Twitter corrects Donald Trump: Not all black people live in inner cities

Impact

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sure has a limited understanding of minority groups in the United States. When asked a question about his devotion to the U.S. population, Trump implicitly suggested all African-Americans live in inner cities — and viewers were enraged.

"My question is, do you believe you can be a devoted president to all the people in the United States?" audience member James Carter, a black man, asked Trump and his opponent, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

At one point in his response, Trump declared he'd be "a president for all of the people" — then launched into some disturbing talk of inner cities, mired in racist stereotypes:

African-Americans, the inner cities, [it's] devastating what's happened to our inner cities. She's been talking about [it] for years, but as usual, nothing happens. She doesn't get it done. Same with the Latino and Hispanic Americans — the same, exact thing. They talk, they don't get it done. You go into the inner cities, 45% poverty. African-Americans, 45% poverty in the inner cities. The education is a disaster. Jobs are essentially nonexistent.

On Twitter, angry debate viewers spoke out against the harmful stereotypes Trump seemed to be perpetuating. Not all black people live in inner cities, they pointed out — and not all people who live in inner cities are black.

And by the way, Trump's statistics on poverty in inner cities are wrong, too. According to Poverty USA, the poverty rate in metropolitan areas is 15% — lower than the rate of poverty outside metropolitan areas, which is 17%.