Donald Trump's Advantage

With the inauguration of Donald Trump rapidly approaching, there has been a much needed resurgence of interest in the progressive movement around the country, as well as an awakening to the need of an actual revolution by more moderate liberals. The Republican sweep of all levels of government indicates an all too familiar conservative backlash against the social progress that has been steadily building over the last eight years. Historically, this has ultimately led to the empowerment of emboldened racists and bigots of all ilks, which we are presently seeing.

Published by the New York Times under the Opinion section, the audience for this article is any interested reader. At the time it was released, November 18th, 2016, this article arrived during last year’s elections, in which a large, but surprising number of Americans voted for candidate Donald Trump, shocking many forecasters who had predicted otherwise. Therefore, after the election, many people may have been researching the demographics of the election, and this article, which briefly shared Brooks’ opinion on the nature of the election and how viewing others through the lens of a dominant identity influenced how the votes fell where they did, may have caught a keen reader’s eye. Also, this article came at a time where racism and prejudice caused many problems, leading some to view others as one-dimensional, represented only by a skin color or religion. Since prejudice and hate is still a large issue today, tackling this problem helps make this article relevant, nearly a year after its release.

In the year 2008 the world was a much different place. Before countless racial protests and riots in streets, before NFL players knelt during the National Anthem for what they believed in, and before our president spoke of nonsensical chauvinistic principles on a regular basis, our country appeared to have a greater sense of unification. This unifying bond between the American people was due in part by Barack Obama, whose entire campaign to become president may have been the most difficult struggle for anybody in the lineage of presidential candidates to go through. As part of his strategy to win over voters and soothe the skepticism of whites who may have had any doubting questions, Obama gave this speech on race; a speech which still

Devinatz focuses the article on the similarities between the new president elect, Donald J. Trump and the 1968 election of George Wallace. Devinatz informs the reader that while Donald Trump’ presidency was an event that took the nation by surprise, mostly white union members voted for Trump just like they voted for Wallace because their campaign strategy was similar. Devinatz exclaims that Wallace used comparable rhetoric to Trump’s to get the crowd on his side at rallies, the rhetoric they both used was racial rhetoric. Wallace and Trump used the racial fears that immigrants and people of color would take the white Americans jobs to get the votes and gain political power. The overall argument Devinatz is making is that presidential canidates

After centuries of racial injustice and 43 white presidents, Obama enters office in the history making election. Racial barriers in the government fall as the last position in office to never have had an African American succeed it had seated Obama. In “Barack Obama to be America's first black president,” Ewen MacAskill, Suzanne Goldenberg, and Elana Schor report Obama’s win by a landslide in electoral votes with “338 electoral votes to McCain's 129.” With states so keen on Obama winning, the country has taken a huge step from racial oppression exhibited in Wright’s time. A big part of Obama’s victory was due to the blacks who voted as in the article, “Obama Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls,” Adam Nagourney states, “Mr. Obama benefited from a huge turnout of voters, but particularly among blacks. That group made up 13 percent of the electorate, according to surveys of people leaving the polls, compared with 11 percent in 2006.” Blacks have stepped up and made their voices heard through the votes in comparison to Wright’s time. Instead of writing about how blacks around him have submitted to an inferior position placed by whites, he would write about how they have joined together to place a black person in the highest position in government. It is an immense change from when blacks had to give into Jim Crow laws to

The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America. White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear – especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LBGT Americans and Asian Americans. Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like

Forty six years later the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund released Defending Democracy: Confronting the Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America; a report revealing that there is a connection “between the trend of increasing, unprecedented African American and Latino voter turnout and an onslaught of restrictive measures across the country designed to stem electoral strength

How the republican party gain black-american votes, is more or less the same as the democratic party gained votes using their own strategies. As both parties have been influencing minorities, ethnic groups have been sought after as voting blocs and attracted by one or another political party based on agendas designed specifically for them (Zake and Gormly, 469–490). This offers insight on how strategies were used not just by the republican but also by the democratic party, this insight offers an opposing viewpoint of Brown that the Republican party was not the only party to use political strategies that were constructed to create diversity. There are many ways that ethnic groups and minorities have been part of political content, during the 1930s the Democratic Nationalities Division found itself engaged in political work even in the periods between the election campaigns and its task was to generate a long-term strategy for appealing to ethnic voters. It consisted of a person or two looking after foreign language affairs (Zake and Gormly, 469–490). The Democrats’ strategy was to put senators or congressmen as the leaders of these foreign languages sections and thus avoid conflicts and power competition among different leaders within the ethnic group. Doing this gives other minorities a sense of accomplishment. Going back to the republicans

By electing Obama, the people decided that people other white can hold high power jobs. The election also correlates to an increase in diversity of voters and a step in the right direction when it comes to bringing more diversity to politics. His election also demonstrates the melting pot that is the United States.

Racial resentment among white voters was particularly convinced by the Republican political strategy that stoked white racial resentment to win elections. “Trump’s campaign can best be described as hateful and the Southern Strategy, by keeping people separated which is how the Republican Party has deployed for a half-century to shore up its support in the states which is mostly rn by racial resentment and white solidarity,” Republicans fueled voters, with lies, racism, and division leading up to the 2016 election.

George Wallace (Democrat) led a social movement so angry and powerful that he forced Richard Nixon (Republican) to learn the art of fully exploiting white voter’s racial fears without running openly racist campaigns or governing in a racist way. Since then, people with presidential aspirations and the presidents themselves have evolved and refined these tricks into racially coded political advertisements, slogans, and symbolically charged events. George Wallace came into power by leading a social movement that was based on exploiting white voter’s racial fears. At the beginning, the Democrat’s positions were openly racist. Wallace started exploiting white voter’s racial fears when he stated “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!” Eventually, talk of race came to be “coded” into politics, like issues of “welfare reform.” Most candidates in today’s world would not openly incite racism.

This made whites worried that other groups have too much power; Abramowitz points out that white flight of “racially resentful” voters from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party has increased racial polarization down party lines (p. 35). Now Democrats rely more and more on the votes of any group of nonwhite voters. Nonwhite voters are generally more accepting of activist government, so Democrats are as well, so fiscal conservatives flee the Democratic party, so economics are polarized as well (p.33).

On November 4, 2008 history was made, the United States of America elected their first black president. We as a nation had taken our first step towards improvement and had gain a new fond hope. The years following this historical election, included moving forward and believing that America was finally a country that accepted minorities and have left its racist/ homophobic history behind. However, the 2016 presidential elections proved this to be all wrong. We have gone from being a country who just elected their first black president, to a nation who has elected a misogynistic, racist, sexist, homophobe.

The election of President Obama marks the most noteworthy political accomplishment for African Americans in the United States during the post-civil rights revolution, thus bringing about a change in the country’s social and political landscape that was steeped in racial discrimination since the founding of this great nation. Because social and political conditions are subject to constant change, President Obama’s

Philadelphia, March 2008. Neither that city nor year suggests a crucial event in American racial history. It’s not Birmingham in 1961, or Washington, D.C. in 1963. However, on March 18, 2008, at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon-to-be President Barack Obama, a black man with an African father, took the stage and delivered a speech that would paint the racial landscape of his historic presidency. In his speech, Obama welds three distinctive rhetorical tactics to support his overarching argument that unity is compulsory in this country to produce racial equality. First, he opens with a personal and historical background to highlight the kairotic moment and exigence present, then appeals to pathos through multiple examples of racial injustice to indicate the necessity of such change, and finally uses his appeals to ethos to suggest, but not legislate, modes of change for black and white Americans. The speech was met with profound success: pundits from both the right and the left praised his bravery and oration, while, later that year, Obama defeated John McCain in a landslide victory to secure the presidency. To many, this speech was both a rhetorical and political turning point in the 2008 presidential campaign.