The Elephant in the Voting Booth: Hatred of a Black President
March 11, 2016
The Elephant in the Voting Booth: Hatred of a Black President
by Rev. William Alberts
A major force fueling Donald Trump’s popularity among Republican presidential primary voters is their hatred of a black president. A hatred that Trump embodies and, in turn, enables a majority of Republican voters to safely vent indirectly, as seen in media-reported code words. Such as, “Trump’s brand of resentment politics resonates.” (“Christie Splits With His Past in Backing Trump,” By Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, The New York Times, February 28, 2016) “Republicans are reaping the whirlwind . . . [of] Mr. Trump’s politics of rage.” (“The Party of Trump and the Path Ahead,” Editorial, The New York Times, March 2, 22016) “The combative casino and real estate magnate has stoked his political fortunes by picking fights with public figures, repeatedly defying predictions that he had gone too far.” (“Trump in a word war with pope, By Matt Viser and Tracy Jan, The Boston Globe, Feb. 19, 2016) “The stubborn popularity of Mr. Trump who defies Republican orthodoxy on issue after issue shows how deeply the party’s elites misjudged the faithfulness of rank-and-file Republicans to conservatism .” (“Supporters Join Trump Outside G.O.P. Doctrine,” By Trip Gabriel, The New York Times, Feb. 18, 2016) “His fierce and sometimes offensive comments on Mexican and Muslim immigrants and on waterboarding and killing family members of Islamic State fighters demonstrate, his voters said, a refreshing willingness to disregard political correctness . . . ‘He’s saying how the people really feel.’” (‘TRUMP AND CLINTON FEAST AS TWELVE STATES VOTE,’ By Ashley Parker and Maggie Haberman, The New York Times, March 2, 2016)
The hatred of President Barack Hussein Obama lurks behind Donald Trump’s primary victories in seven states on Super Tuesday. That hatred peers out from behind the headline of a front-page New York Times story, which declared Trump’s “Support in G.O.P. Spans Breadth of Nation.” From “Southern strongholds like Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, as well as Northern states like Massachusetts . . . and in Virginia.” He won “not only among low-income voters, his usual base, but also . . . veterans and self-described conservatives and white evangelicals.” And then the elephant in the voter’s booth as seen in interviews with voters: “Mr. Trump’s supporters . . . had a unifying motivation—a deep-seated pervasive sense of anxiety about the state of the country, and an anger and frustration at those they felt were encroaching on their way of life.” (Ibid)
Republican voters’ “deep-seated pervasive sense of anxiety” is assumed to be caused by a black president in their White House. With his presence “encroaching” on their hallowed, historic, psychically-conditioned white supremacy, which is unconsciously integrated into their being and reinforced by America’s white-controlled hierarchy of access to political, economic, legal, media, business and religious power. A white supremacist-conditioning in a country believed to be divinely blessed, the fulfillment of that Biblically-prophesized “city set on a hill” that is “the light of the world” (Matthew 5: 14). A country founded on the bones of native peoples and built on the backs of black persons made slaves. Their country now “encroached” upon by a member of the “servant” race. New York Times reporter Toni Monkovic alludes to voters’ hatred of a president who is not their kind: “Some social science research suggests that the simple fact that President Obama is black might have contributed to a sense of lost power and resentment among whites, and, of course, Mr. Trump first came to political prominence by questioning whether Mr. Obama was even a citizen.” (“Why Donald Trump Has Done Worse in Mostly White States, “ March 8, 2016)
The displaced anger toward a black president, invited by Donald Trump’s racism, is believed to be evident in a front-page Boston Globe story on Super Tuesday, with Republicans giving Trump “a near sweep.” The story referred to exit polls which revealed that “Anger at Washington and a yearning for a leader to shake things up continued to fuel Trump’s extraordinary popularity.” Also, “Southern Republicans were more likely to say they were ‘angry’ with the government,” with “voters in nearly all states saying they wanted an outsider in the Oval Office.” (‘BIG GAINS FOR TRUMP, CLINTON,’ By Matt Viser and Tracy Jan, March 2, 2016)
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/11/the-elephant-in-the-voting-booth-hatred-of-a-black-president/
