#Race | Demographics

[xtruss]

Racism Is Why Trump Is So Popular

Trump’s Popularity With His Base Isn’t The Result of Economic Anxiety, As Many Claimed In 2016. It’s About Race And Demographics.

— James Risen | August 10, 2024

Donald Trump arrives at his Mar-a Lago estate on Aug. 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

To Understand The Rise of Donald J. Trump, you don’t need to go to a diner in the Midwest or read “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D. Vance’s memoir.

You just need to know these basic facts: In 1980, white people accounted for about 80 Percent of the U.S. Population. In 2024, white people account for about 58 Percent of the U.S. Population.

Trump appeals to white people gripped by demographic hysteria. Especially older white people who grew up when white people represented a much larger share of the population. They fear becoming a minority.

While the Census Bureau says there are still 195 million white people in America and that they are still the majority, the white population actually declined slightly in 2023, and experts believe that they will become a minority sometime between 2040 and 2050.

Every component of the Trump-Republican agenda flows from these demographic fears.

The Trump phenomenon and the surge of right-wing extremism in America was never about economic anxiety, as too many political reporters claimed during the 2016 presidential campaign.

It was, and still is, about race and racism.

The mainstream press has been afraid to say this directly and succinctly. Political pundits keep looking for other causes; after Trump’s upset win in 2016, they thought that “Hillbilly Elegy” was the answer. I read the book in its entirety — something I doubt most campaign reporters can claim — and it offers nothing about Trump or the economic anxieties in the American heartland that supposedly led to Trump’s election. It’s a personal memoir about his dysfunctional family, and the closest thing Vance gets to a political message comes when he writes that his relatives screwed up their lives on their own and have no one else to blame.

But the political press somehow concluded that the book’s narrative unlocked the key to understanding Trump voters, and the ambitious Vance, now Trump’s running mate, didn’t bother to correct them.

The press hasn’t done any better in the years since. It has now failed to adequately cover Trump for three straight presidential campaigns.

— It Is Trump’s Shamelessness About His Racism That Appeals To White People.

The simple truth is that Trump is a racist, and it is his shamelessness about his racism that appeals to white people. He says what they wish they could get away with saying. They forgive his criminal behavior, his lies, his egomaniacal behavior, and his other flaws because of his racism, not in spite of it. They don’t care that his economic policies will benefit billionaires and not them, just so long as he makes sure minorities have it worse than them. Vance followed up “Hillbilly Elegy,” his supposed paean to the working class, by becoming a puppet of right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, who bankrolled his Senate campaign in Ohio. Trump no doubt chose Vance to be his running mate at least in part to get more money from billionaires for his campaign.

The Evidence of Trump’s Racism is so overwhelming that the press and many voters now seem to consider it old news, shrugging at his constant stream of bigoted comments. That is exactly what Trump is counting on; it’s difficult to remember that his racism was still considered shocking as recently as 2016 when he ran for president.

Trump has been a racist his whole life; the Justice Department sued him for racial discrimination in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he took out newspaper ads calling for the death penalty in the case of the Central Park Five — Black and Latino men falsely accused in a New York City rape case — and he has stubbornly refused to apologize to the exonerated men.

He first gained prominence as a political figure for being an obsessive “birther,” propagating false conspiracy claims that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States and thus couldn’t legally be president.

Trump remains obsessed with race and is constantly looking for ways to discredit and dehumanize any and all minorities: African Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, Muslims, Asians. He’s claimed that Mexican immigrants are murderers and rapists, that Obama was the founder of ISIS, that Covid-19 was the “kung flu,” that migrants crossing the southern border have been released from mental institutions and are coming to take “Black jobs,” that Haitians probably have AIDS.

When Trump first emerged as a presidential contender, many Republican Party leaders claimed they were disgusted by his blatant racism.

Now they embrace it.

Dominated by Trump, the Republican Party adheres to policies designed both to maintain white political power and increase the white percentage of the nation’s population.

Once you understand that it is all about white power — especially white male power — the Trump-Republican agenda begins to make sense.

The right-wing obsession over racial demographics becomes obvious in the “pro-natalism” movement, which advocates for conservatives to have more children to take control of society. The mission of the movement is “to build an army of like-minded people, starting with their own children, who will reject a whole host of changes wrought by liberal democracy,” according to a fascinating recent story in Politico.

For the right wing, pro-natalism means looking for every possible means to increase the white percentage of the nation’s population. Through this lens, it’s not hard to see why Republicans remain virulently anti-immigration and strictly opposed to abortion.

Those two issues may appear unrelated, but in fact Republican positions on both stem at least in part from white demographic fears. Republicans want to halt the rise in the nonwhite population by curbing immigration. At the same time, they hope their abortion bans will boost domestic birth rates — staving off white demographic decline. They also want to ban contraceptives and no-fault divorce, forcing women to stay in marriages and have more children.

The Republican Party’s white nationalism is often justified in religious terms, since much of this agenda designed to enhance white power stems from the party’s Christian fundamentalist base. Along with Protestant evangelicals, the Republican religious base now includes fundamentalist Catholics, who stridently oppose abortion.

Fundamentalist Catholicism has started to attract young conservative activists, politicians, and influencers, who seem to searching for a faith steeped in tradition and hierarchy.

Converting to Catholicism has thus become a culture war flex for well-off American conservatives; it is not a coincidence that Vance converted in 2019, just as he was also in the process of converting from being anti-Trump into a Trump lackey. In April, right-wing influencer Candace Owens became one of the latest extremely online conservatives to convert. Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the Federalist Society and the man widely credited for turning the Supreme Court into a conservative bastion, is now focused on creating new right-wing Catholic organizations to deepen right-wing power in the American Catholic Church while expanding his culture war reach.

Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalist Catholics share a common right-wing political agenda, and both groups have aided the rise of Christian nationalism, a movement driven by opposition to any separation of church and state. Christian nationalists call for a return to a Judeo-Christian America, code for a return to a nation in which Christian whites held all the power. The most prominent Christian Nationalist in politics today is Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, who has said that the idea that the Constitution calls for a separation of church and state is a “misnomer.”

Christian nationalism and white power also help explain the confounding nature of current Republican foreign policy. Many Republicans today oppose U.S. military aid to Ukraine but strongly support military aid to Israel.

To understand that policy mashup requires an understanding of the beliefs of Christian nationalists. They consider Vladimir Putin to be a fundamentalist Christian, a guardian of traditional white values, largely because he has cracked down on LGBTQ+ rights in Russia. By contrast, they associate Ukraine with Western Europe, which they think is too woke. Andrew Torba, founder of the far-right site Gab who wrote a self-published book called “Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide for Taking Dominion and Disciplining Nations,” said after the Russia’s invasion that “Ukraine needs to be liberated and cleansed from the degeneracy of the secular western globalist empire.” Nick Fuentes, another online Christian nationalist, said on Telegram after the Russian invasion that “I wish Putin was president of America.”

Meanwhile, Christian nationalists believe the Bible demands that they embrace Israel. They see it as the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy that Israel must exist as a precondition to the second coming of Jesus. Such biblically-based support among Christian nationalists means that the Republican Party will support Israel no matter what actions it takes in Gaza.

Increasingly, the Trump–Republican Party has become explicit in its embrace of policies designed to expand white power and appease white nationalists. In fact, several of the right-wing authors of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan for a second Trump term filled with extremist proposals, have white supremacist backgrounds and writings. Trump has tried to disown Project 2025, but its authors include former Trump administration officials. Whether Trump officially endorses Project 2025 or not, it remains a good barometer of the white nationalist hold on the Republican Party.

[ao3demographicssurvey2024]

In case you missed it, these are just some of the graphs from the AO3 Demographics Survey 2024 - an unofficial demographics survey of 16,131 AO3 users.

You can find the first section of the results, including full transcriptions of all the data above, on AO3. The second section of the survey will begin posting results soon!

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[augmentedpolls]

No nuance are you mixed race

Yes

No

Thanks anon for submitting! If you want your own question answered, feel free to submit polls via my ask box

[rebellum]

I feel like... Perhaps... Arguing that transphobia is defined by murder and that anything other than murder doesn't even matter... May NOT be conducive to fighting for trans rights.

Like... people want the right to exist as they are. They want to have access to hrt and surgeries and prosthetics. People want access to clothes that fit them and reflect how they want to be seen. People want access to medical care (eg. Getting screened and treated for sex-based forms of cancer can be impossible if you have the "wrong" sex listed to receive those tests). People want to be respected and treated well. People want to not be sexually assaulted and beaten and abused. People want to have access to housing and jobs, and the protection to not lose those things for being trans. People want access to shelters for homeless people or survivors of domestic abuse. People want name changes.

Acting like all of those things don't matter because at least they weren't murderered by an individual (and instead die of suicide or state violence, or survive and suffer) isn't okay.

[one-winged-dreams]

I keep saying I'm not gonna talk about it, but I was not ready to see a thread of libs being blatantly racist and hateful against latinos

[starzalign]

Theres too much going on regarding American politics it scarily mirrors the Nazi Regime.

The Supreme Court just overruled Cheveron v NRD. Which in simple terms means, they just stripped experts in their respective fields of their RIGHTS to speak on and determine whats proper for the FDA, Safety in Aviation, healthcare, social security, education, civil rights, WORKERS rights, the environment etc. People are going to lose their jobs or have to “transfer” because of this.

More importantly the judiciary branch can now take payouts and implement whatever they’d like, experts be damned. Now the supreme court holds all the power & a certain party has made it clear that they will take away abortion nation wide, same sex marriage, interracial marriage, the right to privacy and more. I suggest you all look into Project 2025!

To make matters worse the supreme court LITERALLY just ruled that homelessness is illegal….it’s about to get scary

​I encourage anyone that lives in America to vote for the democratic party and do their research on the people you vote for. Not just on the national scale but your mayors, governors, etc.

[lgbtlunaverse]

Half the internet talking about how we just need to be more niceys to men and misogyny is the fault of mean internet feminists and the other half going "Let's try seperatism again!" I'm so tired. I want to be in community with men, especially marginalized men whose political goals align with mine, while trusting that any critique of misogyny won't immediately turn them into fascists. Is that too much to ask?

[doomdoomofdoom]

"Living in unprecedented times" needs to stop being a euphemism and start referring to stuff like AOC and Tim Walz stream Madden on twitch.

[constantvariations]

For a show that's supposedly about female empowerment, it's odd how every major female character is heavily influenced by men

Women whose fighting styles are based on men: Ruby (Qrow), Yang (Tai), Cinder (Rhodes)

Women whose ideologies are based on men: Weiss (opposition to Jacques), Blake (same as Ghira)

Women whose stories are almost completely intertwined with men: Nora (personal arc was figuring out who she was without Ren), Pyrrha (almost every scene with her prior to V3 was with Jaune), Emerald (almost every scene prior to v8 was shared with Mercury), Salem (motivated by Ozma's death, cursed by idiot brothers)

If the writing cast reflected the character cast, we probably wouldn't have this problem

[strifetime]

There's a post doing rounds on the former blue bird app (!) about anime/manga opinions (!!) and the one I've seen is "there should be XYZ type of ABC genre" (!!!)

And after years of seeing various forms of this statement spun on its head, my immediate thought was "are you going to make what you want to see, or just complain about the lack of"

[tuituipupu]

ik i talk about my parents a lot i promise it’s not all i talk about but i noticed every suggested käärijä insta post that pops up on my feed my mum has already liked all of them without me engaging with it in any way 😭

[ao3demographicssurvey2024]

In the AO3 Demographics Survey 2024 - an unofficial demographics survey of 16,131 AO3 users - 68% of respondents identified as solely white, including 68% of those living in North or Central America.

To see more analysis, including a discussion of issues we identified with the phrasing of this question, please view the full results on AO3.

[queer-reader-07]

racial demographic surveys that don't let me specify my races are actually my villain origin story

[starlooove]

Oh. Sad

[liesmyth]

actually a very good life tip for lesbians everywhere: local road racing events are SUCH a good opportunity to meet fit older women who'll leave your ass in the dust. it's very inspiring and also hot