During President Trump’s formative years, Queens — the New York City “outer borough” in which he grew up — was transformed from an all-white enclave into a racial and ethnic battleground. The forces unleashed in those struggles shaped Trump’s current policies on both immigration and racial integration. …
Taken together, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — with attendant white flight — drove the upheavals that converted Queens into one of the most diverse counties in the nation. To those who love it, it is a vital, dynamic, multicultural community of people who enrich one another’s lives in myriad ways. To Trump, residents of modern American inner cities are “living in hell.” CONT.
Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times