Adebayo Adeniyi
A Black college student who was thrown out of a Donald Trump rally said the incident has caused him to lose faith in America.
According to The New York Daily News, Adebayo Adeniyi, a student at East Carolina University, was part of a group of Black people escorted out of a Trump rally in Fayetteville, N.C. At the same event, Rakeem Jones was sucker-punched by Trump supporter John McGraw as he was being led out by police. McGraw is now facing assault and battery, and disorderly conduct charges.
McGraw was unrepentant about his actions.
“He deserved it,” said McGraw in a video posted by Inside Edition. “The next time we see him, we might have to kill him. We don’t know who he is. He might be with a terrorist organization.”
Adeniyi said he wanted to attend the Trump rally to observe the spectacle of the billionaire’s controversial presidential run.
“I was there just to watch and experience the surreal moment of someone like Trump running for president and speaking to thousands of people,” Adeniyi told The Daily News.
However, he said he was randomly targeted and escorted out of the arena by police. Adeniyi captured the incident on video. Adeniyi said he considered ignoring the police’s order to leave, but he thought that would only make the situation worse.
“At first I refused to leave because it was all just a product of being Black at a Trump rally. Basically, in that environment, I’m guilty by association. But common sense told me to just listen to the cops and move along,” he said.
It was bad enough that Adeniyi was thrown out of public venue for not doing anything, but the reaction of the crowd was truly shocking. As he was escorted out, a middle-aged white man screamed profanities at him and slapped him in the face.
“The hate in his eyes. The words. The hate in those words. The slap. It was disgusting and sad. At that moment I believed that America will stay and continue to be a hateful and bigoted country,” he said.
Adeniyi told The New York Daily News that this kind of hate should not happen at a political event.
“These are presidential candidate rallies. I’m not at a KKK rally,” he said. “The fact that I experienced hate at a candidate rally tells you everything you need to know about Donald Trump and the people that support him. People will act more hateful and racist in environments that they feel not only encouraged to do it, but accept it as normal,” said Adeniyi.
Unfortunately, acts of hate and violence are becoming regular occurrences at Trump rallies. A Black protester in Alabama was beaten in front of police; a Black college student who attended a rally in Kentucky was assaulted and called the n-word and a c**t; and a Black Clemson professor, wearing a Muslim head scarf, was removed from a Trump rally.
Dr. Chenjeria Kumanyika said he is not a Muslim, but he wore the scarf as part of an experiment.
“There’s a real atmosphere of fear, and that’s an atmosphere where somebody is benefiting from that. We don’t need to target the people that are made scared, but we need to look at those who are benefiting from this fear,” he said in a 7 News story.
At last night’s CNN debate, Trump denied he is motivating violence. But he has encouraged supporters to assault protesters and promised to pay their legal fees.
