According to a Trump campaign chair in Ohio, there was “no racism” before President Barack Obama.
Kathy Miller, who heads up the campaign in Mahoning County, made the remarks in an interview as part of the Guardian’s Anywhere but Washington video series.
“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” she said in the video. “You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.”
In her comments, Miller also called the Black Lives Matter movement a “stupid waste of time” and blamed low African-American voter turnout on “the way they’re raised.”
“I don’t think that’s part of the way they’re raised,” she said. “For us, I mean, that was something we all did in our families, we all voted.”
She then denied having seen any racism in the 1960s when she was graduating high school and said that there was no racism until the Obama era.
“I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this … Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.”
What’s more, when Miller was told some people might take offense to her comments, she simply replied, “I don’t care, it’s the truth.”