Reality Check:
No, the Trump Voters Did Not Have “Just Grievances”
November 28, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Some people claim that the fact that some white people who voted for Trump also say that they voted for Obama in 2008 or 2012 shows that the Trump vote “was not mainly racist.”
First off, a lot of these people voted for Obama both because they thought he would change their lot for the better AND because they were led to think that voting for Obama would mean an end to the fight against the oppression of Black people, and that if after Obama was elected Black people were still in conditions of oppression, privation, and misery, then that would be their own fault. Obama himself encouraged this, in part by denouncing the speech of his former minister Jeremiah Wright—a speech which called out some of the historic oppression of Black people in America in basically accurate terms; and in part through Obama’s periodic “pull up your pants, brothers” speeches to young Black men. So those Trump voters who actually did vote for Obama were led to vote for a Black man, ironic though it seems, on essentially racist and populist grounds. And when Black people and others began to question and then rise up in powerful struggle against the murders by police and vigilantes, and the mass incarceration of Black people and other people of color—uprisings at which Obama mainly shook his finger while going through a few motions at “understanding” and “reform”—some of these white Obama voters then felt that Obama had “betrayed” them.
Beyond that, there is the gross fact that even if someone believed the lies of Trump about “bringing the jobs back,” they knew full well that voting for this went along with mass deportations for immigrants, persecution of Muslims, stepped-up threats and actual attacks on other countries, no rights for Black people, and the degradation of women that Trump clearly represents. “Not racial”—give us a break!
Besides all that: nobody has been hit harder by economic inequality and decay than Black, Latino, and Native American people, and nobody has suffered worse in the past eight years in particular—yet you didn’t see THEM vote for Trump! So, no, this was not mainly “a vote on the economy” by “white working class people who were suffering”; this was a vote by a majority of white people to reinforce and intensify white supremacy (which has never gone away!!), no matter what their economic station (and by the way—Trump won a majority of ALL white voters and did best among those voters making more than $50,000 a year!).
Don’t “Normalize” Fascism! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!
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