The Election Was Not a White-lash But a Bigot-lash
By Al Carroll
Van Jones’s assessment of Drumpf’s victory is that it was a “white-lash,” an angry reaction by fearful or racist whites. (It’s best to use his actual name, since “Trump” comes from his grandfather’s self-hatred as a German immigrant.) Ignoring the massive evidence of Drumpf’s racism, his followers’, his endorsement and by numerous racist groups, and his inherently racist proposals, Mother Jones and National Review quickly ran articles denying any role for racism in this election.
But the white-lash argument was partly wrong in an important way. Drumpf managed to exploit virtually every prejudice out there, including obviously sexism. Both Jones and Review point to a study showing that some minorities, small but sometimes significant numbers of Blacks, Latinos, and Asians, supported Drumpf and voted for him. (American Indians, Jews, and even both Arabs and Muslims likely voted for him significantly enough to need explanation.) But then both magazines draw the wrong conclusions.
These minorities are important because they cause confusion, making it possible to deny Drumpf’s overwhelmingly white following are what they are: at least half of them deeply racist, religiously bigoted, white supremacist, and fascist in everything but uniforms. Nonwhites voting for him certainly doesn’t disprove Drumpf’s racism. Their votes for Drumpf only show how deeply many minorities have their own prejudices, self-hatred, or both.
Any image search online shows most minority Drumpf supporters actually could pass for Anglo-Americans. They experience less or no racism because they pass for white, or in Jewish and some Latinos’ cases, they are whites. For those supporters that cannot pass, they are the most assimilated, de-cultured, out of touch, clueless-about-their-culture minorities.
Votes and support from minorities for the deeply racist happened before. About 5% of Blacks in Louisiana voted for Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke when he ran for governor in 1991. Some chapters of the KKK have Latino members, as long as they are entirely Spanish and speak without accent. Some German Jews voted for Hitler. Over 2,000 Jews even worked with Nazis during the Holocaust as Ghetto Police, only to be gassed to death in the ovens after they helped kill other Jews.
Some groups within minorities had higher support for Drumpf. Among Blacks the most strongly assimilated upper middle class ones, bourgeois or “bourgies” (boo-jees) as other Blacks call them, are more likely to support him. Among Latinos, it’s white Latinos of entirely Spanish ancestry, able to pass, not speaking Spanish or having an accent. Among Asians, it’s especially Filipino-Americans and Indian-Americans since both cultures have strong color bias and discriminate against Blacks. Many Hindu Indian-American supporters are also motivated by prejudice or fear of Muslims.
American Indians who support Drumpf mostly are Natives so intermarried with whites they are basically rednecks with distant indigenous ancestry. Sometimes these supposed “Natives” are actually whites with imagined fictitious ancestry they use to claim they are not racist. Very few of them actually know the Native cultures they claim to be part of. Jewish Drumpfists likely are the most fanatic Israel supporters, ignoring the many anti-Semites who support Drumpf. Arabs supporting Drumpf are often Arab Christians who hate or fear Muslims.
Even some Muslims support Drumpf, the less devout and most self-hating. Self-hatred is a central part of why minorities support Drumpf. Having to deal with racism and bigotry on a daily basis is exhausting, dispiriting, and often frustrating. It’s something that often seems never ending. Especially if one lives in a deeply racist area or is one of the few or the only member of a group around, it can be easier to just give in. Agree with white racists that Blacks and Latinos are lazy and criminal, Natives savages, Jews greedy, and all terrorists are Muslims.
Giving into self-hatred can bring acceptance and approval by white racists or those in denial of their own racism. Bigots love pointing to Ben Carson and Stacy Dash because they validate their hatred of Blacks by their own race baiting of other Blacks. American Indian haters love pointing to token Natives who defend anti-Native racism like “Indian” sports mascots. Holocaust deniers love pointing to Jews who deny the Holocaust. Anti-Asian racists love Michelle Malkin because she defends interning Japanese Americans during World War II and refuses to call herself Asian. The self-hating help promote hatred of their own to deflect hatred away from themselves. It’s a way to claim, “They [white racists] aren’t talking about me/don’t really hate me.”
Every minority knows examples of this. Entertainment recognizes it in characters like Uncle Ruckus from Boondocks. It isn’t unusual for self-hating Latinos to rant about “lazy wetback” immigrants, or for self-hating Blacks to denounce other Blacks as having a “plantation slave mentality” as said by Ben Carson while running for president.
The self-hating are rewarded for self-hatred. They become the favored pets and mascots for whites. They also get an inflated sense of self-importance: They are going to “rescue America,” take it back to a mythical golden age. In their minds, no less than that of the worst white racist, the America of the 1950s was a great time, back when women stayed home and gays stayed in the closet. Can anyone deny the role that sexism played in getting some Latinos to vote for Drumpf, or the fear of immigrants played in getting a few Blacks to vote for him?
But those who romanticize that time when “America was great” ignore this is also when most Blacks, Latinos, American Indians, and Asians could not vote, were kept segregated, and were even still being lynched. Make no mistake, similar atrocities will happen again under Drumpf, unless he is stopped by people of conscience. Being his supporters won’t save their darker family and friends with accents from hate crimes or being barred or kicked out, even “accidentally.” And the self-hating will have no one but themselves to blame.