The president and ceo of the national urban league. mark, tell us based on your report, how would you best describe the current state of black america? i think our social and economic traditions are frozen in a sort of suspended animation, zerlina. meaning the comparative position of blacks versus whites, when it comes to jobs, and housing, and life expectancy, and health care, remains a wide gap, a gap that hasn t changed for multiple decades. now, you always have to qualify it, because of the black people serving as a bit of a caboose on the american train. meaning when the train speeds, the condition and position of black people may improve, for example, a high school graduation rate for black people is higher today than it was 30 years ago, but it s also higher for white americans. the gap hasn t narrowed as much. for things like joblessness, and
Of this. it s an extraordinary press conference, former apprentice members of color. what is it in your experience with donald trump brought you to the conclusion he was racist such that it you had that press conference, tara? for me, there were several things. the first is when he proposed a blacks versus whites season of the apprentice. i thought that was horrific. and just the damage that something something like that would do and that he was seriously considering it and floating the idea. that was point one. omarosa talks about marc burnett setting the seasons up that were provocative, where you had teams mostly black or mostly white. that was the way the show was built. that was not experienced on my season but there were very few blacks on my season specifically. i will say this, donald trump, i saw sort of the evolution of him deciding to make race his basically his platform. and so it started for me with
The blacks versus white season he proposed on the aprep tispr and then him being the chief spokesperson on the birther movement and the way he treated randall when randall was such a dominant, unequivocal winner of that season that randall won and he asked him to share his apprenticeship with the with the white contestcontestant. he had never done that with any other contestants. the way randall won, there was no competition. it wasn t as if it was so close and he was asking him to share it. to me, it was about diminishing randall and what he accomplished, taking him down a tack because he was so dominant. how did omarosa was tasked with responding to all of you when you did your press conference. did she reach out to you? did she talk to you about it? yes. for me, omarosa was calling me the day before we were going to do the press conference.
Particularly space among african-americans where i live to pass marriage equality. you can see this happening. it s a generational change. people are looking at this differently. and the law has to catch up. i don t want to interrupt you. but i want to reveal what you re saying here. when we look at the recent quinnipiac polls on marriage in general, we see kind of the support in opposition is 48, 46. when we look by age, it s really kind of a generational question. secular change over time is going to bring it. by race, as you just point out, as much as we hear blacks versus gays narrative that we often here, the fact is by race, we have a majority of african-americans, 52% and latinos, 59% in support of marriage equality in the election in 2012. that s absolutely right. there s been so much progress in addition to the president coming out for marriage and i agree creating that space.