Donald Trump is so dependent on racial and ethnic antagonism that without it he would be a marginal figure, relegated to the sidelines.
Trump’s constant demonization of Black people and immigrants has inured the public to the fact that he is the first — or certainly the most explicit — modern president and party nominee to transparently generate, not to mention exacerbate, fear and white animosity toward people of color.
Despite his appeal to a small if potentially crucial segment of Black and Hispanic men, racial bigotry has been central to Trump’s appeal from his initial quest, in 2015 and 2016, to take over the Republican Party. In the closing days of the 2024 election, he continues to foment race hatred and to rely on it ever more intently.
The 2018 book, “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America,” by the political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck, documents the success of Trump’s strategy.
“Trump was distinctive in how he tapped into white grievance,” they write. “Trump’s primary campaign became a vehicle for a different kind of identity politics” — one oriented around capitalizing on the feeling of many white people that they were being “pushed aside in an increasingly diverse America.”
Trump crushed his primary opponents by magnifying and mobilizing the racial resentment and bitter discontent endemic in the Republican electorate.
How endemic? Sides, Tesler and Vavreck write that in late 2015, a P.R.R.I. survey found that 64 percent of Republicans claimed to believe “that ‘discrimination against whites has become as big of a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.’ ”
Trump has consistently capitalized on the vulnerability — and the racial prejudice — of these white voters, repeatedly legitimating their sense of victimization and grievance.
“There is a definite anti-white feeling in this country and that can’t be allowed,” Trump told Time magazine in April.
Trump’s history of racist comments and actions is long and deep.
In 1989, famously, Trump paid $85,000 for full page ads in four New York newspapers calling on authorities to severely punish the Central Park Five, Black and Latino teenagers accused of rape and assault but later exonerated. “They should be forced to suffer, and when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes,” the Trump ads declared. More recently, he and his running mate, JD Vance, have caused havoc claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating their new neighbors’ pet cats.
For Trump, the angry Republican electorate has been fertile ground, and it is getting even more so, as the United States inexorably moves from a once overwhelming white majority to a white minority. From 2010 to 2022, the non-Hispanic white share of the population fell to 58.9 percent from 63.8 percent. In roughly 20 years, according to the U.S. census, whites are predicted to make up less than half of the population.
Trump initially rose to power on the backs of white voters who feel most aggrieved by what they see as the subversion of their status, employment and income by ascendant people of color.
What does Trump’s rise say about the level of bigotry and prejudice in this country? Stanley Feldman, a political scientist at Stony Brook University, emailed his response to my query:
“There’s no question that Trump has made appeals to whites who are threatened by the growing size and influence of Blacks and Latinos a central part of his campaigns and rhetoric,” Feldman wrote:
His signaling to white voters is clear: “Minorities are a threat to your way of life and I will restore white, Christian dominance in the U.S.” You could see this clearly in his response to the Black Lives Matter protests that occurred after the George Floyd killing. His threats to send in the military to break up the protests sent a clear message to white voters about his position on race relations and his willingness to use the power of the federal government to control the growth of minority power.
But, Feldman continued,
It would be a mistake to label all of Trump’s white supporters as ethnocentric or racist. Partisanship remains a powerful influence on vote choice in the U.S. and some of his followers are more focused on limiting access to abortion and defending traditional gender norms. And there’s no question that he is benefiting in this election from deep dissatisfaction with the Biden administration because of inflation. But his clear appeals to white voters who want to halt or even roll back minority gains has been a major factor in his effective takeover of the Republican Party. It’s what set him apart from the other Republican primary candidates in 2016 and it has helped him increase the proportion of racially fearful whites in the Republican Party.
Trump’s unambiguous support of white Christian America is a crucial factor in the willingness of the majority of his supporters to either overlook or accede to his habitual lying, to dismiss the multiple criminal charges and convictions against him as the work of “corrupt” Democrats, and to endorse his endlessly repeated and provably false claim to have won the 2020 election.
Arlie Russell Hochschild, a sociologist at Berkeley and the author most recently of “Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, described by email the conclusions she reached during the research and writing of her book after “talking to people in Kentucky’s Fifth Congressional district, the whitest and second poorest congressional district in the country”:
The people I talk to do not believe they are racist and are insulted when they see themselves so described on CNN. They roundly rejected a 2017 white nationalist march through Pikeville, Ky., led by the neo-Nazi, Matthew Heimbach. Many I talked to were proud to have the first integrated cemetery, and there are town markers commemorating an early century Black female poet.
But they also sense themselves sinking and are threatened — by, in order of importance, immigrants, refugees, Blacks, women, highly educated “elites” — who are doing better than they are — and feel these categories are favored by the Democrats over them. They feel the Democrats are consumed by ‘identity politics’ and have, because of it, wiped white men off the Democratic social map.
Most of Trump’s appeal is based, I argue in “Stolen Pride,” on his call to turn the shame of white, non-B. A. downward mobility into blame. Primary among the many targets of blame are immigrants, but secondary are Blacks and women — sort of ‘secondary immigrants’ threatening to replace white males in the status hierarchy.
Since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Democratic Party has struggled in its efforts to deal with racial issues, while the Republican Party has repeatedly used crime, busing, urban decay and immigration to divide the Democratic coalition.
Trump’s focus on such divisive issues is a political strategy, in the view of Christopher Stout, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego:
Trump is unique in that he has made explicit racial outreach a core part of his campaign. He did this in 2016, 2020 and now again in 2024.
It also helps him expand his base by motivating voters who generally do not vote to turn out. For example, white non-college educated voters turn out in larger numbers for Trump than they do in other years. However, this messaging around race may make it difficult for him to appeal to swing voters, and in particular, college educated suburban women who feel uncomfortable with his messaging on this topic.
Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at UC-San Diego, sees Trump as an avatar of malice. “Extreme rhetoric fanning fear and hatred of nonwhite immigrants and urban minorities is central to Trump’s current campaign,” Jacobson wrote by email. “I assume he thinks it works for him.”
Trump, Jacobson argued, would be a stronger candidate if he moderated his rhetoric:
Trump’s appeals to racial resentment and fear of nonwhite immigrants helps motivate his MAGA base but does not do much to expand his coalition. I think he would probably be more competitive if he relied more on subtler dog whistles to remind the MAGA crowd of where he stands (they don’t have to be told explicitly) while focusing on exploiting economic woes and other sources of unhappiness with the direction of the country.
The fundamentals — the Biden-Harris administration’s low approval ratings in every policy domain, large majorities believing the economy is poor or only fair, the reality of higher prices for necessities — favor Republicans this year. Trump could benefit from focusing on these problems and addressing them in terms that make him appear reasonable. This could even include a less hysterical approach to immigration. But it is not in his nature to do so.
According to Samuel Sommers, a professor of psychology at Tufts, Trump’s emphasis on racial and immigration issues is less a strategic decision than a reflection of Trump’s persona:
It’s difficult to play out the counterfactuals with confidence, of course, but one can conceive of a universe in which a Republican campaign would be quite competitive in the current election cycle by focusing on public discontent with consumer prices and inflation, foreign policy, and other domains contributing to what some pundits have referred to as fundamentals favorable to a Republican candidate.
In fact, some reporting indicates that Trump campaign officials have tried to steer the candidate toward those issues. His focus on racial hostility, in terms of policy rhetoric and how he talks about his opponent, appears to be somewhat of a personal choice.
One of the selling points of Trump’s messaging is its appeal to white voters who believe that government policies treat them unfairly.
Jack Goldstone, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, emailed his assessment of Trump’s modus operandi:
Racial and ethnic hostility has become a core element of the Trump campaign’s messaging, policies and rhetoric. You see it in everything from the wild claims that the Biden administration is diverting FEMA emergency aid away from Americans who need it to buy migrants cellphones and hotel rooms to Trump’s claims that ‘open borders’ are being used to bring in immigrants who murder Americans and will (illegally) vote Democratic.
Despite this, Goldstone continued,
It is important to realize that such appeals are not based simply on crude racism. Rather, they build on a fairness narrative that undeserving “others” — immigrants, LBGTQ+ people, racial minorities — are getting resources and privileged treatment that is being denied to native-born white Americans. It is not that minorities are “bad” as such — while some Trump supporters are white supremacists, the vast majority are not — what packs emotional punch is the belief that minorities are being unfairly favored while native-born white Americans are under attack. Trump and his acolytes do everything they can to say that Democratic treatment of racial, ethnic and religious minorities is unfair and damaging to native-born white Christians.
Trump, Goldstone argued,
is deeply dependent on the idea that “things are unfair” to him and to his supporters. Whether it is cheating at elections or opening borders to criminals and murderers or diverting FEMA funds, it is all a vast conspiracy to portray Trump and his supporters as victims of an unpatriotic, anti-American elite who are out to ‘get them,’ and who therefore must be defeated and deserve retribution. Without these beliefs, his movement would quickly lose steam.
There is, however, what Goldstone calls “an element of truth” that gives Trump credibility among his supporters:
That it has become more difficult to rise out of the working class into the upper and professional classes. Blue collar jobs don’t pay as much and don’t have the benefits that they used to; college has become much more expensive and competitive to get into; housing in middle and upper class areas has become far more costly; and economic growth became more concentrated in major metro cities and less widely shared in rural and small-town America.
For Trump, it is important that his supporters do not see these trends as the result of changes in technology, international economic competition, and profiteering by private businessmen. Instead, he wants his followers to see these trends as a deliberate effort of Democratic leaders and “elites” to undermine traditional America and deliver the country into the hands of “others.”
How crucial is racial and ethnic hostility to Trump’s presidential campaign? Darren Davis, a political scientist at Notre Dame, addressed that question in an email:
A large component of Trump’s appeal is driven by racial resentment and racial prejudice, though there are a host of reasons people may be attracted to Trump — such as a (mis) perceived business shrewdness, tough talk on foreign affairs, and his stance on immigration. Without tapping into and triggering citizens’ racial resentment and racial prejudice, Trump would not be competitive. He is incapable of articulating traditional conservative values.
What strategies and policies on racial issues might Kamala Harris, Tim Walz and other Democrats adopt to counter Trump? Davis’s suggestions:
Policies that are explicitly racial or that are perceived to benefit Blacks will likely incur intense backlash in this political climate (examples: BLM, wokeness, 1619, DEI). Because resentment is rooted in ideals of fairness, justice, and deservingness (American ethos and meritocracy), Democrats might frame policies that emphasize American values, justice, civic virtue, and the negative consequences of inequality.
With three weeks to go in the campaign, Robert Jones, founder and president of P.R.R.I. and author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy,” wrote by email:
We’re rapidly running out of superlatives to describe how extreme Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has become. He’s clearly amped up his harsh and violent rhetoric. Even in 2020, his rhetoric largely focused on building a wall and keep out undocumented immigrants. But in 2024, his rhetoric has shifted almost exclusively to talking about immigrants as the deranged and violent enemy who has already invaded the country.
He talks about immigrants slitting the throats of housewives in their kitchens and raping young girls and promises mass arrests, militarized encampments, and deportation. His rhetoric has now moved — there’s really no other way to say it — fully into Nazi territory. He has called immigrants “not human” and referred to them as “animals.”
More disturbingly, Jones added,
Trump has taken his supporters with him on this extremist journey. In 2013, a majority (53 percent) of Republicans supported a path to citizenship for immigrants living in the country illegally; by 2019, that number had dropped to 39 percent.
Today, two thirds of Republicans (64 percent) and a majority of white evangelical Protestants (54 percent) agree even with Trump’s dehumanizing assertion, echoing Hitler’s arguments in “Mein Kampf,” that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ We know these words are the bricks paving the road to political violence and even genocide.
Perhaps even more disturbing: Trump has at least a 50-50 chance of once again becoming president.
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