As a minority, I had visceral reactions watching how clearly Jorge Ramos’ new documentary, Hate Rising, illustrates the effect of Trump’s rise, his candidacy and the increase in hateful rhetoric we’re seeing in 2016. I decided to retrace Trump’s ascent myself, using the 5 W’s.
What happened?
Donald Trump rode a wave of racist and divisive rhetoric to become a major political player in Republican politics. Paul Waldman wrote in November of LAST year, “Donald Trump is now running the most plainly, explicitly, straightforwardly racist campaign since at least George Wallace's third-party run in 1968, and maybe even Strom Thurmond's in 1948.” And of course he is. Trump leaves little room for doubt as a man who launched his campaign declaring that Mexicans were “rapists” and criminals.
Who’s involved?
Donald Trump is of course the main person responsible for his rise but many others are complicit in enabling his ascent. As much as Donald Trump disparages the media, they played a role in helping him rise from a reality TV star to the Republican nominee for president. The Washington Post reported, “Yes, media coverage helped Donald Trump clinch the Republican nomination. In the absence of media coverage, it is difficult to imagine that Trump could have done so. And because Trump often dominated news coverage, it was difficult for other Republican candidates to ‘break out.’”
Popular shows like SNL and Tonight on NBC also welcomed Trump onto their sets, normalizing his behavior and racist rhetoric. This prompted ire from many, including Latino protestors and Samantha Bee—herself a late-night host.
Finally, the fractures within the GOP itself cannot be overstated in the role they played to engender Donald Trump. “The ill-will between the base and the leadership has been growing since the rise of the tea party in 2010, culminating with the nomination of Trump on the backs of voters who feel betrayed by party leaders,” reported Raju and Walsh. As Trump repeatedly offended Mexicans, Gold Star families and spoke ill of party leaders, those very leaders—Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan—refused to withdraw their support in fear of losing his base of supporters. In fact, only after a graphic tape wherein Trump made predatory and lewd comments about women surfaced in October, did some Republicans begin to distance themselves from Trump. So, in the words of Senator Harry Reid, “Trump is no anomaly. He is the monster the Republicans built. He is their Frankenstein monster. They own him.”
When did it take place?
Some argue that the rise of Trump began on June 16, 2015 when he announced his presidential bid. “Polling data supports this claim that birtherism launched Trump’s political career within the Republican Party,” notes Tesler for the Washington Post. He was not alone in this thought as Kapur states that in 2011, “[w]eeks after Donald Trump began indulging the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., the real-estate mogul shot to the top of Republican polls.”
Tesler concludes that, “Any account of Trump’s rise to the top of the GOP must start with his origins: exploiting widespread backlash against the country’s first black president by peddling birtherism.”
Still, Trump wading into political waters can be traced further back to the 70’s. The Department of Justice sued Trump for housing discrimination against blacks in 1973. It was the beginning of a worrisome pattern which continued in 1989 when Trump took out a full page ad, calling for the death penalty for five young men of color—The Central Park Five—who were later proven innocent. In an attempt to double-down on this false claim in 2016, Trump again refused to accept their innocence in spite of evidence to the contrary and their legal exoneration.
Where did it take place?
Trump’s rise may have taken place across the United States of America but the specific pockets of the country where his base thrives paint a much different picture of the country at-large. “Analysis shows that Trump counties are places where white identity mixes with long-simmering economic dysfunctions,” Irwin and Katz report. “It’s a non-urban, blue-collar and now apparently quite angry population,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “They’re not people who have moved around a lot, and things have been changing away from them, but they live in areas that feel stagnant in a lot of ways.”
Why did this happen?
This is the big question. But you cannot examine it independently. Together, the answers to all of these questions paint a full picture of the rise of Trump. A man who peddled racist theories about Barack Obama to gain popularity, who was enabled by the media and Republican leadership and who appealed to disenfranchised (and predominantly white) voters by repeatedly tapping into xenophobia and racism. Bouie wrote that, “Not only does he lead a movement of almost exclusively disaffected whites, but he wins his strongest support in states and counties with the greatest amounts of racial polarization. Among white voters, higher levels of racial resentment have been shown to be associated with greater support for Trump.”
Finally, the role of Barack Obama cannot be minimized—as a historical figure challenging preconceived notions of race and power in this country. A Black man holding the highest office in American politics seemed to remind many that an imaginary hierarchy which placed only white men on top was suddenly being dismantled. In 2013, Tesler wrote, “the election of the country’s first Black president had the ironic upshot of opening the door for old-fashioned racism to influence partisan preferences after it was long thought to be a spent force in American politics.” What happens next? After November 8th with the 17 million+ supporters Trump has now himself empowered to display overt acts of racism and hatred? Do the “second amendment people” take matters into their own hands as Donald Trump has invited them to do? Only time will tell. The Trump effect is real. The only question that remains is how large a role it will play and what shape it will take once this election ends. However, as people of color, we can do something. We can get out the vote in record-breaking numbers to help resoundingly beat Donald Trump on election day, sending a clear message that love most certainly does trump hate.