The racial anxieties of conservative white Americans are certainly nothing new to U.S. history, but in recent years observers have warned of a range of factors that may be radicalizing right-leaning Americans into political violence and extremism. Donald Trump, in particular, often receives credit for normalizing this extremism for a new generation of Americans.
Straight Arrow News contributor Ruben Navarrette reviews some of Trump’s recent speeches and pledges to his supporters, specifically his promise to avenge the white American population, and traces the recent history of this rhetoric from the 1980s to today.
If you asked me to rank an order the top 100 problems facing America, your crime, your homelessness, drugs division, climate change, xenophobia, etc., nowhere on that list would you find the phrase anti-white racism. Whoever heard of such a thing? That must be when the folks who devoured 99% of the pie fight you for the extra 1% and then cry foul.
Crybaby in chief: Donald Trump. If the skies turn red, seas boil, frogs fall from heaven and he is reelected, President [Trump] plans to use a second term to settle scores and get even with those who wronged him and his supporters. According to news reports, given what his close aides, including the nativist know-nothing Stephen Miller, have planned if they returned to power, one group that this bunch thinks has been wronged are white people. They intend to use the Justice Department and a perversion of more than a half century of civil rights laws to avenge the victims of what they claim is an epidemic of anti-white racism.
This is nothing new. In the 1980s, white people attacked affirmative action, insisting that it amounted to “reverse discrimination.” In the 1990s, they thought multiculturalism was a plot to make them feel guilty for the racial injustices of the past. Today, there are those who think the push for DEI, diversity, equity [and] inclusion, is all about taking things away from white people and giving it to people of color. Still, this whole concept of anti-white racism is weird for me. I spent most of the first half of my life, about 28 years, growing up in the conservative farm country of Central California, where white people own the farms and brown people work the farms, and no one lets you forget the color scheme.