June 06, 2016
Make America what again?
If you're anything like me, you might have a sneaking suspicion that the subtext behind a certain political campaign is "Make American White Again." Well, it turns out there's some evidence that points that way. There's more on that here. And then, apropos of nothing, there's this.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
News Feed (RSS & Atom)
2 comments:
Sorry, I don't buy it. First of all, there's a problem with the question: Is support for Trump (on the part of his base, middle aged and older whites) correlated with racism or with economic anxiety and resentment? Namely, that the two could be linked--they feel their jobs and economic viability are threatened by black and brown people taking those jobs. Secondly, this is based on how people in surveys or as primary voters chose Trump over Clinton--but Clinton is a whole ball of wax of her own. For example, I will not vote for either under any circumstances--expect to vote for Stein in November unless Sanders survives. Does this mean I'm a moderate Trump supporter, since I think Clinton would be equally devastating to this country? I regard the assertion that Obama is a Muslim (or that it would matter if he was for that matter) as on a par with the moon being constructed out of cheese. If the studies were based on primary votes, then they measure how Republicans assessed Trump as against the clowns in that car--a rather meaningless question.
thanks for this thoughtful response, Mary Wildfire.
my reaction to Rick's post was initially resistance - I am so weary of folks reflexively responding to Trump's careless oversimplified gut-level pronouncements with opposing careless oversimplified gut-level pronouncements.
but then I tried to test Rick's "make America white again" hypothesis with some of the real-live Trump supporters I encounter in daily life.
distilling the comments, all from white people, most middle aged and older but also including one young mother, it seems to me that these Trump supporters' resentment is much more focused on white liberals/progressives, whom they see as using non-"white" people (African Americans, Hispanics and Muslims from troubled parts of the world) as pawns, in their (white liberals/progressives) drive to force their (elitist, out-of-touch with reality) vision for society on everyone else.
according to these friends and acquaintances, "make America white again" is an exaggeration of their views, but contains a grain of truth. about as much truth as de-coding opposition to liberal/progressive climate change proposals to mean "make the planet hotter again."
Susan J.
Post a Comment