TRUMP IS RACIST!

Just kidding, I know he's not really racist. I went with the "controversial" title to grab your attention, because I know a lot of people who have been conditioned into thinking he is the most racist man on Earth. So this is sort of a set of counterarguments that I want to put at your disposal.

---Now, the most obvious out of the way first. The most common argument you will hear about Trump being racist is what he said about Mexicans. Putting aside that "Mexican" is not even a race...
Actual quoite : "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
Assuming that racism means "People from another race than mine are inherently inferior and/or all alike", that statement couldn't be any less racist. He says right there that some of them are good people, that the Mexicans have their own "best people". He's simply stating that the ones fleeing their country to come here without permission aren't usually those best people. And counting the fact that of the estimated 11 million illegals in the US, 3 million of them have committed felonies or worse (a rate of over 25%), he seems to be on to something. Colorful language to be sure, but not racist, and part of a much larger speech that shows a man that's full of love for his country and its people.

---The tired routine about the KKK. So many factors render this "argument" completely moot. The KKK didn't even endorse Trump : its leader simply said that he found qualities in him. Even if they DID endorse him, that wouldn't mean anything. You have no control over who endorses you. The communist party endorsed Hillary; nobody batted an eye. Trump has repudiated and denied any interest in David Duke and his KKK innumrable times, except that one time where he seemed to not really understand the question and said "I'll have to get back to you on that" and did the next day. Of course the media jumped on that soudbyte and abused the hell out of it, but that doesnt' mean it's valid. THE KKK ARGUMENT IS NOTHING.

---The wall. I've already written quite a bit on this, so TL;DR is : several walls already exist in other countries and have supporters; the wall does nothing against people who want to come in a legit manner; it's perfectly feasable. As a matter of fact, both Obama and Hillary are on record voting for the construction of a fence between Mexico and the US in the last decade. Bet you did not know that.

---So many "racist" things attributed to him are so stretched that they barely mean anything anymore. We have anecdotal evidence of one of his black employees saying he said means things 25 years ago: what can I argue against that? Other than "it weighs nothing"? There's a giant page titled "Final Answer about Trump's Racism" with a hundred entries, but all those entries link to either Buzzfeed or Jezabel or Gawker (RIP) articles with no primary sources and no evidence. And do not forget that the zeitgeist changes very quickly: some of the things he might have said in 1981 will sound very rough to our ears, but they could have been pretty innocuous at the time. Running decades-old events through the filter of our offense-prone ears is not very fair. It's very easy to overblow everything in today's outrage culture.

After all this, my very boring conlusion is that Trump is no more or less racist than any other presidential candidate of recent history. He said several hair-raising things, sure. The man is a bit strange and seems to be having minor brain-farts sometimes. But he's far from the white-supremacist monster that his opponents wanted to paint him as.

This research was my main source for information. It's very interesting and nuanced, but I suspect no one will ever take the half-hour needed to read it.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/