Woody Guthrie Wrote a Song About the Trump Family’s Racism. Seriously!
On This Day In 2020
Despite major progress achieved by the Civil Rights movement, housing discrimination remains a persistent problem for this country. President Obama attempted to help solve this issue, in part, by strengthening the Fair Housing Act of 1968. He insisted that jurisdictions receiving federal housing funds submit a plan to help reduce segregation in their areas.
Trump put a stop to all that: Before he entered politics, Donald Trump was an infamously racist housing developer who had been sued by the Justice Dept in the 1970s for his racial malice. And going back further in the dark Trump Family annals, Donald’s father Fred was such an ogre that in 1954 folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote a song specifically about Fred’s racist policies as landlord of his “Beach Haven” development.
Yes, that Woody Guthrie, the one who’s famous for celebrating America in “This Land is Your Land.”
Some of Guthrie’s lyrics include:
Finally, Donald gets his chance: True to the Trump Family’s long bigotted history, President Trump wanted nothing to do with an Obama law that made it easier for Blacks to obtain housing in the United States. So, now that he was president, he was finally able to do something about it on a national scale. In 2018 he forced his Administration to pause Obama’s rule, and OTDI 2020 Trump formally overturned it.
For decades, the Trump Family has repeatedly told Blacks "This Land is Not YOUR Land."
Biden/Harris Administration brings back common sense: They took steps to reinstate the former policy during their very first week in office.
2024 update: Yesterday, Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman noted the Trump/Vance "Cynical Attempt to Pit Recent Immigrants Against Black Americans" at their convention. He noted "There was a time when a rant like (theirs) would have signaled that a politician lacked the emotional stability and intellectual capacity to hold the highest office in the land. Alas."
As with so much of the Trump Administration, alas indeed.
Dive Deeper
The National Low Income Housing Coalition details the importance of the rule and Trump’s steps to overturn it
Here’s the Government’s case against the Trump Family
More on Biden/Harris’ actions to reverse Trump’s efforts
Amanda Petrusich, in the New Yorker, uncovered the story of Woody Guthrie the American Poet and Trump his Racist Landlord
Paul Krugman on Trump/Vance's efforts