IT IS INSUFFICIENT TO STATE the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump’s predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness—that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump’s forefathers and barred others from it. Once upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the Wilderness and then into the White House. Their individual triumphs made this exclusive party seem above America’s founding sins, and it was forgotten that the former was in fact bound to the latter, that all their victories had transpired on cleared grounds. No such elegant detachment can be attributed to Donald Trump—a president who, more than any other, has made the awful inheritance explicit.
His political career began in advocacy of birtherism, that modern recasting of the old American precept that black people are not fit to be citizens of the country they built. But long before birtherism, Trump had made his worldview clear. He fought to keep blacks out of his buildings, according to the U.S. government; called for the death penalty for the eventually exonerated Central Park Five; and railed against “lazy” black employees. “Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” Trump was once quoted as saying. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” After his cabal of conspiracy theorists forced Barack Obama to present his birth certificate, Trump demanded the president’s college grades (offering $5 million in exchange for them), insisting that Obama was not intelligent enough to have gone to an Ivy League school, and that his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, had been ghostwritten by a white man, Bill Ayers.
It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power. Trump inaugurated his campaign by casting himself as the defender of white maidenhood against Mexican “rapists,”
The new Republican candidate Trump has opened the door for many people to show discrimination against groups of minorities. Sullivan states, “The racial aspect of this is also unmissable. When the enemy within is Mexican or Muslim, and your ranks are extremely white, you set up a rubric for a racial conflict. And what’s truly terrifying about Trump is that he does not seem to shrink from such a prospect; he relishes it.” (Sullivan 10) In other words, Sullivan believes that Donald Trump is not promoting equality. Rather than being the people’s voice he is actually advocating racial discrimination against targeted minority groups. He even seems to finds enjoyment towards the race bashing of the targeted individuals. As an individual of the target group I feel as if this is a prime example of how weak our democracy is. We are raised to feel that we are all equal due to the Constitution, which was formed by our founding
Barack Obama’s election as the President of the United States in 2008 was considered by many to be a representation of the huge strides the country has made in terms of race relations. Considering that blacks in America were denied civil rights less than five decades ago, his election certainly indicates that progress has been made. Obama and his election to office is linked to this progress because much of the population considers him to be black, including himself. Yet, Obama has as much “white ancestry” as he does “black ancestry.” This specific example can be related to the convention ‘that considered a white woman capable of giving birth to a black
Another trick Obama tends to utilize in his writing becomes clear when we notice finely shaped patterns among his usage of wording. “White and black, too black or not black enough, on the streets and in the courts;” all of these statements reference two polar opposite ideals. When Obama attempts to break apart the current system of society and explain the rights and wrongs behind it, he digs to a deeper level to make
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
On June 16, 2015, a long time television and real estate magnate by the name of Donald J. Trump opened his presidential campaign by uttering one of the most racially insensitive remarks in today’s time when he elucidated upon that notion that Mexican immigrants who come to America are not model citizens but rather rapists and murderers who undermine the legitimacy and economic fortitude of the American experiment. This racist and xenophobic remark illustrates just how entrenched the notion of white supremacy or as Walter Rodney would call it the “white cultural imperialism” ideology is inextricably tied to the understanding of our society today. Because of this problematic ideology, there must be some sort of opposition to fight against such
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
While the world continues to sway between left and right – the message and humanity gets lost in politics. The world needs a change of consciousness from the current status quo of white privilege and continuation of colonisation to a more measured return to morals and value systems based on decency and protecting the vulnerable. The height of white privilege is being able to ignore president trump’s white supremacy, because it is of no threat to white people, but it is a threat to many other Americans.
Throughout the first week of THE 225, many events took place within America that took the country by surprise. Trump’s inauguration was last Friday, January 20th, and already he has made drastic changes that will affect the lives of millions. His policies are based off sexist and racist claims that people have, for some odd reason, supported. With his new, corrupt policies, life in America will soon be set back decades because of his white supremacy mentality. Because of this, the nation has never been so divided since the Civil Rights Movement, something that was seemingly done with but clearly not if white supremacy becomes an issue. Although Trump’s America is not an ideal America and his claim to “Make American Great Again” implies
Trump's presidency and supporters provide a startling insight into the fear of an erosion of whiteness as the cornerstone of what it means to be an American. The assumed fraying of the white identity that has provided privilege and fortune is terrifying to white Americans. White men, who live in luxury and privilege in an age of limited social mobility, have nothing literal to fear, rather their sense of dread hovers in the backdrop of their everyday lives. Their fear is linked to their presumed loss of political and cultural power. Due to the onset of racial paranoia, conservative Americans are scared that ethnic and racial minorities are going to comprise a majority of the United States population, challenge the status quo, and somehow procure access to unprecedented amounts of power, diminishing the power of whiteness. Immigration is not only a threat to the deterioration of whiteness but also to white Americans socioeconomic dislocation, which is why the phrase "they're taking our jobs" is so commonly employed during immigration debates. It is obvious that Trump and his supporters have a juvenile and surface level understanding of race. Even if immigration somehow compromised whiteness as a majority, it does not mean that the racial hierarchy of the United States would somehow become inverted. And it is very telling of Trump's unwillingness to be a minority that he, on
As I wandered down to the lower level of the Bryan center, I began to hear chatter and smell the sweet scent of waffles drifting towards me. On the night of September 19th, I rushed into the crowded room, filled my plate with pizza and waffles, then quickly sat down to listen to the presentation. The first slide flashed across the projector screen, “Waffles and White Privilege: A Conversation”. Two young men introduced themselves as president and vice president and began to explain the purpose of that night’s event. “Our goal is not to make white people feel guilty, but we must realize the abundant amount of privilege we hold” Senior, and President Conor Smith remarked.
Trump’s selections are perfect for the job of bringing in the reign of American Facism: right wing extremism, coupled intolerance and overbearing authoritarianism. And rather then simply lie complacent and hope for the best, let’s take a look at his selections to better understand how their remarks and political stances come directly in opposition to the American values of equality, progress, and free speech.
My brother is a white man, my father is a white man and my father’s father is a white man. Myself and this country were both created by white men. This project is to explore the current and historic white male supremacy in the United States of America and how it has directly and indirectly affected myself and the fellow people of this country who do not identify as white men. In US history, white men are the most visibly represented, however through their process of creating a nation they have destroyed many things along the way. White male supremacy has become normalized and invisible to the average American through actions, like educating young children on Christopher Columbus as a hero instead of the murder he really was.
President Trump started his discourse with a gesture to the respectful rights development and Dark History Month, utilizing uniquely diverse talk from his campaign. In the months driving up to the race, Trump started inquiring the explanatory address to dark voters — before overwhelmingly white gatherings of people — “What the hell do you have to lose?” He painted a picture of dark neighborhoods as wracked with destitution, wrongdoing and schools that are “no good,” as he put it. Trump’s words were completely criticized by numerous African-American pioneers as harsh and an out of line depiction of their communities. In spite of that feedback, Trump beated 2012 GOP chosen one Glove Romney among dark voters. In his discourse
During Barack Obama's presidency, some American's thought that the country had entered a post-racial era in which, racial prejudice and discrimination had ended in the United States. This idea now is destroyed in Trumps presidency by Trump showing his true whiteness in discrimination and through racism. In "The First White President: The foundation of Donald Trump's presidency is the negative of Barack Obama's Legacy," Ta-Nehisi Coates, an American author, journalist, comic book writer, and educator, writes how discrimination and racism still stand through politics. Coates presents a convincing argument that Donald Trump's presidency is a reflection of racism in the United States through birtherism, bondage, and the voting rates.
From the very beginning of his campaign trail, Donald Trump piqued America’s interest with his blunt and oftentimes shocking statements. With his candidacy came exclamations of making America great, building walls, deporting illegal immigrants, and keeping jobs in the United States. A Google search