Us Election : Why Trump Gained Support Among Minorities
Despite his election defeat, President Donald Trump can boast a success that has intrigued pollsters – he was more popular with ethnic minority voters than in 2016.
Some might find this surprising given that his critics so accused him of racism and Islamophobia. Trump denies the charges and has accused Democrats of taking African Americans voters for granted.
The Republican president gained six percentage points among black men, and five percentage points among Hispanic women. It means some voters changed their minds, after either not voting or voting for another candidate in 2016.
But it tells us something about Trump’s unique appeal.
“I was definitely more liberal growing up – my grandmother was big in the civil rights movement here in Texas during the 60s, and I grew up with that ideology.”
Mateo Mokarzel, 40, is a graduate student from Houston, Texas and is of mixed heritage, Mexican and Lebanese. He didn’t vote in 2016, and he isn’t loyal to either major party – but this time around he decided to cast his vote for the Republicans.
“The first time Trump ran I really wasn’t convinced. I just thought, here’s this celebrity talk-show host guy that wants to run for president, I didn’t take him seriously – so I was not a Trump supporter the first time he ran. To be honest, I thought he was a ringer for Hillary, so I just wasn’t interested,” he tells BBC News.
But Mokarzel says his upbringing in Texas influenced his view of both political parties.
An Obsession With Dark
He began his 2016 presidential campaign with a speech disparaging Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists.
He uses the gang MS-13 to disparage all immigrants. Among many other statements, he has suggested that Obamas protection of the Dreamers otherwise law-abiding immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children contributed to the spread of MS-13.
In December 2015, Trump a a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, including refusing to readmit Muslim-American citizens who were outside of the country at the time.
Trump said a federal judge hearing a case about Trump University was biased because of the judges Mexican heritage.
In June 2017, Trump said 15,000 recent immigrants from Haiti all have AIDS and that 40,000 Nigerians, once seeing the United States, would never go back to their huts in Africa.
At the White House on Jan. 11, Trump vulgarly called forless immigration from Haiti and Africa and more from Norway.
Trump regularly demonized dark-skinned immigrants before the 2018 midterm elections, and his campaign produced an ad about a caravan of migrants traveling through Mexico that was so racist even Fox News to air it. He claimed that the same caravan included criminals and unknown Middle Easterners.
Rolling Back Civil Rights Protections
In January 2021, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice sought approval to end enforcement of the Civil Rights Act in cases of “disparate impact” on minorities. According to Civil rights groups, not being able to use disparate impact analysis would result in less accountability for organizations with policies that result in racially disparate outcomes, such as discipline for students of color, and treatment of residents of color by their city’s police force.
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The Moral Character Of His Presidency
Trumps presidency has corresponded with a surge in activity by white nationalist groups, as well as concern about the growing danger they pose.
Recent assessments by the Department of Homeland Security describe white supremacists as the countrys gravest domestic threat, exceeding that of the Islamic State and other terror groups, according to documents obtained by the Lawfare national security website and reported by Politico.
The FBI has expanded resources to tracking hate groups and crimes. FBI Director Christopher A. Wray testified Thursday that racially motivated violent extremism accounts for the bulk of the bureaus domestic terrorism cases, and that most of those are driven by white supremacist ideology.
Major rallies staged by white nationalist organizations, which were already on the upswing just before the 2016 election, increased in size and frequency after Trump took office, according to Brian Levin, an expert on hate groups at California State University at San Bernardino.
The largest, and most ominous, was the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
On Aug. 11, 2017, hundreds of white supremacists, neo-fascists and Confederate sympathizers descended on the city. Purportedly there to protest the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, they carried torches and chanted slogans including blood and soil and you will not replace us laden with Klan and Nazi symbolism.
Kelly and Cohn declined to comment.
Terminations Of Temporary Protective Status
In directives by DHS Acting Secretary Elaine Duke, the Trump administration began rescinding Temporary Protective Status for an array of refugees of dire circumstances in their home countries on Sept. 1, 2017, and continuing through at least May 5, 2018:
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Sudanese people: 1,000 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since 1997 amid armed conflict.
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Nicaraguan people: 2,500 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since a 1999 hurricane.
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Haitian people: 59,000 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
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Salvadoran people: 200,000 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since the 2001 earthquake in El Salvador.
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Nepalese people: 9,000 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.
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Honduran people: 57,000 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since a 1999 hurricane.
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An Oral History Of Trumps Bigotry
His racism and intolerance have always been in evidence only slowly did he begin to understand how to use them to his advantage.
The first quotation from Donald Trump ever to appear in The New York Times came on October 16, 1973. Trump was responding to charges filed by the Justice Department alleging racial bias at his familys real-estate company. They are absolutely ridiculous, Trump said of the charges. We have never discriminated, and we never would.
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In the years since then, Trump has assembled a long record of comment on issues involving African Americans as well as Mexicans, Hispanics more broadly, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, women, and people with disabilities. His statements have been reflected in his behaviorfrom public acts to private preferences . Trump emerged as a political force owing to his full-throated embrace of birtherism, the false charge that the nations first black president, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States. His presidential campaign was fueled by nativist sentiment directed at nonwhite immigrants, and he proposed barring Muslims from entering the country. In 2016, Trump described himself to The Washington Post as the least racist person that youve ever encountered.
I. You Dont Want to Live With Them Either
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Trumps problems with white voters have only deepened since the midterms. He is seeing erosion among working class whites in addition to those who are relatively well-off. Nearly 80 percent of white evangelicals supported Trump in 2016 only 62 percent approve of him now. In 2016, Trump won white senior citizens by huge margins. This year, hes running neck-and-neck with his Democratic rival among seniors.
In short, to the extent that Republican votes are being driven by race, it seems to be in the opposite way from what the prevailing narrative would suggest. Rather than energizing people who would have otherwise sat out, Trump seems to have suppressed turnout in 2016 among Republican-leaning voters. Rather than driving defections toward Republicans through his racialized rhetoric, he seems to be driving Republican-leaning voters into the arms of his opposition.
Despite mocking academia and the media as biased, the president seems to have fully bought into their caricature of the Republican voter.
Of course, it is not just journalists and scholars who misunderstand the situation. Despite mocking academia and the media as biased, the president seems to have fully bought into their caricature of the Republican voter. As Voxs Jane Coaston aptly put it, Trump campaigns like a Manhattan liberal parody of a conservative. He keeps giving his voters what he thinks is red meat, and they continue to recoil in horror and abandon him for it.
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How The Democrats Lost Touch On Trade
Anderson: I would push back on that a bit. What weâre seeing is the death of it operating so visibly. But when you look at the differentiation in wages, for instance, when you look at the differentiations in wealth, when you look at who took the hardest hit and rebounded the least after the Great Recession, whiteness carries incredible value in American society. But you get this language of equalityâI mean, this is why, to me, you get Abigail Fisher hollering that, because her father went to the University of Texas, she deserved to get in there. Now, the fact that she didnât get the grades to get in there is irrelevant. The fact that there were a number of African-Americans and Latinos who had higher grades and higher scores than she had who also werenât admitted is irrelevant. So, to me, itâs not the death of white supremacy. Itâs the death of the visibility of whiteness carrying such incredible economic and political value in the American system.
It makes it even more curious, actually, following the Great Recession, that African-Americans continue to make great strides in terms of falling mortality rates Hispanics have the best mortality rates of the three groups.
Deaton: Itâs true that black mortality rates are falling very rapidly, but theyâre still highest among the three groups.
Opiniontrump Thinks Biden Lacks Voter Enthusiasm He Missed The Anti
Nor did the GOP win a majority of white votes specifically because of Trump. Republicans have captured the lions share of white votes in every presidential election since at least 1972. Theres no sign that these voters wouldnt have backed Jeb Bush, or John Kasich had one of them ended up the 2016 nominee, just as they also backed Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush in previous years all leaders who have condemned Trumps rhetoric towards minorities.
In short, the overwhelming majority of people who voted Republican in 2016 were not voting for Trump, but for the party. And if the primaries are any indication, most would have preferred to be able to vote for some other Republican instead. Trump got the lowest primary vote share of any GOP nominee since 1968.
In fact, the most common negative word associated with Trump last cycle, even among Republicans, was racist . As political scientist Matt Grossmann put it, His negative statements about minority groups were recognized by voters but not positively.
This isnt the dominant narrative, though, and research and media coverage often serve to back up the idea of the race-driven Trump voter even when the data they are using shows otherwise, as I demonstrated in a recent paper for The American Sociologist.
In a typical example, an author purported to demonstrate that Trump voters were especially motivated by racial animus. In fact, his data showed that Trump voters were less racist than Romney voters.
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Nyc Subway Assault Tweet
On August 30, 2020, Trump retweeted a video showing white woman being shoved into a subway by a black man. The video was labeled “Black Lives Matter/Antifa” but in reality the video depicted a mentally ill individual with no connection to either group. The video was originally posted on social media by a white nationalist.
The Politically Motivated Ingrates Of Puerto Rico
Lets face it, Puerto Rico has been dealt a very poor hand in the aftermath of the 2017 hurricane season . And when it came time for the Trump Administration to spring into action, they dropped the ball. Inevitably, Trump mozied down to Puerto Rico, made an appearance, then called the Puerto Rican people politically motivated ingrates when his administration was scrutinized for its lack of assistance.
Next: Hes chummy with this outwardly racist politicians and government officials.
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Friendliness With Proud Racists And White Nationalists
“@WhiteGenocideTM: @realDonaldTrump Poor Jeb. I could’ve sworn I saw him outside Trump Tower the other day! “
Donald J. Trump
He has retweeted white nationalistswithout apology.
He called some of those who marched alongside white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., last August very fine people.
After David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed him, Trump was reluctant to disavow Duke even when asked directly on television.
Trump hired Steve Bannon as his campaign head and later White House chief strategist. Under Bannons leadership, the website Breitbart madewhite nationalism a central theme. It featured a section, for example, on black crime.
Trump has endorsed or praised politicians who have made racist statements, defended the Confederacy or associated with white supremacists, includingRoy Moore in Alabama.
Trump pardoned and fulsomely praises Joe Arpaio, the Arizona sheriff sanctioned for racially profiling Latinos and for keeping immigrants in brutal prison conditions.
A Brew Of White Supremacy And Self
In short, those 71 million votes arent just a fad. The backbone of Trump support still very much stands. In racial terms, whiteness indeed is the most common denominator.Read on Vox: Election results: White people make up the majority of Trump voters in 2020 So there certainly is truth to the theory that racism, xenophobia and status preservation from that group are fundamental driving forces for voting for Trump.
But there are also other motivators that stem from voters immediate self-interest. From the 1%, to large corporates and publicly traded companies, to small business owners and those afraid of or in the grip of unemployment, Trump managed to either create economic benefits or capitalise on tailwinds of economic improvement, to really cut through.
In a political system that makes few other transformative offerings, economic prosperity is the most immediate benefit
For those who already secured employment, grew their businesses or received tax windfalls, the motivation to maintain these benefits is even more powerful than the motivation in 2016, when they were just promises. Biden and the Democrats can then be successfully cast as a threat to a persons economic fate.
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Central Park Jogger Case
On the night of April 19, 1989, Trisha Meili was assaulted, raped, and sodomized in Manhattan’s Central Park. On the night of the attack, five juvenile malesâfour African Americans and one of Hispanic descentâwere apprehended in connection with a number of attacks in Central Park committed by around 30 teenage perpetrators. The prosecution ignored evidence suggesting there was a single perpetrator whose DNA did not match any of the suspects, instead using confessions that the suspects said were coerced and false. They were convicted in 1990 by juries in two separate trials, receiving sentences ranging from 5 to 15 years. The attacks were highly publicized in the media.
On May 1, 1989, Trump called for the return of the death penalty by taking out a full-page advertisement in all four of the city’s major newspapers. He said he wanted the “criminals of every age” who were accused of beating and raping a jogger in Central Park “to be afraid.” Trump told Larry King on CNN: “The problem with our society is the victim has absolutely no rights and the criminal has unbelievable rights” and, speaking of another case where a woman was raped and thrown out a window, “maybe hate is what we need if we’re gonna get something done.”
Here Are 13 Examples Of Donald Trump Being Racist
Republican presidential front-runnerDonald Trump may have failed to disavow the Ku Klux Klan in late February, but hell have you know he is not racist. In fact, he claims to be the least racist person that you have ever met, and last summer he pulled out the old standby about not having a racist bone in his body.
But he hasnt given us a lot of reason to believe that. In fact, despite Trumps protests to the contrary, he has a long history of saying and doing racist things. Its not really surprising that hes won the support and praise of the countrys white supremacists.
Heres a running list of some of the most glaringly racist things associated with Trump. Were sure well be adding to it soon.
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Moving Date Of Tulsa Rally
Trump had planned to hold his first rally since March on June 19, 2020, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but this provoked an outcry as it would have overlapped âa day commemorating the end of slavery. The rally also caused controversy due to the location’s associations with the Tulsa massacre, the worst case of racial violence in American history. Trump initially defended the plans, stating that his rally would be a celebration, but then announced that the rally would be moved to June 20 “out of respect”.
