Unearthing the Divisiveness in America in the Era of Trump
As Samuel DuBois Cook warned, “in a tortuous and anguished way, racism has been, on the ultimate level, both the affirmation and the negation of the American dream” (1976, p.1). It has become common today to dismiss the origins of racism and its heightened abuse towards ethnic minorities. Such historical events, however, cultivate the acceptance of discrimination across a world spectrum. For instance, in the “Notes on the State of Virginia,” written by Thomas Jefferson in 1785, he claimed that blacks “are inferior to whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” Multitudes of ethnicities feel threatened and petrified of exposing their faces to the world’s spotlight as looming white supremacists and racist remarks have dominated the globe. Genocide, violent tactics, verbal abuse, entrapment, and mass shootings amplify these fears as ethnic groups are wrongfully perceived as a menace to democracy. To make matters worse, the presidential seat awarded to Donald Trump has intensified tensions amongst races. As the country has become more divisive, racism has become more prominent and cultural sensitivity is omitted through hate crimes. Racial slurs have not dissipated within society and have been inflamed through Donald Trump’s distasteful rhetoric and cycles of dehumanization, resulting in a domino effect of enmity and regression in America.
According to the Department of Justice, hate crimes are defined as a crime motivated by bias against race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability at the federal level (2019). Recent studies have shed new light on the rising prevalence of hate crimes in 2019. Researchers Edwin and Rushin (2019), have indicated that the number of hate crimes has spiked far above what they expected in 2001 in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11 and in the fourth quarter of 2016 around the same time of Donald Trump’s presidential election. They further discovered that Trump’s election contributed to approximately 0.13 additional hate crimes per county per quarter. Given that there are 3,151 countries nationwide, this means that Trump’s election may have led to around 410 other hate crimes nationally per quarter, or 2,048 additional hate crimes since his electoral victory (Edwards & Rushin, 2019). This interpretation challenges the work of those critics who have long assumed that Trump has never been a factor in brainwashing Americans to believe that abomination is a manner of expressing American patriotism across national borders.
Donald Trump’s distasteful rhetoric has also heavily contributed to a divisive country. The FBI reported over 7,000 hate crime incidents in 2017, a 17% increase from the previous year and a 31% increase over 2014. During those same four years, hate crimes against African Americans rose by 20%, anti-Semitic hate crimes rose by 35%, anti-Latino hate crimes rose by 43%, and anti-Muslim hate crimes rose by 44% (HORS, 2019). Thus, secessionist and white supremacist sentiments give rise to hate crimes and buried history. In the wake of the Charlottesville protest on August 12, 2017, a Unite the Rally drew hundreds of alt-rightists of the most blatantly fascist stripes for “blood and soil” (Segrest, 2017). A white supremacist by the name of James A. Fields sped his car into a crowd and slaughtered Heather Heyer and critically injured nineteen others who were “on their way back from helping to repel a white supremacist march to a predominately black housing development” (Segrest, 2017). As the White House became aware of the mayhem occurring in Charlottesville, Trump minimized the white supremacists’ horrific acts as he immediately embraced their “bravery.” Further, he cried that a federal judge hearing a case about Trump University was biased because of the judge’s Mexican heritage (Leonhardt & Philbrick, 2018). In June 2017, Trump claimed that 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 (Leonhardt & Philbrick, 2018). The essence of Leonhardt’s, Philbrick’s, and Segrest’s arguments is that racism should never be permitted on the lands of the free, despite the authority of any government official and even the president himself. Ultimately, what is at stake here is the resurgence of xenophobia, not only hovering over society but is reigned in Trump’s mind to smear ethnic groups’ reputations that they have withheld for many generations. Trump aims to shatter these perceptions to sustain his overflowing ego and abuse his exercise of powers. As exemplified in the Trump Twitter Archives, it reminds us of the hate he holds in his heart. He boasted that “there has never been a time in the history of our country that the Media was so Fraudulent, Fake, and Corrupt! When the “Age of Trump” is looked back on many years from now, I only hope that a big part of my legacy will be the exposing of massive dishonesty in the Fake News!” His perpetuated attacks on the media demonstrate his need to conceal his wrongdoings for his benefit and continue striking on diverse groups, which are not in favor of America’s welfare.
The impact of cycles of dehumanization halt society’s progressive state. Scholars suggest that the depiction of groups such as Africans, Native Americans, Tutsis, the Roma, and Jews (alongside others) as apes, savages or vermin not only accompanied colonization, slavery, and extermination but facilitated these atrocities (Smith, 2011). Also, two studies during the presidential primaries revealed that the blatant dehumanization of Mexican immigrants and Muslims were strongly associated with supporting Trump, even after controlling for political conservatism and prejudice towards these groups. This relationship was significantly stronger than for any other primary candidate, Democrat or Republican (Kteily & Bruneau, 2017). If we are right about the cycles of dehumanization, then significant consequences follow for the false image America evokes to the world as a haven.
Hate crimes, Trump’s distasteful rhetoric and cycles of dehumanization all effectively contribute to the downfall of America’s welfare and unification in its’ entirety. Although racism may seem of a concern to only a small group of critics or alt-rightists, it should concern anyone who cares about the future of America. We are regressing rapidly. Error after error, soon enough we won’t be able to erase our mistakes. The time is now; social change is now.
References
Cook, S. (1976). Democracy and Tyranny in America: The Radical Paradox of the Bicentennial and Blacks in the American Political System. The Journal of Politics, 38(3), 276–294. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.lib-proxy.fullerton.edu/stable/2129585
Edwards, et al. “The Effect of President Trump’s Election on Hate Crimes.” By Griffin Sims Edwards, Stephen Rushin:: SSRN, SSRN, 18 January. 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3102652.
House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Hearing. (2019). Congressional Documents and Publications, p. Congressional Documents and Publications, 15 May, 2019.
Kteily, N. S., & Bruneau, E. (2017). Darker Demons of Our Nature: The Need to (Re)Focus Attention on Blatant Forms of Dehumanization. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 487 — 494. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417708230.
Leonhardt, David, and Ian Prasad Philbrick. “Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List, Updated.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 January 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.html.
Segrest, M. (2017). Flagged Up, Locked, and Loaded: The Confederacy’s Call, the Trump Disaster, and the Apocalyptic Crisis of White People. South, 50(1), 22–36.
Smith, D. L. (2011). Less than human: Why we demean, enslave, and exterminate others. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
The United States Department of Justice. (2019). “Learn About Hate Crimes.” Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/learn-about-hate-crimes/chart.
