PHILADELPHIA—Donald Trump says “inner-city” African-Americans will vote for him because of how miserable their lives and neighbourhoods are.

The African-Americans of North Philadelphia say Donald Trump is an ignorant bigot.

Trump’s campaign has described his recent rhetoric about black people as outreach. With actual black people, it seems to have produced little but outrage. Trump, Philadelphians said in interviews this weekend, is offering blacks not a helping hand but a slap in the face.

“Extremely insulting. And I think purposely insulting,” said lawyer Rasheedah Phillips, 32.

“He’s getting the ships ready. He wants to send us back over to Africa,” said Douglas Skipworth, 33, who does maintenance work.

“Black folk aren’t fooled by this thing. African-Americans are clear about who Trump is,” said professor Anyabwile Love, 41, watching his 2-year-old son. “Many other elections, local and national, it’s been the lesser of the two evils. In this, it’s not even lesser of two evils. It’s one is completely against us and one is not.”

Trump has a historically dreadful approval rating with black voters, as low as 1 per cent. But as he frantically attempts to convince white people that he is not a racist, black people have suddenly become central to his message.

Which black people believe is racist.

In a series of August speeches and interviews, none to a black audience, he has described black lives as hopeless, black families as dysfunctional, black areas as murderous cesspools.

“It’s just, like, a total catastrophe,” he told Fox News. “No health care, no education, no anything.” He has also said blacks have “no homes,” live in virtual “war zones,” and “get shot” when they dare to venture outside.

There the Loves were on Saturday: black father and black son, playing outside, not getting shot. At a park party for residents of gentrifying Brewerytown and adjacent blight-plagued Sharswood, two neighbourhoods with significant black poverty, the only hint of violence came when Joyce Green, a gregarious 67-year-old, began laughing at Trump.

“When I see some black faces standing behind him, I want to get a little pop gun and shoot through my TV screen,” joked Green, a retired nursing home worker. “Because: you’re not listening to who you’re standing behind.”

Green objected to Trump’s claims, but to his tone, too. Instead of approaching black voters with empathy, she said, he is dripping with condescension.

“You’re saying it like, ‘I pity the African-Americans,’ ” she said.

Kids danced, teens tossed a football, moms and dads checked raffle tickets in the shade. Talmadge Belo stood in the hot sun. A devoted Republican for four decades, he tried for a minute to contain his “disdain” for his party’s nominee, then contemplated Trump’s “get shot” remark, then gave up.

“I think he’s crazy,” said Belo, 73, vice-president of the Brewerytown-Sharswood civic association. On Sunday, he skipped city Republicans’ annual clambake, a staple of his calendar, and made himself spaghetti.

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Prosperous black suburbanites have pointed out that Trump is ignoring their existence. Black urbanites said he is misleading the world about theirs.

“I’ve been walking these streets 33 years. I’ve never been shot, stabbed, robbed,” said Skipworth. “It ain’t that bad. It’s bad, but it ain’t that bad.”

One Trump supporter disagreed. Shawn Gerald, 35 and on disability, applauded Trump’s controversial closing pitch to blacks: “What do you have to lose?” He said Trump is right: his neighbours, he said, live in poverty and “broken homes.”

“They walk around proud,” he said, “like they got something. They don’t got nothing.”

But others took Trump’s generalizations as personal affronts. No homes? Virginia Whitaker, 76, bought her beloved house in Brewerytown in 1962. No education? Businessman Brandon Ford, 30, graduated from Penn State University.

“I haven’t been shot. I got an education,” said Donte, a 17-year-old high school student. “Or — I have an education. Just in case he hears this.”

The contempt was strong. Navy veteran Rodney Thomas, 50, said he stopped paying attention to Trump long ago, his mind made up, for this reason: “I hate stupidity.”

In 30 interviews, the Star found as many residents — two — who believe Trump will try to deport black people as residents who plan to vote for him. Even a man who agreed with Trump’s depiction of the black community complained that the saviour was offering no solutions.

“Our schools suck. Our housing situation sucks,” said Andre Wright, 37, founder of the youth program Give and Go Athletics. “There’s no resources. The economy is not built for us to prevail. I agree with all those things. He’s pointing out the obvious. But what is he going to do about it?”

Residents overwhelmingly saw racism in Trump’s decision to emphasize the black contribution to widespread social problems like homelessness. Jasmine Rhine, 27, worried that a Trump presidency would foster bigotry in young schoolchildren: “Are the white kids going to say, ‘Well, since our president doesn’t like black people, or Mexican people, I don’t like you either?’ ”

Sharswood has descended from middle-class respectability into dire disrepair, its streets dotted with abandoned row homes and overgrown vacant lots. But people still live there, and they aren’t cowering.

On Sunday, Niah Fenwick’s 15th birthday, her family and friends lounged on the sidewalk eating ice cream. When Trump came up, complaints came pouring forth. Herman Kirkland, a supervisor at a detention centre, softly declined to join in the pile-on.

“He’s a lost person, man,” said Kirkland, 27. “I don’t even watch him. That’s how mad I get. It’s all negativity. All you can do for a man like that is pray for him.”

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