affected by them, said that while he had once tried to go to talk to African Americans in Chicago, “it was not a safe environment”.  Trump has yet to reschedule the rally, but he has since returned to the city for other events – the latest being lunch at a suburban country club that sold tickets ranging from $1,000 to $250,000. On the same day he spoke at the Polish National Alliance headquarters. Two places in which the only black people he would likely encounter would be working there.  As the campaign continues, I expect he’ll carry on avoiding neighborhoods like the south side of Chicago. Places he’d actually have to engage with communities subject to some of the violence he tries to exploit, not, in my view, to win the support of black voters, but to gain the sympathy of supporters who don’t believe black lives actually matter.  Because to be quite blunt – and to borrow from Kanye West, the most famous artist of late to come out of the Windy City – I believe Donald Trump doesn’t care about black people. Especially those who have died.
The Republican candidate is fond of quoting the city’s violent crime statistics – but he won’t come and talk to us face to face. I think I know why