But more than ever, the question is being asked: Is Mr. Trump personally racist?

The few African-Americans in his inner circle respond with an emphatic no. Most privately describe him as a 71-year-old man with fixed views and a cloistered history, raised in a heavily white enclave in Queens, who came of age and built a tower in the Manhattan sky when New York City was roiling with racial strife.

“Just because you’re a nationalist and you’re white doesn’t make you a white nationalist,” said Katrina Pierson, an African-American who was a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign. “Putting Americans first makes you a nationalist and in that case, I’m a nationalist. I think we should take care of our families and our children first.”

Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development and the only African-American in Mr. Trump’s cabinet, said while on a trip to Louisiana on Monday that the controversy over Mr. Trump’s statements on the violence in Charlottesville were “little squabbles” that were “being blown out of proportion.”

“We have got to begin to think more logically and stop trying to stir up controversy and start concentrating on the issues that really threaten us and threaten our children,” Mr. Carson said.

Critics see a man who has viewed African-Americans as tools for his personal advancement. The Democratic National Committee on Thursday distributed a litany of past offenses, under the headline “Trump’s Very Long History of Racism.”