Trump’s repeated use of the Mexican rapist trope is as old (and as racist) as colonialism
Donald Trump took time away from a tax reform meeting in West Virginia on Thursday to say, again, that Latin American men are a bunch of rapists, which is why we need stricter immigration laws in the United States. “And remember my opening remarks at Trump Tower,” he began, referring to his presidential campaign kickoff speech in June of 2015 when he said that Mexico is sending “rapists” along with drug traffickers and drugs.
“When I opened. Everybody said, ‘Oh, he was so tough,’ and I used the word rape. And yesterday, it came out where this journey coming up,” he said, referring to the annual Pueblo Sin Fronteras caravan for immigrant rights currently traveling from Central America through Mexico to the United States, “Women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before. They don’t want to mention that. So we have to change our laws.” (On Friday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was referring to the Central American women too often raped on the journey to the United States to seek asylum, which is one reason they formed the caravan in the first place.)
“When I opened. Everybody said, ‘Oh, he was so tough,’ and I used the word rape. And yesterday, it came out where this journey coming up,” he said, referring to the annual Pueblo Sin Fronteras caravan for immigrant rights currently traveling from Central America through Mexico to the United States, “Women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before. They don’t want to mention that. So we have to change our laws.” (On Friday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was referring to the Central American women too often raped on the journey to the United States to seek asylum, which is one reason they formed the caravan in the first place.)
MORE EVIDENCE THAT RACISM AND SEXISM WERE KEY TO TRUMP’S VICTORY
A new analysis finds attitudes about gender and race were far better predictors of support for Trump than personal economic woes.
To the dismay of many, President Donald Trump has amped up his racist rhetoric of late, sending out angry, misleading tweets about Latin-American immigrants. Tufts University scholar Daniel Drezner argues this is his attempt “to ensure that his loyal base supporters are sufficiently energized to come out and vote GOP in the midterms.”
Drezner doubts this will work. But a new scholarly analysis suggests Trump’s instinct that racial prejudice drove him to victory is spot on.
“The 2016 campaign witnessed a dramatic polarization in the vote choices of whites based on (their level of) education,” writes a research team led by political scientist Brian Schaffner of the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. “Very little of this gap can be explained by the economic difficulties faced by less-educated whites. Rather, most of the divide appears to be associated with sexism, and denialism of racism.”
In the journal Political Science Quarterly, Schaffner and his colleagues note that a significant split between the preferences of highly educated and less-educated white voters is a relatively new phenomenon.
“In 2000, a small but notable gap began to emerge, with non-college-educated whites providing more support for the Republican presidential nominee,” they write. “This gap remained relatively small, ranging from five to seven points in the elections held from 2000 to 2012.”
How Donald Trump is making racist language OK again
Once upon a time, not too long ago, it was taboo for top level politicians to openly express racist sentiments. That’s why they tended to use code words, talking about “inner city crime” or “welfare dependency”. These are dogwhistle terms, which have been shown to appeal to voters’ latent racism without their full awareness. If politicians were too obvious in their racial appeals, political psychologists predicted, they would fail.
So how have we come to be where we are now, in a world where the President of the US speaks of “s***hole countries” and calls Mexicans rapists. How did this happen? Have all the prohibitions on racism evaporated? Is it now perfectly acceptable to be openly racist? It isn’t.
I think a key reason that Trump has been so successful is that he makes use of what I call a “racial figleaf”. A racial figleaf is an additional utterance which provides just enough cover for an utterance that would otherwise be seen as clearly racist. The figleaf serves to undermine the audience’s confidence that the racist utterance really is racist. I call it a “figleaf” because it serves to just barely cover something one isn’t supposed to show in public. If you use a dogwhistle, you don’t need a figleaf because the racism is already well-concealed. A figleaf is something that can cover up for racism that would otherwise be all too clear.
To see how this works, let’s look back at Trump’s infamous comments about Mexicans:
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 … they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Most media attention focused, quite reasonably, on Trump’s appalling claim that Mexicans are rapists. But there are several other bits that serve as figleaves for this assertion – most notably the bizarre line: “Some, I assume, are good people.”
Jewish activists launch project to tackle anti-Muslim racism
Late last year the Pew Center published a report that confirmed anecdotal data, and plain common sense: hate crimes against Muslims are up. Current rates dwarf the national spike that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks. The culprit for such a dramatic increase is no surprise. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for president ushered in a wave of racism against Muslims, among others. To combat the challenges of the political moment, activists Elly Bulkin and Donna Nevel have launched a new campaign: Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism.
The project provides resources to activists an educators. There’s a syllabus, a directory of groups organizing around anti-Muslim racism, and guides for events. The site also connects to some practical advice for just about anyone. Want to know what to do if you witness harassment against Muslims? Elly and Donna have it covered.
Late last year the Pew Center published a report that confirmed anecdotal data, and plain common sense: hate crimes against Muslims are up. Current rates dwarf the national spike that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks. The culprit for such a dramatic increase is no surprise. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for president ushered in a wave of racism against Muslims, among others. To combat the challenges of the political moment, activists Elly Bulkin and Donna Nevel have launched a new campaign: Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism. The project provides resources to activists an educators. There’s a syllabus, a directory of groups organizing around anti-Muslim racism, and guides for events. The site also connects to some practical advice for just about anyone. Want to know what to do if you witness harassment against Muslims? Elly and Donna have it covered. The site also connects to some practical advice for just about anyone. Want to know what to do if you witness harassment against Muslims? Elly and Donna have it covered.
At least 8 Democrats boycotting State of the Union over ‘racist,’ ‘divisive’ remarks
At least eight House Democrats now have said they will boycott President Donald Trump‘s State of the Union speech, citing his divisive rhetoric and, in some cases, his reported use of a slur to describe African countries during a White House meeting on immigration.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., announced over Twitter in early January that he would not attend the speech, later adding that he would send a guest in his place, an Oregon resident and recipient of protections under the DACA program for immigrants brought into the U.S. illegally as children. Read More …
ep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., announced over Twitter in early January that he would not attend the speech, later adding that he would send a guest in his place, an Oregon resident and recipient of protections under the DACA program for immigrants brought into the U.S. illegally as children.ep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., announced over Twitter in early January that he would over Twitter in early January that he wouldnot attend the speech, later adding that he would send a guest in his place, an Oregon resident and recipient of protections under the DACA program for immigrants brought into the U.S. illegally as children.ep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., announced over Twitter in early January that he would not attend the speech, later adding that he would send a guest in his place, an Oregon resident and recipient of protections under the DACA program for immigrants brought into the U.S. illegally as children.ep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., announced over Twitter in early January that he would not attend the speech, later adding that he would send a guest in his place, an Oregon resident and recipient of protections under the DACA program for immigrants brought into the U.S. illegally as children.
Even white people can see it now: Donald Trump’s a racist
Donald Trump is no friend of black people. This fact is so obvious that a large number of white Americans are finally starting to acknowledge it. A new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News finds that 52 percent of Americans believe Trump holds “a racial bias against black people,” with 4o percent “strongly” believing that.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a strong split by party in those numbers, with Democrats viewing Trump as biased and Republicans seeing him as not. More than half of independents think he is.
In this question we also see the consistent gender gap in opinions of Trump. More than half of women view him as biased. Among men, it’s a more even split. Overall, the gap between men and women on the belief that Trump is biased is 10 points.
Eight in 10 black Americans think Trump is biased against them, and nearly two-thirds of Hispanics say that he is as well. Among whites, though, a plurality of respondents said that they think Trump isn’t biased against black people.
This divergence in white Americans’ opinions about Donald Trump’s dislike of black people should not be surprising. It is nothing new. Since before the founding of America, white supremacy has generated a sense of willful denial, fantasy and delusion in white people. For example, during Jim and Jane Crow and the civil rights movement’s struggle to bring down that evil regime, public opinion polls revealed that a majority of white respondents actually believed that black people had equal rights and opportunities in America.
The Washington Post-ABC poll also provides an opportunity for a teachable moment about how we discuss and understand racism in America. Even the language of its question — “Do you think Trump is biased against black people?” — demands an intervention and corrective.
First, “bias” is a common deflection in post-civil rights era “colorblind” racial discourse. It would be more accurate to ask whether respondents thought Trump was racist.
The White House Dreamer Deal Isn’t A Compromise. It’s A Racist Ransom Note.
As the White House’s senior advisor for policy, Stephen Miller seems to have one goal: to take a wrecking ball to the Statue of Liberty and shove the remains into the Upper New York Bay.
It’s no secret that Miller, along with Gen. John “Adult In The Room” Kelly, has been penning some of the most heinous immigration policies coming out of the White House. One might even wonder if Miller and Kelly, not President Donald Trump, are running the government from the sidelines ― exploiting Trump’s short attention span.
Which brings us to this moment, when the White House is preparing to erode America’s reputation as a nation of immigrants and replace it with toxic immigration policy, which it has disguised as a way to save young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children, known as “Dreamers.” The Trump administration has said it supports extending a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 800,000 Dreamers that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy currently protects from deportation and for other young immigrants who are eligible but don’t currently hold the protections ― an estimated 1.8 million people in total.
On Monday, you will hear White House officials present their outline as nothing short of a heroic attempt to reform our nation’s broken immigration system. Do not be fooled. What the White House is selling the American people is nothing but a nativist wish list that would reduce the number immigrants, especially people of color born in countries that Trump considers “shitholes.” Read More …
W
Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List
Donald Trump has been obsessed with race for the entire time he has been a public figure. He had a history of making racist comments as a New York real-estate developer in the 1970s and ‘80s. More recently, his political rise was built on promulgating the lie that the nation’s first black president was born in Kenya. He then launched his campaign with a speech describing Mexicans as rapists.
The media often falls back on euphemisms when describing Trump’s comments about race: racially loaded, racially charged, racially tinged, racially sensitive. And Trump himself has claimed that he is “the least racist person.” But here’s the truth: Donald Trump is a racist. He talks about and treats people differently based on their race. He has done so for years, and he is still doing so.
Here, we have attempted to compile a definitive list of his racist comments – or at least the publicly known ones.
He uses the gang MS-13 to disparage all immigrants. Among many other statements, he has suggested that Obama’s 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 called for 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 judge’s 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 for less immigration from Haiti and Africa and more from Norway.
NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS DECRY RAW RACISM OF TRUMP
Amidst Principled Negotiations on the Dream Act, Trump Shows That One Value Drives His Decisions Above All Others: White Supremacy
Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, the raw racism of Donald Trump and those driving his immigration and other policy making decisions were on full display as he called for fewer Black people to be admitted into the United States in favor of white immigrants. This morning, the President doubled down on his comments offering a weak justification for his racist viewpoint.
Today, civil rights and immigrant rights organization leaders offered their perspectives on Trump’s disturbing comments and their call for a return to a principle-driven negotiations on the Dream Act.
Amidst Principled Negotiations on the Dream Act, Trump Shows That One Value Drives His Decisions Above All Others: White Supremacy Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, the raw racism of Donald Trump and those driving his immigration and other policy making decisions were on full display as he called for fewer Black people to be admitted into the United States in favor of white immigrants. This morning, the President doubled down on his comments offering a weak justification for his racist viewpoint. Today, civil rights and immigrant rights organization leaders offered their perspectives on Trump’s disturbing comments and their call for a return to a principle-driven negotiations on the Dream Act. Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, the raw racism of Donald Trump and those driving his immigration and other policy making decisions were on full display as he called for fewer Black people to be admitted into the United States in favor of white immigrants. This morning, the President doubled down on his comments offering a weak justification for his racist viewpoint. Today, civil rights and immigrant rights organization leaders offered their perspectives on Trump’s disturbing comments and their call for a return to a principle-driven negotiations on the Dream Act.
