WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday made a pitch for African-American support to an audience of black educators, emphasizing the economic gains that have been made since he became president and glossing over a summer of racial taunts aimed at Democratic lawmakers of color.

[Related: Trump is speaking at an H.B.C.U. His allies will outnumber the students.]

Speaking to a National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week conference in downtown Washington, Mr. Trump seemed to make the case that economic gains that benefited African-Americans would prove more important to voters of color than any of his tweets.

“When I’m on that debate stage, these are pretty good numbers,” Mr. Trump said, after ticking off what he claimed was the lowest African-American poverty rate in history. “Who’s going to beat these numbers? Please tell me.”

Mr. Trump, whose approval rating among black voters is 10 percent, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, compared with a 48 percent approval rating among white voters, called his administration’s commitment to supporting historically black colleges and universities, known as H.B.C.U.s, “bigger and better and stronger than any previous administration, by far.”