African Americans Have Everything to Lose with a Trump Presidency
[This essay originally appeared in the October 6–12, 2016 edition of The Tennessee Tribune.]
The 2016 presidential election matching Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump is an important one for African Americans. Trump’s racial past — the housing discrimination cases against his real estate business in the 1970s, his stealth courtship of white supremacists like Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, his attacks on non-white immigrants, and media assault on black and Latino youth in the infamous Central Park rape case — should, by themselves, cause great concern. Yet more troubling is that a Trump presidency would legitimate white nationalism (others may call it white supremacy) as a mobilizing force in the post-Barack Obama era.
White nationalism has been a cornerstone of Trump’s candidacy unlike any that we’ve seen in decades from a major party nominee. For Trump (or Trumpism), this is most pronounced by his leading role in the Birther Movement. Birtherism levied the most vicious racial attack in our lifetime against a sitting president. With the tacit approval of the Republican Party, Trump used Birtherism to criminalize and publicly shame Obama. Had Obama not been born in the United States, as Trump insisted for many years, then his presidency would have been in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution. The racial toxicity behind this charge — that Obama upended Article II of the Constitution via an electoral coup— most likely exacerbated the death threats levied the president.
Certainly, Trump has tapped into a deep reservoir of racial resentment that fueled his victories in the Republican Party primary, but it has been building for some time. An early manifestation of this was articulated by the Tea Party Movement, which came to prominence in the early years of the Obama presidency. Many studies found that racial resentment was the principal driving force behind the Tea Party Movement. After all, the Tea Party’s main theme of “Taking Back Our Country” is quite similar to the racially nostalgic “Make America Great Again” slogan that defines Trump’s campaign.
Trumpism is also a reaction to the growth of non-white voters. Whereas non-whites comprised only 11–12 % of the voting-age-population in the early 1980s, blacks, Latinos, and Asians now make up 25–29 % of potential voters in 2016. Latinos make up the fastest growing share of non-white voters with more than 70 % voting for Obama in 2012. They are also dispersed in must-win battleground states such as Florida, Nevada, and Colorado, as well as states such as Virginia and North Carolina where their political presence is much stronger in 2016 than it was 30 years ago.
The most troubling aspect of Trumpism and its affixation to white nationalism is that many conservative whites believe that they are the victims of institutional racism (or “reverse discrimination”). The research in this area is surprising even to the most seasoned political observers. Republican Party economist Bruce Bartlett recently authored a paper on this subject. He concluded that voters gravitating to Trump’s campaign are more likely to believe that they — not African Americans and people of color — are the prime targets of discriminatory policies. Accordingly, Trump’s supporters see his presidency as a counterattack against federal policies such as Obamacare and civil rights that they interpret as discriminating against whites.
Tennessee’s political climate offers a home-style look at why the politics of race and racial resentment are critical to understanding electoral outcomes. In the state legislature, Republicans won a net gain of 27 House seats from 2002–2010, all of which occurred in districts that are more than 90% white. In presidential elections, Obama won only four of 95 counties in 2012 and five in 2008, while Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry won 35 in 2000 and 18 in 2004, respectively. During this period (2000–2012), the black-white divide in voting preference for a presidential candidate grew from 19 to 46 %. In summary, the Republican Party has solidified its power in Tennessee by consolidating voters in lily-white counties.
Regarding the presidential election, the outcome could be determined by a handful of battleground states as both candidates seek to capture the required 270 out of 538 electoral college votes. As it stands, Clinton starts off with a major advantage in the electoral college. She is currently ahead or in a dead heat in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Florida. Trump’s path to the presidency is much harder than Clinton’s. In order to win, he must pull together a combination of battleground states like Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
The instability of this election, however, underscores the possibility that the election could rise and fall on the non-white vote in swing states. Yet by some accounts, including a recent New York Times story, young African Americans are unenthusiastic about the presidential election. Some media reports indicate that young people are disillusioned with the political process and two-party system, partly because of the inability by public officials to reduce police killings of unarmed blacks.
The criticisms of young black activists, such those affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, by some older activists, politicians, and celebrities may have also deepened the political cynicism. For example, during the height of Baton Rouge protests after the Alton Sterling killing in July, civil rights icon Andrew Young referred to young protestors as “some unlovable little brats….[who] show off with no consequences.” Oprah Winfrey, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, and even Al Sharpton also levied criticisms of BLM protestors.
If these criticisms discourage young blacks from reaching their full voting potential, regardless of who is elected, then it would be among the biggest disappointments in this election cycle. The criticisms would further overshadow BLM’s underreported policy and electoral achievements since 2014: state lawmakers sponsored at least 55 police accountability measures from 2014–2015 due to BLM protests; activists defeated district attorneys in Chicago and Cleveland who exonerated the officers involved in the killings of Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice; Congress adopted the Death in Custody Reporting Act due to national protests; and the U.S. Department of Justice forced Baltimore, Maryland and Ferguson, Missouri to sign consent decrees mandating reforms to their police departments. These achievements demonstrate that BLM protests are actually working, such that one would hope that young blacks would be more optimistic about this election.
Young activists allied with BLM movement have the most to lose with a Trump presidency. In speeches explaining his positions on police killings and protests, Trump paints a cartoonish portrait of the black community that sees them as excessively violent and highly dysfunctional. Yet, he believes that his presidency is their only path to rehabilitation. The main fix Trump proposes is a national Stop and Frisk policy modeled after New York City’s policing approach — an approach that was vigorously opposed by young black and Latino activists — that a federal court in New York deemed unconstitutional and racist. Further, a Trump presidency would lead to the reorganization of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Given the emergence of non-white voters and his opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement, he would position the Justice Department against voting rights and police accountability advocates.
The 2016 presidential election is an opportunity for African Americans, and particularly young people, to reject Trumpism and white nationalism as a mobilizing force in American politics. In several campaign speeches explaining why blacks should vote for him Trump has routinely shouted, “What the hell do you [blacks] have to lose?” The answer to his question is quite simple: “We have everything to lose.”
