White voters hope Trump will restore the racial hierarchy upended by Barack Obama

[kpete]

How Trump Happened
It’s not just anger over jobs and immigration.
White voters hope Trump will restore the racial hierarchy upended by Barack Obama


What caused this fire to burn out of control? The answer, I think, is Barack Obama.

Obama didn’t herald a post-racial America as much as he did a racialized one, where many whites were hyperaware of their racial status.

There have been some conservative writers who have tried to hang Trump’s success on the current president, pointing to his putatively extreme positions. But in most respects, Obama is a conventional politician—well within the center-left of the Democratic Party. Or at least, he’s governed in that mode, with an agenda that sits safely in the mainstream. Laws like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act weren’t impositions from the far left; they were built out of proposals from the right and left, passed by a majority of Congress that was elected to pursue solutions on health care and the economy. Barack Obama is many things, but conservative rhetoric aside, he’s no radical.

We can’t say the same for Obama as a political symbol, however. In a nation shaped and defined by a rigid racial hierarchy, his election was very much a radical event, in which a man from one of the nation’s lowest castes ascended to the summit of its political landscape. And he did so with heavy support from minorities: Asian Americans and Latinos were an important part of Obama’s coalition, and black Americans turned out at their highest numbers ever in 2008.

For liberal observers, this heralded a new, rising electorate, and—in theory—a durable majority. “The future in American politics belongs to the party that can win a more racially diverse, better educated, more metropolitan electorate,” wrote Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post after the 2008 election. “It belongs to Barack Obama’s Democrats.”


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/03/how_donald_trump_happened_racism_against_barack_obama.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top

[OregonBlue]

1. They are just pissed that there is a black man in their White House. Idiocracy has arrived.

[temporary311]

11. Possibly.

Though ironically the President in Idiocracy was also a black man, and I would vote for Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho over Trump any day.

[Hortensis]

15. WHICH white "voters"?! They are hard-core social conservatives.

Mostly. Upset about the prospect of America without a strong white majority has caused an upswing in extremist behaviors. Those prone to it reacted to Obama's election by persecuting minorities across the nation and acting out their nastiness in this election. But don't imagine that this is "white" behavior.

Even with the upswing in anxiety infecting moderate conservatives, these troublemakers are at most perhaps 2/3 of all white conservatives. Where do we think all those right-leaning "indies" came from? A large number left the GOP because they rejected the extremists.

Importantly: The outrageously overblown coverage given Trump is merely a reflection of the coverage given this minority of troublemakers. Like him, they are empowered by media attention beyond their numbers. But that's all. They still have to get around the rest of us.

[Dont call me Shirley]

2. Trump is saying out loud the long time whisper dog whistle racist and sexist rhetoric of the GOP.

Caucus Room Conspiracy

[Bestuserever]

3. I figured that the GOP racism would fade once Obama left office

but the rise of Trump proved me wrong.

[Wellstone ruled]

4. Said many times,this election cycle

the GOP would pull out all the stops to take back the White House. Futurist's have for years forecated the demise of the GOP before 2020 and appears they are getting it right. They are running out of angry Old White People.

[Rebkeh]

5. Racism doesn't fade, that's a myth

It goes underground, it goes quiet, it takes on new forms, it becomes subtle - but it does not fade.

The only way to eliminate racism is to talk about it and do the work continuously. The rise of Trump was to be expected, it was just a matter of time. If it wasn't him, it would be someone else. If it didn't happen now, it would have happened later. America has a lot of work to do.

[MisterP]

6. it's like how the militia movement sprang up under Clinton

[davidn3600]

7. Quick question.......Where did Obama upend it?

The top 10% is like 99.9% white. 99% of Fortune 500 executives are white, and over 80% are white men. And those people have done pretty darn good the last 8 years expanding their wealth by a significant percentage over the rest of the population.

African Americans have actually decreased in net earnings during the same time period. And our prisons are jammed with minorities. Obama has done very little (practically nothing) concerning this. He's continued the disastrous war on drugs. We got people in federal prison serving life sentences for marijuana....and chances are they are black or hispanic. He has used his pardon ability very sparingly.

I always find it kind of funny when someone says Obama has upended the racial hierarchy. I always ask, "where?"

[awoke_in_2003]

8. You speak reality

A large portion of white Americans don't understand reality

[Matrosov]

16. There's a black guy leading the country

In fact, President Obama could be only black guy in the entire country, and those conservatives would still be upset that an African American is President. Having an African American above them feels wrong and unnatural to them.

[Populist_Prole]

9. Just overheard a few Trump bots

I wasn't discussing politics with them, but just overheard a conversation that went political.

The people: ex-military gun nuts, and they're major "kiss up & kick down" types.

I listened to them intently, suppressing my indignation to retort. It was all about flag-waving nationalism, though they didn't talk about economics. No race component that I could discern...and I did try to discern.

Just authoritarian fascist assholes.

[Albertoo]

10. Agree: for Trump voters, it's about immigration, not race

A very good article on the subject by a political consultant to David Cameron:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3489656/To-dismiss-Trump-bigoted-buffoon-YUGE-mistake-s-elite-bashing-hit-workers-Political-svengali-helped-sweep-David-Cameron-power-gives-stunning-appraisal-president.html

[pampango]

12. It's part of the 'strict father', authoritarian streak present in many conservatives.

The strict father logic extends further. The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a well-ordered world, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate. The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), The Rich above the Poor, Employers above Employees, Adults above Children, Western culture above other cultures, Our Country above other countries. The hierarchy extends to: Men above women, Whites above Non-whites, Christians above non-Christians, Straights above Gays.

There are at least tens of millions of conservatives in America who share strict father morality and its moral hierarchy. Many of them are poor or middle class and many are white men who see themselves as superior to immigrants, non-whites, women, non-Christians, gays — and people who rely on public assistance. In other words, they are what liberals would call “bigots.” For many years, such bigotry has not been publicly acceptable, especially as more immigrants have arrived, as the country has become less white, as more women have become educated and moved into the workplace, and as gays have become more visible and gay marriage acceptable. As liberal anti-bigotry organizations have loudly pointed out and made a public issue of the un-American nature of such bigotry, those conservatives have felt more and more oppressed by what they call “political correctness” — public pressure against their views and against what they see as “free speech.” This has become exaggerated since 911, when anti-Muslim feelings became strong. The election of President Barack Hussein Obama created outrage among those conservatives, and they refused to see him as a legitimate American (as in the birther movement), much less as a legitimate authority, especially as his liberal views contradicted almost everything else they believe as conservatives.

http://yonside.com/why-is-trump-winning

[Matrosov]

17. Perfect explanation n/t

[TipTok]

13. Meh...

... I could see someone coming to that conclusion if they only saw life through a racial lens but frankly that is simplistic and naïve.

[maxrandb]

14. Just wait until we elect a woman! n/t