Donald Trump could actually be the next president. Just let that sink in.
This is a man who actively demeans women, has encouraged violence at his campaign rallies, would ban all Muslims from entering the US and recently seemed undisturbed by an endorsement from a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. And yet Trump, a political outsider, is poised to grasp the highest office in the land.
It was never supposed to happen. But here we are. Tonight in Indiana, in the primary that nobody thought would matter, the thing that nobody thought possible a year ago, is really coming to pass. Donald Trump is going to clinch the Republican nomination. He is really winning, like he always says. Only it’s not a joke or catchy mantra – it’s reality.
And even he seems to understand how absurd that is. “It’s been an unbelievable day and evening and year,” Trump said at the beginning of his acceptance speech.
Unbelievable is one word for it.
After the race was called from Trump on Tuesday night, Ted Cruz, the only thing standing between him and the nomination, suspended his campaign.
This was never supposed to happen. Early polling had showed a tight race between Trump and Cruz. And Cruz had thrown everything he had at the contest, from money, to a newsy presidential pick and a non-aggression pact with John Kasich. Even up until tonight’s election, insiders continued to insist that delegate math protect the party from Trump’s nomination.
But suddenly with Cruz’s announcement, the specter of a contested convention fell away and the Republican primary was a one-man show. One big, orange, frightening one-man show.
Beaming at his audience on stage in the Trump Tower, he heaped lavish praise on people he’s disparaged the most, from women – he’s called them “dogs” and “fat pigs” – to Cruz himself, whom he recently declared “everyone hates.”
“He is a tough smart competitor”, Trump said of Cruz, a man he’d earlier said that everyone hates. Nevermind what’s honest, Trump has never been concerned with that .
The relationship between the two men has always been politically transparent , and tonight was no exception. After all, Trump will need to win over Cruz’s evangelical base if he’s ever going to beat Hillary Clinton in a general election. So with Cruz out of the race, he went from being Trump’s Opponent-in-Chief to being his Ally-in-Chief.
Not everyone’s on-board (Cruz, in one of his last acts as a presidential candidate, nuked the billionaire real estate mogul as a “pathological liar”), but it doesn’t matter anymore.
With all 57 of Indiana’s delegates under his belt, Trump has a breezy path to the 1,237 count he needs to steer clear of a contested convention in Cleveland this summer. And he doesn’t have an opponent in sight.
Indiana was the moment when Cruz said that, if Trump wins again, “America will plunge into the abyss.” Maybe he was right – November is still a long way off.
Meanwhile the new normal in America is a strange reality indeed. Donald Trump is winning and nobody – not Ted Cruz nor the entire Republican party working in concert (remember the #NeverTrump crusade?), can stop him.
This spring, over 2,000 Washington insiders, journalists and Hollywood elite filtered into the ballroom of the Washington Hilton to attend the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner.
The first comedian to perform for the group was Mark Russell in 1983. His political songs were full of puns, satire and mugging to the crowd. He was funny and sharp, but hardly biting.
The same cannot be said for this past weekend’s comedian-in-chief, Larry Wilmore, the black host of Comedy Central’s “The Nightly Show.” Wilmore began his routine by dubbing President Obama’s opening act and his own “Negro Night.”
Wilmore ended his routine by emotionally describing the historical significance of the first African-American president before saying, “Words alone do me no justice. So, if I’m going to keep it 100 – Yo, Barry, you did it my n-gga.”
Some in the audience shrieked, others laughed and many murmured. To use the term to refer to the president of the United States was a huge risk, and The Twitterverse lit up seconds after Wilmore uttered it.
Former White House staffer Van Jones said the comment was “disgraceful” and he’d never appear on any show hosted by Wilmore.
Meanwhile, activist Al Sharpton called it offensive and in “poor taste.”
As a person who studies media representations of diverse people across time, I generally find the term objectionable. Still, in this one case, I’m OK with it. And it’s not simply due to the standard trope “He can say it, he’s black.” I excuse Wilmore because in this case, the “n-word” triggered a rare code shift for Obama – a breath of blackness that we have rarely seen from the president over the past eight years.
In this brief moment, Wilmore was able to connect with the president in a way that no previous headliner had. He also highlighted a type of tension that all African-Americans – including President Obama – can relate to: that being black and “being black” are two different things.
Navigating tricky terrain
Afterwards, Wilmore pounded his chest and pointed at the president. In response, the president thumped his own chest. With this gesture, Obama acknowledged his brotherhood with Wilmore, another black man from Chicago.
Black America has long had its own lexicon of coded language and symbols. But people of color that succeed in corporate or political life tend to pick up and drop the mannerisms, symbols or words that they have grown up with.
The phenomenon, known as code switching, can be thought of as acting differently in different situations. And to assimilate with those who wield power, we often feel pressured to be like them.
For example, historically, blacks in the workplace have felt pressure to change the way they dress, do their hair and even greet each other to make their presence more palatable to coworkers.
Sociologist Chandra Waring has noted that the ability to code switch can be an asset for black Americans. It’s part of how many blacks navigate American society: yielding to the expectations of the dominant culture, while still retaining credibility with other blacks.
While it’s unfortunate, there is a comfort that people of color give to white America by temporarily eliminating the affectations that can come with our culture. Since ascending to the presidency, Obama has rarely been seen connecting with his black constituents this way. After all, as president, he’s supposed to represent all of America. Regrettably, that has tended to mean defaulting to the white majority.
Being president while black
Every now and then, however, we’ll see President Obama being black. There was, of course, the famous campaign trail fist bump with Michelle in 2008. Then there were the different handshakes he deployed during a locker room meet and greet – one for a white guy and one for black basketball star Kevin Durant.
Certainly Obama’s singing Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” at a fundraiser at Harlem’s Apollo Theater was far more soulful than it would have been in a different setting, with a predominately white audience. And the president’s speech that culminated with a touching performance of “Amazing Grace” could have happened only in a Charleston church touched by racially charged violence.
Wilmore knows what all black men know: There are at least two guys lurking under the surface.
And after more than seven years, Wilmore wanted to be honest about it in a way that, while toeing a line between acceptable and objectionable, was culturally familiar.
Of course, the president had pulled off his own code switch at the end of his standup routine.
“Obama out,” he said, kissing the peace sign and dropping the mic.
In the final year of his administration, he reminded the room that even though eight years in the Oval Office may have aged him, he was still the cool black guy from Chicago.
And with Wilmore’s code switch, he was able to tell a president that has been criticized for being both “too black” and “not black enough” that black men are proud to be his brothers.
This week the world saw – via that new, visual means of wildfire gossip-mongering known as “trending on social media” – Lil’ Kim’s new face and hair. For anyone who doesn’t know Lil Kim, she isn’t a teenage Instagram model – born Kimberley Jones in 1974, she’s one of the most successful female rappers the world has ever seen. And, assuming it matters, she used to be a black woman.
But after years of plastic surgery and progressive skin-bleaching, and who only knows what she’s done to her hair, she’s not black any more. Kim, who seems like a genuinely sweet, if vulnerable woman, explained back in 2000 that she’d always been told by men – “even the ones I was dating” – that she wasn’t pretty enough. Well, OK. But I doubt there was a single black person on this earth – male or female – who didn’t look at Lil’ Kim’s new, white face and feel a deep, inscrutable pain. Because Lil’ Kim just announced to the whole world that as far as she’s concerned, Black just isn’t Beautiful.
— (@)
Now, we can blame “racist”, “sexist”, “heteronormative” society for this. We can blame Instagram. We can blame the unrealistic photoshopped advertising images that saturate our screens and, by extension, psyches. We can bleat about “intersectionality” and “patriarchy”. We can blame the music industry. We can blame Barbie, Mattel and Malibu Stacey. If we were really struggling we could do our best to blame Kim Kardashian.
But just for a moment, let’s not blame anyone for the fact that Lil Kim has such a compromised self-image – and let’s not equate Kim with Rachel Dolezal, the white NAACP leader who purported to be black, last year claiming a controversial “transracial” identity. Dolezal may have permed her hair but she never changed her features or her skin tone, nor was she filled with tragic self-loathing. Dolezal’s attitude was rather one of entitlement.
For now, let’s just accept all this without trying to blame anyone.
Wanting to be white
Unfortunately I understand all too well how Lil’ Kim (or Lil’ Vim, as someone I know unkindly dubbed her – referencing a brand of “extra-whitening” scouring powder) has ended up the way she has.
Lil Kim in 2001.
Everett Collection/Shutterstock.com
Kim and I are the same age; when I was a little girl, I also wanted to be white. And it wasn’t because I thought white people were “cool”. It was because I believed that not being white made me ugly by default. My (white) mother was so uncomfortable with my black genes that she told me I was of South American, rather than Jamaican (and ergo African), descent – and I believed her. Why wouldn’t I? I was in my teens before I found out the truth.
Rather than use make-up and plastic surgery to reconstruct a self-identity, I threw myself into books. Chiefly anything by or about Malcolm X, or any of the Black Panthers – aged 15 I read Roots, all 700 pages of it. When I was 16, a copy of Frantz Fanon’s 1952 classic Black Skin, White Masks was given to me by white schoolfriends amused by my new militant stance and whose motives, I suspect, were slightly tongue-in-cheek. Those books did for me what no amount of reconstructive surgery could have done. Fanon, a psychiatrist from the French West Indies, wrote about the psychology of blackness as a legacy of colonisation and white supremacy. What all those books told me was that: this internalised self-image of black ugliness, black inferiority – it’s a lie. And one that’s taken root inside, deep; like a particularly insidious form of brain cancer.
Although I read a lot, those were pre-internet days. It was only recently, via video footage, that I understood quite how aesthetically beautiful the Black Panther leaders were, in their black leather jackets and berets. Huey Newton was like a pin-up, Kathleen Cleaver and Angela Davis were not only beautiful women with fashionable afros – they were brilliant, articulate and outspoken women at the forefront of a thwarted revolution. In 1968 Kathleen Cleaver told an interviewer:
For so many, many years we were told that only white people were beautiful; that only straight hair, light eyes, light skin, was beautiful; and so black women would try everything they could to straighten their hair, lighten their skin, to look as much like white women. But this has changed, because black people are aware.
Well, I wish Lil’ Kim had been aware. Come to that, when I was ten years old, well after the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party, I wish I had been aware.
This year marks the 50-year anniversary of the birth of the BPP and the cry that “Black is Beautiful”. It’s not true to say that nothing has changed in the interim period – much has changed, although progress is never guaranteed to happen in a straight line. Perhaps what none of these writers and revolutionaries could have foretold 50 or 60 years ago was that the psychology of colonisation would persist, invisibly, even when laws and statutes are in place to protect the rights of all.
Without blaming, let’s just accept this fact for what it is. And now I ask you: is it acceptable?
Even though I have never liked the sound of the N-word, and have only ever personally experienced it in a negative context, I could not have been more moved by Larry Wilmore’s use of the word in his closing remarks as host of the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday night.
Wilmore said to President Barack Obama: “Yo Barry, you did it, my n---a,” fist pounding his chest and going in for the brother love embrace. Doing so, he broke comedic character to tell the president, to a large extent on behalf of black America, how meaningful it is for us to have seen him in office for the past eight years. Agree or disagree with his policies, as Wilmore noted earlier in his bit – “I agree with the policy that he’s black” – their embrace represented a moment filled with the vulnerability, truth and power of two black men seeing each other in an America that devalues, profiles, incarcerates and kills them at a startling rate.
I was introduced to the N-word long before I had any real understanding of its association with blackness and black culture. Certainly when I first heard it from the mouth of a white playground bully in the fourth or fifth grade, I knew it was not meant as a term of endearment. But as a black child adopted into a white family, the word and its meaning had never been discussed. It wasn’t until high school, after I’d read James Baldwin and other black writers, interacted with some black kids during summers out of town and listened to hip-hop did I come to realize that it was a word not merely complicated, but intensely fraught. The level of fraughtness is entirely reliant upon who says it and to whom.
But even after I understood that in hip-hop culture, and among many black Americans, the N-word is often used playfully, lovingly, and that Ta-Nehisi Coates told Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton of BuzzFeed’s popular podcast Another Round that “n---a” is his favorite word in the English language, as an adult and the parent of a 10-year-old son, I still don’t use it or want to hear it.
The obvious reason is that I never heard it spoken to me lovingly. The only context I know for that word is one in which I am being intentionally degraded by white people. The next time I heard it after the playground was in high school, when my boss a the local oil company called me a lazy n---er under his breath after I refused to clean the bathroom right after he’d used it. I was a receptionist, not a cleaning person. I believe the word belongs to black people and black culture – the agency and right to use it when or if or how we want to use it is important.
As much as I support and understand Wilmore’s use of it with President Obama, and respect that Ta-Nehisi Coates finds magic in a word many people cringe at, I have been very clear with my son that context matters. When he hears Kendrick Lamar say it, or Larry Wilmore, he knows that it’s their prerogative to use the word, and that they are communicating a very specific, deeply rooted kind of affection toward one another.
He also knows that white people are never allowed to use it. While I have been fairly strict with him about his own usage of the word – not in our house, not with his boys, not even singing along with hip-hop – the exchange between Wilmore and Obama reminded me of a moment I witnessed and wrote about in an earlier book of mine called Saving the Race, which looks at the legacy of WEB Du Bois in a contemporary context.
I was chatting to the journalist LeAlan Jones in New York’s Union Square last year when, when mid-sentence, almost as if it were part of what he was saying to me, LeAlan looked up past my shoulder and said, “Hey, Q-Tizzy, what up?” Then, in this one beautiful seamless motion, LeAlan and the man he had just greeted exchanged the graceful palm-to-fingers slide of a familiar handshake. The man kept walking, and LeAlan resumed the sentence where he’d left off with me. A little while later, having recognized the man he’d shaken hands with, I asked him: “So how do you know Q-Tip?” and LeAlan said: “I don’t.”
It’s not just a familiar handshake – it’s a black handshake. It’s the physical embodiment of the word “n---a” and it is ours. At a time of heightened awareness and receptivity regarding race and black culture, it felt like Larry Wilmore was saying: “You can keep degrading us, keep ignoring or killing us, keep pretending that conversations about race will get us where we need to get, but you cannot take this. Not this word, not this gesture. Not our recognition of each other.” And it made me feel a sense of pride – a sense of black pride.
Tonight I tried to give the HBO series Game of Thrones another chance--but when they entertained us by having a pack of vicious dogs tear apart a baby, they crossed a line, and I have ceased watching again.
When I've complained in print about a television program that is sadistic, using cruelty for entertainment without balance, without any real moral center, someone says, "But oh John, you have published some very dark fiction, some violent fiction indeed..." But you know, there were always lines I wouldn't cross, and there was always a moral center. Occasionally I probably got carried away with some act of Righteous Revenge in a story or novel -- but then I wasn't writing for a television show going out to millions of viewers and, anyway, I would never have a baby torn apart alive (or even dead) by vicious dogs.
Usually, at this point, someone says, “Oh, but Shakespeare was violent too!” But he never had a pack of vicious dogs tearing a baby apart. Shakespeare knew where the line was and, God knows, the man always had a real point to make.
The way sadistic violence is dramatized in Game of Thrones -- multiple rapes, and the extended torture of one of the characters that went on for many episodes, and now vicious dogs tearing apart a baby just off screen -- it just doesn't feel like a drama protesting the horrors innocents are subjected to in the world. It doesn’t feel meaningful. Nor does it feel like, for example, a dramatization of the doings of Caligula, though clearly that real-life sadistic Roman Emperor inspired two separate characters in Game of Thrones.
No. It feels like, just more entertainment -- just like the "useful torture" on 24 and Fear the Walking Dead, and like beloved series characters being eaten alive in extended excruciating detail on the original The Walking Dead.
One has to ask, why don't the producers of “Game of Thrones” in particular, simply see where the line should be, on this show. Why don’t they just know where that line is, as so many other people do, and simply choose not to cross it? The answer may be, "What does that line have to do with my paycheck and residuals?" They seem desperate to find new lines to cross. It’s easier than coming up with real drama.
You see, I think someone one the show does know where the line is. Apparently someone cleared their throat at the script reading, perhaps, and said, “We shouldn’t show the dogs tearing the baby and his mother apart onscreen. I know! Let’s put it just out of shot!” So they show the satisfied look on the face of the sadist, and we heard the screams and snarls and snaps. Why, what admirable restraint! We should all be grateful that they didn’t show the baby being torn apart. We should send them thank you notes. We only heard it, perforce imagined it, and enjoyed this much exploited character smiling in satisfaction. That way we can chuckle, and identify with his satisfaction.
I’m told the books by George R.R. Martin didn’t include most of the egregious acts of sadistic cruelty found in the television series. We might infer that someone administrative on the production encouraged the sadism, then gave the “green light” to using vicious packs of dogs tearing a baby apart as entertainment.
As seven billion people increase to 9 billion people on a climate-changed Earth where food will likely be scarce and billions pushed into desperate migration, empathy will become a rare gem. It will be around--but it'll be rare and precious. How long before we make this kind of amusement more than fictional television, and put the Romans to shame, leaving their timid little bread-and-circus entertainments far behind? Are we now engaged in a televised preparation for that society?
Do we really have to degrade ourselves in advance?
There’s a place on the internet where thousands of Americans across the political spectrum are hanging out together and not arguing – they’re actually having a great time.
The man responsible for this miracle is Bernie Sanders, but not in the way you might think. The only requirement for joining the subreddit Enough Sanders Spam is a hatred of overzealous Sanders fans and a willingness to put aside personal politics for the fun of roasting them. The low barrier to entry has, counterintuitively perhaps, made it one of the most collegial gathering spots in an increasingly divisive campaign.
So user globalglastnost created a forum to lampoon it. It has over 6,000 subscribers.
“I am in New England and have seen face-to-face what I call the ‘green tea bagger’ types,” globalglastnost told me in a private message on Reddit, describing green tea baggers to another redditor as, “very uncompromising, unapologetic and dogmatic.”
One of Enough Sanders Spam’s main targets is the subreddit /r/Politics , which is one of the site’s most popular, with more than 3 million subscribers. In the course of the campaign, it has become a second Bernie Sanders for President page. All stories about the candidate are positive, all stories about Hillary Clinton are negative, and all stories about anything else are few and far between. Commenters who criticize Sanders on /r/Politics are called “low information voters” or “Shillaries”. And when faced with a Democratic Primary loss, Sanders supporters cry voter fraud.
Here’s a characteristic comment posted on /r/Politics the night that Hillary Clinton won the Nevada Democratic caucus:
To all the Hillary gloaters, i’ll tell you one thing. r/politics is, and always will be, Bernie territory. OUR territory. The mods of r/politics have formally endorsed Senator Sanders for president. We will continue to control the front page with positive Bernie news. So before you start talking shit and bragging about your bitch’s win, I’ll have you know that we’re well versed in downvote brigades. Say RIP to your karma if you try anything cute. Assholes.
The site runs on user-submitted stories that everyone votes on to decide what gets shown on the front page, which is in turn fodder for much of what eventually filters onto mainstream news sites. Manipulating votes is against Reddit’s rules , but when it comes to the 2016 presidential race, all of that has gone out the window. So it’s led to a strange space where bipartisanism works in service of trying to push back against a giant Bernie bias.
There’s also a megathread from the night of the New York Primary which was the Christmas Eve of /r/enoughsandersspam: a night everyone looked forward to as the unofficial end to the Sanders campaign. There’s a comprehensive list with citations of the craziest things that Bernie Sanders has said (“I don’t believe in charities”).
But my favorite thing on Enough Sanders Spam has been the Upvotes Party they had after Hillary Clinton won the New York Primary. It really illustrated the cross-political nature of the sub. “As a Hillary supporter, I know this place can get very Hill-centric, so I wanted to throw out a CONGRATULATIONS Trump supporters on your victory tonight as well!!!” is just one characteristic example.
As the Sanders campaign winds down, (Bernie laid off hundreds of campaign staff last week after losing four out of five east coast primaries on Tuesday), even some Sanders supporters have found their way to /r/enoughsandersspam and, true to form, they’ve been welcomed with open arms.
“You don’t have to answer shit about your views,” redditor yzlautum wrote . “This sub is to just laugh at all the ridiculousness that occurs with Bernie, his campaign and his supporters.”
When I asked what will happen to /r/enoughsandersspam after Hillary Clinton becomes the presumptive Democratic nominee, globalglastnost pointed out that the sub has already been jokingly rebranded as /r/enough_jill_stein_spam on the subreddit’s main banner, a reference to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who would be the natural progression for Sanders fans who swear they’d never vote for Clinton.
In what is, perhaps, America’s most polarized and unsettling presidential race to date, a love fest between conservatives and liberals turns out the be the sanest choice of all.
I was chatting with a friend recently – a successful actor who does abortion-rights advocacy on the side – about a big pro-choice fundraiser she’s currently orchestrating. It was past midnight at her house, but she was still up, still working, clacking away at her laptop, tying up loose ends, pushing ticket sales, gathering auction items – her “side” project looking suspiciously like a second full-time job.
“You’re a hero,” I said.
“No, I am not,” she snapped, vehement. “Somebody’s got to do it. It’s a fucking embarrassment that I have to.”
She was right. “Our country is a septic tank,” I sighed. “On fire.”
“Full-on fail.”
I still think that choosing to take on the exhausting, sisyphean, largely thankless work of abortion advocacy (we are not taught to say “thank you” for abortion; we are taught to never speak of it at all) is heroic. She could choose to leave that work to others, but she doesn’t. That’s significant.
But that reaction – somebody’s got to do it, so I do – triggered a familiar weariness in me. We shouldn’t have to spend our spare time working, pro bono, to remove stigma from a procedure so common that a full third of the women you know have had one ; or to raise money to help impoverished pregnant people travel hundreds of miles, to other states, to exercise a legal right; or to convince a supposedly free and enlightened nation, in 2016, that people with uteruses are autonomous human beings deserving of basic medical care. Each of these things should be a given, and we’ve been having this conversation since before my grandmother was born, so why are we still talking about it now? When will the “debate” end so that women can finally be fully invested in their work and passions and lives?
It was when I sat down to write about Donald Trump’s statement – he said: “Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5% of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the women’s card” – that I realised: it’s the same thing. How many times do feminists have to deconstruct and debunk the notion of the “woman card”? How many rounds are we going to go this time? How many thinkpieces do we need before society accepts that sexism is real and we can move on to the far more important work of repairing the damage it has caused? The next time some rightwing dillweed drops a turd like “woman card”, will anyone remember that women have already done this labour? Or will we just have to do it all over again?
What a tremendous, tedious, pointless drain on our time and energy. Imagine what we could accomplish if we were just allowed to do our jobs.
I hate this election. Everything about it makes me miserable. Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s fans. Twitter. Abortion. Xenophobia. That thing on Ted Cruz’s lip. The opinions in Ted Cruz’s brain . Walls. Refugees. Four hundred and ninety-seven thousand debates. My Bernie friends yelling at my Hillary friends. My Hillary friends yelling at my Bernie friends. Straight white men insisting that identity politics have no value. The random dude who yelled at me for tweeting that I liked that little bird that landed on Bernie Sanders’s podium , because he thought it sounded like I liked the bird better than Bernie, and none shall besmirch the honour of the Bern on Trevor’s watch. (“I get it,” he said. “You have a vagina.”)
But maybe what I hate the most about this election is thinking about all the goddamn writing I’m going to have to do for the next four (or, potentially, eight) years if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency. Misogynist rhetoric is going to reach levels of frenzy heretofore unknown to science, and with misogynist rhetoric comes feminist outcry, and with feminist outcry comes dopey faux-confusion: “I don’t get why this is sexist. Explain it to me. Debate with me. Help me. Convince me.” There is no sense of memory, of the fact that all of this has been explained many, many times before. Because why would they want to remember? The incessant demand that women “debate” and defend our own humanity is a deliberate diversion meant to hobble our power – part of the mechanism of sexism itself.
Do you know what I care about? Young-adult fantasy novels, detective shows and writing comedy with my husband. Do you know what I spend my time writing about? Abortion, online harassment and rape, over and over, around and around. Not that I’m not passionate about those issues – I am, deeply – but my passion is born of necessity. I would love to not have to care.
“Hopefully, we won’t have to do many more of these,” my friend said of her fundraiser, “but you should come next year!” Hopefully, some day, abortion will be affordable and accessible everywhere, and we can go back to whatever we were doing before we were forced to fight for our lives. Hopefully, we won’t have say this all over again. But we know we will.
At a recent “Town Hall” debate Hillary Clinton announced that she would appoint a cabinet that is half female if she is elected president. When questioned by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, Clinton pledged: “Well, I am going to have a cabinet that looks like America, and 50% of America is women, right?”
Given that Clinton is the Democrats' almost-certain nominee and is given a healthy chance against any likely Republican contender – Trump in particular – 2017 could be the year that America inaugurates its first female president, and has its first gender-parity cabinet.
This would be a first for America. In total, of the 558 Americans who have served in the US cabinet since 1776, only 29 have been women. Just four of the 15 current cabinet secretaries are female.
Internationally, pre-election pledges for gender equality in the most powerful offices of state have become increasingly common. In 2004, Spanish prime ministerial hopeful Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero made this pledge before his election and went on to appoint Spain’s first gender-parity cabinet. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously pledged in 2015 that half of his cabinet would be female. He made good on that pledge, and when asked why, simply replied: “Because it’s 2015.”
Yet deploying cabinet appointments as electoral strategy is not just the province of the left. David Cameron also pledged in 2008 that one third of his cabinet ministers would be female by the end of his first term in office – and once he had control of all cabinet appointments in 2015, that standard was met.
But why has Clinton felt the need to join the fray? Clearly she feels the pressure to demonstrate her commitment to gender equality, so the particular politics of the 2016 race are at work here.
Clinton has struggled to win over young female progressive voters from self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, and now his chances of winning are fading away, the pledge will fit well into her push to win them over for the general election.
However, Clinton has also felt this pressure simply because she’s a female candidate. Whereas she declined to allude explicitly to her gender for most of the 2008 campaign, Clinton has been clear about her perception of feminism, and has sought to use her female identity in her electoral strategy. Donald Trump and other Republicans have derided her use of the “woman card”, but she’s managed to turn it into a compliment.
There is also an important political contrast to be drawn here. It’s highly unlikely that we’ll see such a commitment from Trump or his principal Republican rival, Ted Cruz. Clinton, by contrast, isn’t just positioning herself as the “woman candidate”, she’s trying to set herself apart from the hard-line conservatism of her opponents.
Under pressure
Women’s representation in government has become an important measure of a leader’s attitudes to equality and diversity in representation more generally, and executive appointments all over the world are increasingly scrutinised for their gender balance. If enacted, Clinton’s pledge will also bring the US up to par with the aspirations of other countries' party leaders, especially on the progressive side.
More than ever, party leaders, national media, and electorates expect that the cabinet will represent the gender balance of the nation, and whether the women appointed actually hold power equivalent to their male colleagues. (Just ask British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.)
So what are the numbers Clinton is looking at? A US president’s cabinet comprises the heads of 15 executive departments, the vice-president, and seven additional cabinet-rank positions. There has been speculation that Clinton will choose a female running mate, which would leave seven cabinet secretary positions to be allocated to women.
Clinton, herself only the third female secretary of state, will be conscious of the fact that the senate, whatever its makeup in January 2017, will have to approve all of her cabinet nominees. But there’s no shortage of competent female candidates for these roles, and with the increasing probability that the Democrats will take control of the senate once again, this should not be such a hurdle.
The real test isn’t just whether Clinton can keep her promise, but whether candidates in future elections find themselves under pressure to follow her lead. And now she’s gone on the record with her commitment, Clinton will certainly be held to account for it if she’s elected.
When asked to choose between the candidacies of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, remarked,
It’s like being shot or poisoned. What does it really matter?
But, in fact, it really does matter for the Republican Party.
Based on a survey taken before the Iowa caucus, voters see Cruz as the most orthodox neoconservative candidate on issues such as trade liberalization, taxes and shrinking the role of government. Simultaneously, he represents a slightly less authoritarian choice. By contrast, Trump is seen as taking a more moderate economic stance on trade and taxes, but a more extreme position on authoritarian values.
Most importantly for the electoral fortunes of the GOP, both candidates are located some distance away from the position of the median American voter.
Clearly, candidate positions evolve. Nominated candidates usually pivot toward the center in the general election. Nevertheless, candidates are often unable to ditch the image about their positions which were first formed in the public mind during the primary season.
If there is a contested Republican convention – a prospect which looks increasingly unlikely – delegates will probably support a candidate based on their positions and who is regarded as the least-bad electoral risk.
Two rival interpretations about the basis of support for the candidates are commonly heard. Let’s consider both:
Interpretation #1: It’s the economy
Numerous commentators regard both Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as economic populists with strongest support among those who are economically struggling and dissatisfied with growing social inequality.
Economists like Dani Rodrik blame globalization for rising populism and the politics of anger. In this thesis, blue collar and less educated voters have grown weary of growing income disparities, stagnant or falling wages, lack of corporate accountability for the 2008 financial crisis and the continued exodus of manufacturing jobs overseas. Researchers at The Hamilton Project found that American men without a college degree, in particular, have fared poorly in loss of real wages since 1990.
Washington Post reporters Max Ehrenfreund and Scott Clement found that Republicans worried about maintaining their economic situation are more likely to support Trump. It is thought that anti-establishment pitchforks are directed against both parties because Congress is perceived to continually promise job growth and rising living standards while in practice kowtowing to corporate donors, favoring trade liberalization and expanding tax loopholes for the rich.
From this perspective, Cruz provides an extreme version of Reaganesque economic orthodoxy on free trade, while Trump has trampled upon these neoconservative nostrums, such as by suggesting taxes on Chinese imports.
Likewise among Democrats. Sanders' appeal to white, younger voters is often attributed to his progressive economic mantra of tackling income inequality, cleaning up campaign finance, reducing student debt and taking on Wall Street. His campaign has been a one-note angry shout for the “have-nots” against the “haves.” Hillary Clinton’s speeches have gradually tacked closer to Sanders on these issues, although she is saddled with her husband’s legacy of NAFTA.
Interpretation #2: It’s cultural backlash
The alternative argument suggests that popular support for Trump taps most deeply into a cultural backlash, rather than any economic issue. In this view, authoritarian populism in the U.S. and other Western democracies has been driven most strongly by cultural values. Trump’s rhetoric stirs up a potent mix of racial resentment, intolerance, American First nationalism and isolationism. It emphasizes mistrust of outsiders, misogyny and sexism, attack-dog politics, and racial and anti-Muslim animus.
Racial politics are clearly part of this witch’s brew. Nat Cohn found that support for Trump was strongest in areas with measures of racial animosity. Survey data point toward the same conclusions. Jason McDaniel and Sean McElwee have shown that racial animosity is a critical driver in Trump’s support.
But American racial attitudes are arguably part of a broader phenomenon. My book comparing support for the radical right in many countries found that authoritarian populists typically scapegoat outsiders. Populists favor nationalism, social conformity, order and strong leaders.
Taking up this broader theme, Matthew MacWilliams in his research found that support for authoritarian values was one of the best predictors of Trump’s support.
Trump’s willingness to trample upon “political correctness” is thought to be catnip for less educated, older, blue collar Americans. This group finds themselves stranded like fish losing oxygen in a shrinking pool on the losing side of cultural tides, powerless to push back against long-term social evolution transforming the diversity of peoples and values in the United States. Meanwhile, Trump’s speech is anathema to civil discourse among educated liberals and establishment Republicans like Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney.
Survey on favorability
For evidence of which interpretation is right, we can dive into the American National Election Study, conducted in January 2016, just before the first votes were cast in the Iowa caucus.
The survey of 1,200 American citizens monitored candidate preferences by asking “Regardless of whether you will vote in the Democratic primary this year, which Democratic candidate do you prefer?” An equivalent question was asked for Republican contenders.
This does not imply that sympathizers necessarily cast a primary ballot for these candidates. Rather, the questions tap into overall favorability toward the candidates before the first vote was cast.
The position of the candidates can be assumed to reflect that of their sympathizers. These positions can then be compared with the median voter.
Economic values
What does the NES survey say about the economic issues interpretation of candidates' appeal?
Lib Con.
Author provided
The chart above shows two classic indicators of these positions in the survey, including where supporters of each candidate placed themselves on the liberal-conservatism scale and whether they favored less or more government services and spending.
The evidence suggests that among Democrats, both Clinton and Sanders sympathizers saw themselves as liberal and favoring an expansion of government services and spending. Surprisingly, Clinton supporters were slightly more left wing than Sanders supporters.
Among Republicans, those most favorable toward Jeb Bush placed themselves remarkably close to the Democrats. Supporters of the other Republican candidates were all on the right of the median voter. Most supporters of the GOP candidates were fairly close to the median voter – with the exception of those most sympathetic toward Trump and Cruz. Cruz supporters were the most extreme and farthest from the average American on economic issues.
Cultural backlash?
What does the evidence say about the appeal of authoritarian values in America?
Author provided
The chart above taps into social tolerance (how favorably respondents felt toward Muslims) and attitudes toward authority (how favorably they felt about the police).
The results provide a perfect snapshot of the range of choices on cultural values in the 2016 primary campaign. As expected, Sanders sympathizers show least support for authoritarian values. They are followed by Clinton supporters, who were closest to the mainstream position of the average American.
By contrast, supporters of most of the Republican candidates clustered together as more favorable toward these authoritarian populist values. Bush sympathizers were predictably more liberal than those of Cruz.
The most striking outlier concerns supporters of Trump, who displayed the strongest sympathy toward authoritarian populist values. This reinforces the notion that his distinctive brand of populism strikes a chord among less educated and older voters, who regard social diversity as a threat to traditional American values.
These factors continue to predict favorability toward Cruz and Trump even after controlling for other factors associated with political attitudes and electoral choices, including the age, gender, race, education and income of voters.
With Trump versus Cruz, the GOP faces a Hobson’s choice between two types of extremes. Which is the riskier bet for the future of the party – and indeed for America and the world?
Cruz’s support now appears to be lagging, while Trump has surged in recent primaries, so Trump may get a majority of delegates in the first round at the Republican convention. If the contest goes into a second round, however, the answer for Republican delegates probably depends upon whether they are most fearful of the dangers of authoritarian populism or neoconservatism.
Pippa Norris, ARC Laureate Fellow, Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney and McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Harvard University
The long-anticipated Captain America: Civil War has just hit Australian cinemas. The latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe brings to a head a problem that has been brewing for years: whether superheroes should be directed by government organisations.
The movie carries on from a disastrous battle in the fictional country of Sokovia in Avengers: Age of Ultron. In response to the enormous loss of life and property detailed over the previous Avengers movies, the United Nations demands the superheroes submit to registration and oversight by a UN committee.
The Avengers split into two duelling teams, led by the anti-authoritarian Captain America (Cap) and the pro-regulation Iron Man. A vast supporting cast brings in heroes from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a political and personal crisis plays out in a series of knockout fight sequences.
Superhero movies – at their best – reflect the political anxieties of our time through a lurid mythology. This movie grapples with governmental control, overextended police powers and bloated bureaucracies that protect their members from any personal accountability when things go wrong.
The very premise of a superhero narrative, after all, is political. It relies on a recognition of the state’s insufficiency: if the authorities were doing their jobs, why would we need superheroes?
Captain America: Civil War doesn’t rely on super-villains to endanger humankind: the real enemies are power-hungry politicians, and the heroes themselves as their personalities clash in some of the best choreographed action scenes since The Raid (2011).
Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) go head-to-head.
Supplied
Patriotically anti-authority
Heroes have always been part of our cultural imagination, adapting to fit contemporary ideologies. This is particularly true of the Captain America character, whose very name is politically loaded.
Cap’s anti-authoritarian streak has been stirring since Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). In The Avengers (2012), we saw the shady World Security Council authorise a nuclear attack on Manhattan.
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Cap discovers that SHIELD, the organisation he works for, has been corrupted by Nazi splinter group HYDRA. The World Security Council is helpless to stop them. Cap’s distrust of oversight indicates that administrators are not objective. Nor are they incorrigible or accountable.
The problems the authorities are trying to fix in superhero vigilantism aren’t solved by creating more bureaucracy, but transferred to committees that lack the personal accountability of individual heroes.
Despite good intentions, Cap’s movie history shows that any organisation can be corrupted – and, ultimately, individuals have to decide if their leaders are trustworthy. While other characters would ask: “Who watches the watchmen?” Cap asks: “Who watches our watchers?”
Both previous Captain America movies (and the comics they’re drawn from, published in 2006-7) have echoed the real-world War on Terror and the increased state powers assumed since the PATRIOT Act.
Cap has previously rejected increased surveillance; criminal profiling; data collection; and pre-emptive strikes. Most of all, he denounces using fear as a tool to control a society.
Captain America: Civil War is similarly coded with terror culture. Cap objects to declaring uncontrolled superheroes as criminals; to imprisonment without trial; the over-arming of soldiers and police; and inevitable subsequent deaths.
These are real anxieties of our terror age, articulated through superhero mythology.
The Civil War story is only the most recent example of Cap’s resistance of the state. He’s rebelled against political regimes in comics released during the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Jr. administrations.
In these comics, corrupt politicians attempt to harness him as an agent, but Cap goes rogue, fighting for his own ideals. He rejects the assumption that the name “Captain America” is a conservative moniker, and uses his own cultural leverage to publicly criticise the state.
Captain America: Civil War is definitely designed for fans who’ve been following the Marvel Cinematic Universe for some time. For the faithful, there’s an emotionally charged narrative, a complex political crisis, a witty script, and a genuinely intriguing plot between its phenomenal action scenes.
To dismiss superheroes in blockbusters as superficial ignores the fact that these movies can be meaningful, both personally and politically. Civil War manages to fit all this together. Despite being about a team divided, the movie unites its many ideas.
Jesus Christ was not a socialist. Nor was he a free-market capitalist (as one would hope should go without saying). Whether or not one believes him to be the Son of God he was a first-century Palestinian Jew living under Roman imperialism, and influenced by that very specific context of pre-modern politics and apocalyptic religion. Jesus lived before market capitalism, before the scientific and industrial revolutions, before the eighteenth-century language of human rights, and before a coherent modern philosophy of materialism. That he could be thought of as either a socialist – or a capitalist – is a presentist category mistake that imposes and projects our political milieu unto the very distant past. Jesus could have been neither of these things for the simple (and one would think obvious) reason that neither of them existed at the time he lived. At most, it could perhaps be entertained that he was a type of anarchist, though a very odd one who encouraged you to pay your taxes. As a means of political rhetoric (claiming Christ for whatever your narrow partisan side may be) it exhibits a lack of critical thought and historical context.
It’s a given in our national discourse that the right excels at claiming Jesus as a member of their own party. Jesus is enlisted as an anti-choice agitator or as an opponent of gay marriage, despite the fact that he never said anything about abortion or homosexuality. Even more incongruously he is enlisted as a type of Norman Vincent Peale enthusiast for a very capitalist prosperity gospel, certainly an odd interpretation for a man who lived communally and abjured the rich. But a resistance to wealth alone a socialist does not necessarily make, and such an interpretation can lead to a similar category mistake as the ones made on the right. As such, the left can sometimes fall into the same fallacious reasoning that pretends a two-millennia old religious figure’s modern voting preferences can be somehow ascertained. Witness the preponderance of Internet memes that proliferated upon the announcement that the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences had invited Vermont senator and Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders to speak in Rome. Several variations of this meme exist, but broadly they claim something along the lines that “Of course the pope likes the socialist Jew,” explicitly tying Sanders to Jesus in associating the later with the entirely modern economic and political ideology of socialism.
Interpreted in a more charitable way we could claim that such memes are not saying that Jesus was literally a proponent of a modern ideology which he would have never heard of, but rather that this modern political system is more authentically grounded in those ancient teachings. This is not an unfair claim for one to make, and I would of course not discount the power inherent in basing one’s ideology in an interpretation of theology. There are of course venerable strains of Christian socialism that build their foundation on their teachings of the Gospels, but this is different from printing a party membership card with the name “Jesus Christ” on it. And the fact remains that while it’s perhaps impossible to square Matthew 19:24 (“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”) with supply-side capitalist economics, the socialist finds little succor with the Pauline epistle Ephesians 6:5 (“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters”).
This is merely to point out that religion is bigger, more confusing, contradictory, powerful and in some ways stranger than to be simply reduced to mere partisan categories, much less to be reduced into matters of political affiliation. One imagines that the first century apocalyptic minded Palestinian Jew would be rather befuddled about the question of where he would fall on the particulars of the Dodd-Frank Act.
Those of us on the left take it as a matter of political fact that it’s tacky when Republicans reimagine Christ in their own image, it can be similarly obnoxious when we do the same. It generates the divisive fallacy of trying to define who is “authentically” the member of any particular religious group, always a boring and losing proposition, which serves to reduce categories and smooth out nuance. What we’d benefit more from is a certain humble self-awareness concerning these questions of “Who Would Jesus Vote For?” a historical category mistake if ever there was one. A parable of humility: During the Civil War an adviser said to President Lincoln that God was on the Union’s side, the president responded that “I do not boast that God is on my side,” bur rather “I humbly pray that I am on God’s side.”
Ed Simon is a PhD candidate in English at Lehigh University, where research focuses on early modern literature and religion. He has written for several academic and general publications, and can be followed at edsimon.org.
After winning four of five states in the ‘Acela primary’ on Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton’s speech focused on collecting Sanders followers for November
In every other primary, Hillary Clinton has downplayed expectations. But Tuesday night, after winning four of five primary races, she was shimmying before she even started her victory speech.
This is the Clinton we got a glimpse of after New York dealt her a double-digit win last week: happy, confident – and campaigning in the general election. And this time her shift toward November isn’t just a blip in campaign rhetoric or a passing swipe at Donald Trump; it’s a call for Democrats to come together.
“We will unify our party to win this election,” an exuberant Clinton told the audience in Philadelphia. “We win by holding each other up rather than tearing each other down.”
This is the de facto end of the primary battle, and as she beamed out at the crowd, she seemed to have nothing but kind words for opponent Bernie Sanders. “Whether you support Senator Sanders or you support me, there’s much more that unites us than divides us,” Clinton offered, running down a laundry list of Democratic priorities she feels she has in common with her opponent, even as he’s worked tirelessly to highlight the daylight between them, forcing her to tack left.
This was the stage of the election she’s been waiting for, and she was all sunshine on stage, referencing Trump only obliquely when she gushed her enthusiasm about how great America is. She had goodwill to spare.
It was by any measure a good showing for the Clinton campaign, but it was an especially good night by the math. Clinton racked up wins in Pennsylvania and Maryland, the biggest pots of delegates of any of the night’s five contested states, helping her cement her already immense lead over Sanders. She also netted the smaller prizes of Delaware and Connecticut.
Sanders’ deficit is already much worse than even her lowest moments in 2008, and after tonight it’s unlikely the Vermont senator can recover. According to an AP analysis , Clinton could lose every race going forward and still win – and that was true after New York.
But the night was not without silver linings for Sanders. He managed to wrest a win from Clinton in Rhode Island, and to present a strong showing in Connecticut as well, though Clinton ultimately pulled out a slim margin of victory.
In many ways, Sanders’ Rhode Island win is intuitive. The population is 85% white, and it was the one state in play with an open primary, an important advantage since Sanders does well with independents (advocates blamed his New York loss on the state’s closed primary and restrictive registration calendar). A difficult economy means more of the disaffected voters comprise Sanders’ base (Trump also won there), and the proximity to water means a resonance for Sanders’ lefty positions on climate, which he drove home in a speech in Providence on Sunday.
But Rhode Island and Connecticut are some of the smallest states in the union. Rhode Island in its entirety, for instance, offers only 24 delegates. And the base Sanders reached there, while an enduring and significant one, doesn’t represent any the sort of inroads to new demographics.
Sanders spent big ahead of the night’s primaries – $4.6m to Clinton’s $2.4 – and he lost big, just as he did in New York. It’s more than a troubling trend: it’s a new, unwelcome reality check for Sanders. Really the only question on the table for the Democratic primary right now is how and when it will end.
Team Sanders has publicly promised to stick it out until the convention, vowing to try to flip delegates and do whatever it takes to win. But privately the senator is thought to be weighing his options. He took a full day away from the campaign trail to go home to Burlington, Vermont, after his disappointing loss in New York, for instance, a move interpreted by some as a chance to recalibrate his strategy after a failed Hail Mary pass.
So far though, there’s no sign that Sanders is backing off as Clinton continues to rack up wins. She’s pulling further – probably unreachably far – away from him, whether or not he keeps up the chase all the way to the Democratic National Convention.
Luis is an upper-middle-class American-born Latino.
When I interviewed him in 2008, he told me he had spent long hours, and a substantial amount of money, restoring a classic Chevy truck. One day, clad in grease-stained work clothes, Luis decided to take the truck for a test drive around his affluent neighborhood. As he cruised past his neighbors' large homes, his truck broke down. He got out to tinker with the engine. As he did, the police arrived.
The officer claimed to be responding to a call from a neighbor who anxiously relayed that an unauthorized Mexican immigrant in an old truck was casing the neighborhood.
Stories like Luis' are not uncommon. And they shouldn’t be laughed off. These racist conventions are dangerous for American society because they prevail and unfold in communities and institutions, like schools and the workplace, that are becoming increasingly racially diverse.
Data and research, including my own work on the Latino middle and upper class, contradict the stereotype that Latinos are overwhelmingly unauthorized, are criminals and are unable to assimilate.
It also suggests these stereotypes have consequences for the mobility of young Latinos, a growing segment of our population whose integration is critical to the social, political and economic vitality of the United States.
This year’s election has only added to the problem.
The Mexican government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.
Contrary to what you hear on the campaign trail, Mexican immigration to the U.S. has fallen below zero. A recent Pew Report finds that between 2009 and 2014, more Mexicans left the U.S. than entered. Latino population growth in the U.S. is now being driven by births, not immigration. In fact, the majority of Latinos in America are not immigrants. Nearly two-thirds of Latinos in the U.S. were born in America.
Latinos are also younger than any other racial or ethnic group. The median age of Latinos is 29, compared to 34 for blacks, 36 for Asians and 43 for whites. And the share of young U.S.-born Latinos is growing. Today, some 800,000 U.S.-born Latinos enter into adulthood each year, and the median age of U.S.-born Latinos is only 19.
The youth of this population means that they are a demographic critical to all aspects of our economy and civil society. As the white population ages and baby boomers exit high-skilled jobs en masse, Latino youth are poised to sustain our economic, social and civic institutions. They will be going to college and filling the jobs the baby boomers depart. They will pay taxes, contribute to Social Security, start businesses, begin families, buy homes and vote.
Nearly half of all eligible Latino voters are millennials. They are the main drivers of growth among Latino eligible voters.
The presidential primary voting in five eastern states April 26 underlines the importance of the Latino millennial voter. In Pennsylvania, the state with the 13th-largest Latino population in the nation, 41.3 percent of Latino eligible voters are millennials. In Connecticut, millennials represent 39.2 percent of Latino eligible voters. In Maryland, they are 41.9 percent of eligible Latino voters, in Rhode Island they are 44.2 percent of Latino eligible voters and in Delaware their share is 47.4 percent.
Increasingly attend college
The presence of young Latinos is also evident in America’s educational institutions. Latinos make up nearly one-quarter of the children enrolled in public schools, and they comprise a growing share of students on college campuses.
Although Latinos still lag behind other groups in earning a college degree and educational barriers are substantial, the Latino high school dropout rate has reached a record low. The number of Latinos ages 18 to 24 in college increased by 201 percent between 1993 and 2013. During the same period, college enrollment increased 78 percent among blacks and 14 percent among whites.
Fabiola Santiago graduates from UCLA.
REUTERS/Jonathan Alcorn
The majority of these young Latinos have at least one immigrant parent, and many are the first in their families to enter college. My research on socially mobile middle- and upper-class Latinos, and that of others, demonstrates the challenges that they will likely confront as they navigate an environment where nativist rhetoric at the national level hardens racial and ethnic boundaries at the local level and plays out via implicit and explicit bias and institutional racism.
Mobility challenges
The middle-class Latinos I have studied have college degrees, they work in professional occupations or own successful businesses. They make incomes well above the national median income of US$51,939. Some Latinos have even entered into the top one percent of income earners. Los Angeles is a case in point, where seven percent of people in the top one percent of income earners – those making a total personal income of $421,000 or more – are Latino.
Despite their accomplishments, some middle- and upper-class Latinos report having to constantly deflect the criminal, unauthorized and immigrant labels, leading them to question whether they belong in prestigious educational institutions or the white-collar workforce. Consistent with the disparaging stereotype bolstered by Trump, they may be viewed as dangerous criminals – as Luis' case demonstrates – or low-skilled immigrant workers, even though they are American-born and economically successful.
As part of my study of middle- and upper-class business owners, I interviewed Richard Ruiz, owner of a successful investment banking firm. He relayed an incident at a networking event where a fellow attendee asked him, “Oh, can you bring me a water?”
Others shared experiences where they were mistaken for table bussers when dining at restaurants or valets when waiting for their cars on the curbs of swanky restaurants.
My respondents also face a glass ceiling in both corporate America and in business, where some report being passed over for promotions, jobs or business opportunities, despite being extremely qualified.
Negative stereotypes may also lead to barriers when those in positions of authority exclude Latinos from networks and opportunities that provide entrée into positions of power, including managerial and executive positions and seats on corporate boards. In 2013, only two percent of all CEOs at Fortune 500 companies were Latino. In addition, Latinos held only three percent of board seats in the Fortune 500. Seventy percent of Fortune 500 companies did not even have one Latino person on their board.
Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric is already materializing in an institution that is crucial for the mobility of Latino youth: schools. His campaign is emboldening some to bully and harass students of color. Racist chants like “Donald Trump, build that wall” are being hurled at Latino and black athletes.
On college campuses around the country, Trump’s supporters are “chalkening” racist messages like “Build the wall, deport them all.”
A two-way process
Integration is a two-way street. As a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences on immigrant integration emphasizes:
The process of integration depends upon the participation of immigrants and their descendants in major social institutions such as schools and the labor market, as well as their social acceptance by other Americans.
Racist political rhetoric hinders social acceptance, creates a climate of fear and legitimizes discrimination.
As young Latinos increasingly enter America’s core social institutions, like schools and the labor market, and as they represent a burgeoning share of Latino eligible voters, a strong message is being sent that they do not belong. Politicians can hold up their end of the integration obligation by conveying that the growing population of young Latinos is essential to our collective future.
