General Discussion

kpete

(72,018 posts) Mon Feb 29, 2016, 02:35 PM Feb 2016

The right is acting shocked — shocked! — that anyone would ever say there’s racism going on in GOP

The right is acting shocked — shocked! — that anyone would ever say there’s racism going on in their party, and they are all practically calling for the smelling salts at the mere suggestion that Donald Trump might be appealing to white people who hold racist views. This is to be expected. After all, even their protestations are a form of dogwhistle at this point: The pretense of horror at being called racist is a signal to fellow racists.

But the right wing isn’t alone in protesting the very obvious fact that Trump’s appeal is based in racism. There are more than a few members of the left who get similarly upset at any suggestion that the Trump phenomenon might be driven by race. This is odd considering his blatant xenophobia with respect to Hispanic immigrants and Muslims, his blaming of every economic problem on cunning leaders of foreign governments and his long history of outright racism when it comes to African Americans.

If these racist and xenophobic polices weren’t the central message of his campaign — if he weren’t promising to deport and ban millions of people — perhaps it might be believable that the white people who are voting for him [he doesn’t have any other kind] do so in spite of this agenda rather than because of it. The data does not support that. The New York Times reports:

"According to P.P.P., 70 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters in South Carolina wish the Confederate battle flag were still flying on their statehouse grounds. (It was removed last summer less than a month after a mass shooting at a black church in Charleston.) The polling firm says that 38 percent of them wish the South had won the Civil War. Only a quarter of Mr. Rubio’s supporters share that wish, and even fewer of Mr. Kasich’s and Mr. Carson’s do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-supporters-for-intolerance.html?_r=0

Nationally, further analyses of the YouGov data show a similar trend: Nearly 20 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters disagreed with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the Southern states during the Civil War. Only 5 percent of Mr. Rubio’s voters share this view.

Mr. Trump’s popularity with white, working-class voters who are more likely than other Republicans to believe that whites are a supreme race and who long for the Confederacy may make him unpopular among leaders in his party. But it’s worth noting that he isn’t persuading voters to hold these beliefs. The beliefs were there — and have been for some time."

MORE:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2016/02/white-supremacy-sunday-in-gop.html