Dear Donald Trump,

I’m black and I have never lived in poverty nor have I ever been shot at walking down the street. In fact, I have been gainfully employed since I graduated from college and even run a small business part-time. Further, I don’t come from the “broken homes” that you referenced during your rally in Akron last night. My parents just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last Saturday. I was born in wedlock. Also, I have been married to the same man for nearly 23 years, with the union producing two sons. That’s more than I can say for you, a man with five children by three baby mamas.

You talk about wanting to help the black community find its spirit again and improve the lives of people living in the inner cities. This is probably the best opening for the Republican Party to make some inroads in the black community, but you aren’t qualified to take the lead on that issue. You see, we remember the Racist things you have done and said through the years. I’m talking about the housing discrimination lawsuit brought by the Justice Department, which you settled without admitting guilt. Yeah, the one that stemmed from all the cases in which your people were instructed to write a “C” by every black applicant, who were later rejected for renting one of your apartments. Then we had the Central Park 5. You remember taking out a full page ad calling for the death penalty to be sought in the rape of a Central Park jogger. You never apologized for your harsh words when the five men of color were exonerated. Instead, you assailed New York City for the $40 million settlement.

Fast forward to 2008. That’s the year when most people learned how disgusting you are. You demanded then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s birth certificate and college transcript. You said he was a Kenyan and a Muslim. You even offered $5 million to a charity of Obama’s choice if he just anted up the documents. You even claimed his long form birth certificate was forged. You see, you went full birther. Then there’s the claim that Obama was a terrible student who got into Harvard University because of affirmative action. You continued to denigrate the nation’s first black president from 2008 to the 2012 presidential Campaign and even beyond.

Ah, the present. During your presidential run in 2016, you continued to attack President Obama along racial lines. You veered into far more dangerous territory when you said he was in cahoots with ISIS following the Orlando shooting massacre. In fact, just last week, you called him the founder of ISIS, along with co-founder Hillary Clinton. When ISIS was founded as a result of the horrible tactics employed by the George W. Bush administration because of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. You also implied that there will be widespread voter fraud in predominantly black areas of Pennsylvania, for example. You even called on some of your supporters to register as election watchers.  You even retweeted fake black crime stats from a white supremacist. Have you taken a look at some of the content posted by your campaign staff online? Oh, but you must find new material to retweet.

How could I forget the fact that you are waltzing across the dance floor with the ALT-right crowd, as evidenced from your choice of a campaign CEO, Steve Bannon. Have you seen some of the articles that appear on Breitbart? Conspiracy theories, insults, and racially-tinged articles and outright racist comments? Andrew Breitbart engaged in the high-tech lynching of former USDA director Shirley Sherrod, editing a video to show she was openly racist towards a white farmer. That was a shameful lie. You have also aligned yourself with conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Alex Jones and his Infowars site. It took you days to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, but he seems to think he still have your support. How else can you explain his U.S. Senate run? You see, the people that you roll with don’t have our backs.

Some of your armed supporters protested outside the NAACP’s Houston headquarters with White Lives Matter and 14 Words signs. We know what “14 words” is referencing — rebuilding the white race to be superior at the expense of all others. Your campaign has white nationalists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis celebrating. So, excuse me if I call bullshit to your appeal to black and Hispanic voters to rally around you and cast our ballots for you in November or during early voting. Doubling down on fears and stereotypes are an affront to all black and brown voters in this country.

No matter how Kellyanne Conway tries to repackage and rebrand you, you’re still a racist, no-nothing ignoramus.

Let me close with two words to your minority outreach — fuck off.

Sincerely,

Janet Shan

No Donald Trump, I’m Black and Have Never Lived in Poverty Or Been Shot At Walking Down the Street