Why it’s tough for Trump to win over black voters

He is up against not only his record, but also his party’s history on civil rights.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is heading to Detroit this week to visit a black church and to try to convince African Americans — and really, all voters — that he is not racist.

It may be a tough sell. Some polls, including the Associated Press-GfK survey this summer, suggest that half of Americans view Trump as racist. He was seen favorably by only 7% of African Americans polled.

But the Republican presidential nominee is determined to improve his standing with minorities; minority turnout can tip the balance in such key places as Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia.

“What the hell do you have to lose?” Trump thundered at a recent campaign rally, inviting black Americans to support him.

Trump says that Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton is just pandering to black voters and that Democrats have not delivered. He paints a grim, if broadly simplified, picture of poverty and jobless rates set stubbornly high in many black communities.

Amplifying that view is conservative televangelist Mark Burns, a Trump ally who aimed a series of tweets at Clinton, including a racially charged cartoon of her in blackface. Burns later apologized for recirculating it.

Film director Spike Lee told CNN’s Anderson Cooper this week that he doubts Trump will have much success with his outreach to black Americans.

After Trump’s heated rhetoric regarding minorities — including his criticism that an American-born judge overseeing the Trump University fraud lawsuits can’t do his job because of his Mexican heritage, and his reference to “my African American” in describing a black participant at one rally — it’s a slog, Trump critics say.

“It’s bigger than Donald Trump, and I think people — I believe Americans — are smarter than to go for this okey-doke,” Lee said on CNN.

The problem for Trump is history.

Before the civil rights battles of the last century, the Republican Party used to win about 30% of the black vote on average in presidential elections, according to an analysis by Claremont McKenna College professor John J. Pitney.

But when Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater opposed the landmark civil rights bill during the 1964 campaign, black voters broke away from the GOP.

Ever since, fewer than 6% of African Americans on average have voted for Republicans for president.

Trump may not be able to reduce that slide among black Americans.

But his outreach this week may help to soften the sting of past comments and improve his standing among white voters concerned about his brash language.

In Detroit, Pastor Wayne T. Jackson will welcome Trump to Saturday services at his Great Faith Ministries International. Afterward, Trump will sit for an interview, according to the Detroit News.

Jackson has several questions in mind for the candidate, he told the newspaper.

“I’m going to ask him that question,” he said. “Are you a racist?”