The Trump Campaign Goes All In On Xenophobia And Racism
Racism this explicit needs to be directly confronted
While I profoundly disagree with it, I do understand the argument that “when you call everything racist, you risk the word losing its meaning.” And whether I agree with it or not, it’s clear that we don’t have broad cultural agreement on topics like systemic racism. By the end of the 20th century, most Americans seemed to define racism as intentional attacks on individuals or communities based on their race. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to use that colloquial definition because the Trump campaign, its supporters, and, in particular, Vice Presidential Candidate and current US Senator J. D. Vance are clearly engaging in racism, with a healthy dose of xenophobia put in for good measure.
If you have been engaged with political news for the past 48 hours, you know that MAGA has been making wild and unfounded accusations about the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio. On September 3rd, the New York Times did an in-depth article on the attention that Springfield was already generating in the Presidential race. From the article (free-to-read link):
During the last census, in 2020, a little more than 58,000 people lived in Springfield, a town at the crossroads of America that had fallen on hard times and shed population as opportunity slipped away. But it has changed dramatically in recent years, as a boom in manufacturing and warehouse jobs attracted a swelling wave of immigrants, mainly from Haiti. City officials estimate that as many as 20,000 Haitians have arrived, most of them since the pandemic.
[…]
By most accounts, the Haitians have helped revitalize Springfield.
They are assembling car engines at Honda, running vegetable-packing machines at Dole and loading boxes at distribution centers. They are paying taxes on their wages and spending money at Walmart. On Sundays they gather at churches for boisterous, joyful services in Haitian Creole.
The article also details some of the challenges that accompanied the sudden mass migration, particularly the stresses the new residents put on the local housing, school, and medical systems. For the sake of brevity, I won’t go into those. I encourage everyone to read the free article. The city was experiencing rapid changes, which included real and imagined problems, and some longtime residents were uncomfortable about them. It created a tense environment. Then, a tragic accident pushed things over the edge:
The accident that inflamed tensions happened last Aug. 22, when the school bus, carrying 52 students, lumbered down Route 41 outside of town. A 2010 Honda Odyssey moving in the opposite direction jumped across the center divider and into the bus’s path.
The bus driver tried to maneuver away but could not avert a collision. The bus plunged off the side of the road, and Aiden was thrown out of an emergency hatch as the bus flipped over and then landed on him. The boy was pronounced dead at the scene. More than 20 other children were taken to the hospital.
A lawyer for the minivan driver, Hermanio Joseph, 36, said at his trial in April that the sun had blinded him. Mr. Joseph, who has a spouse and four children in Haiti, had been living in Springfield for more than a year, working at a warehouse.
Police officers found no evidence of drug or alcohol consumption. But Mr. Joseph was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and he could spend nine years behind bars.
I will also call out that the family of Aiden Clark, the boy killed in the accident, has for the last year repeatedly asked not to politicize their son’s death.
“Please do not mix up the values of our family with the uninformed majority that vocalize their hate. Aiden embraced different cultures and would insist you do the same. Thank you to the community for your continued support,” the letter read in part.
Unfortunately, those requests have been ignored. Instead, tensions have continued to rise, especially as outside groups, including literal neo-Nazis, have descended on Springfield. As a result, Aiden’s parents have reiterated that ask with this heartbreaking statement:
“I wish my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never though anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate spewing-people would leave us alone.”
Republican Vice Presidential Candidate J. D. Vance sadly had other ideas. He posted the following as part of a message to Xtter in the last 24 hours:
Do you know what’s confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.
This is a very carefully crafted statement to stroke xenophobic tensions. “Murdered” is a loaded word that usually implies some intention. Note that above, Clark’s family used the more neutral “killed.” But at least Vance’s colloquial use of “murder” makes some sense, given that Joseph was convicted of first-degree felony involuntary manslaughter and fourth-degree felony vehicular homicide. That said, a lawyer like Vance should know there is a definitional difference between homicide and murder.
What really stands out is “no right to be here.” Note that Vance didn’t use the term “illegal immigrant.” Joseph is in the country legally. Robbed of that talking point, Vance takes steps to present the idea that his presence in Springfield is still illegitimate. So Vance claims that he has no right–moral, ethical, who knows?–to be here. But, so long as Joseph (or you, or myself) is legally in the US, do any of us have a right to be anywhere?
If Vance and other Trump supporters had stopped there, it would have been possible to chalk this up to xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments. I am not excusing them or denying that racism might play a role in informing those opinions. However, it’s in the other part of this story where explicit, intentional racism rears its ugly head. And that brings us to accusations of eating pets.
Here’s the full text of J. D. Vance’s tweet:
In the last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.
Do you know what’s confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here. That local health services have been overwhelmed. That communicable diseases–like TB and HIV–have been on the rise. That local schools have struggled to keep up with newcomers who don’t know English. That rents have risen so fast that many Springfield families can’t afford to put a roof over their head. Here is Kamala Harris bragging about giving amnesty to thousands of Haitian migrants.
If you’re a reporter, or an activist, who didn’t give a shit about these suffering Americans until yesterday, I have some advice: Spare your outrage for your fellow citizens suffering under Kamala Harris’s policies. Be outraged at yourself for letting this happen. [source]
In short, don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots. Keep the cat memes flowing. [source]
Local reporting found that the rumors of migrants abducting local pets and wildlife appear to go back to a single Facebook posting:
A social media post originally from a Springfield Facebook group went viral nationally in recent days. The original poster did not cite first-hand knowledge of an incident. Instead they claimed that their neighbor’s daughter’s friend had lost her cat and found it hanging from a branch at a Haitian neighbor’s home being carved up to be eaten. [Source]
To some degree, this has all the hallmarks of an anxiety-based moral panic similar to the day-care sex-abuse hysteria. These moral panics often happen during moments of rapid social change and pressure (like what is legitimately happening in Springfield). And as with the day-care panic, in particular concerns about Satanic Sacrifices, the police have yet to receive any actual reports related to pets being stolen and eaten.
From an implicit racism perspective, there is a long history of rumors about non-White immigrants eating domestic animals. Snoopes has found written references to Chinese restaurants serving cat and dog meat going back to the 1850. As migration patterns changed, these rumors were applied to other groups (for example, refugees from the Vietnam War in the 70’s and 80’s and today with Haitians). To be clear, there are places outside the US where domestic animal meat is actively sold for human consumption.
Historically speaking, as recently as the 18th century, cat was consumed in places like France and Spain. During times of famine, including during and following both World Wars, there were places in Europe where domestic animal meat was eaten to survive. But, thanks to implicit racism, this type of rumor isn’t associated, to my knowledge, with European migrant communities. If anyone has examples of those rumors historically associated with White migrants, please share them in the comments.
With the implicit racism out of the way, we get to the EXPLICIT racism. When Trump supporters were challenged about the lack of evidence, many pointed to two “documented examples” of “local” “Haitians” engaging in this behavior. As the scare quotes hint, there is more to each story.
The first unfortunate incident involves a police encounter with a woman who had killed and was beginning to consume a cat. On August 20th, Allexis Telia Ferrell, an Ohio woman with a history of mental illness, was arrested for animal abuse. However, she isn’t a Haitian migrant; Ferrell was born in the US. She was arrested in Akron, Ohio, almost three hours away from Springfield. Perhaps the only thing that Ferrell has in common with the Haitian migrants in Springfield is the color of her skin. She’s a Black woman. And so Trump supporters began to share the video of her arrest on social media, claiming she was Haitian.
The second piece of evidence was a picture taken from the Columbus, Ohio subreddit. The post featured the picture of a man carrying a clearly dead goose down a city street. Again Columbus isn’t Springfield, though it is closer than Akron (only 50 minutes away). Further, as the redditor who made the original post has since shared, they know nothing about the identity of the man who was pictured… beyond the fact he is, you guessed it, Black:
“I think it’s awful that right-wingers including Ohio’s Republican senator will take a random picture from the internet and use it as a weapon to further their agenda,” the redditor said. “The garbage they are spreading has been completely debunked, yet they continue to spread it.”
The redditor also noted that there’s no evidence whatsoever tying the man he photographed to Haiti, or evidence that he planned to eat the goose.
The decision to take two unconnected incidents involving Black folks who don’t live in the Springfield area and connect them with the local Haitian community is clearly fueled by explicit racism (i.e. all Black people are interchangable). To continue to double down on these views, which Vance did in his post–acknowleding that the rumors might be false, but still telling people to share “cat memes” is harnessing explicit racism to own “the cry babies.” Former President Trump repeating those false claims on the debate stage in order to attack an immigrant community is harnessing explicit racism.
This get’s us to a critical point: we cannot know what people actually think. So we can never be truly sure about intent. We can only look to the actions people take and the impact of those actions. And by their actions the Trump campaign and its supporters are clearly fine with harnessing explicit and implict racism to achive their policy directives.
It doesn’t matter if they are “actual racist” or not. They are willing to repeatedly use racism to achieve their goals.
Unfortunately these details may never make it to the general voting public. However, if you are a politically engaged Trump supporter, especially one who spends their time online, you are well aware of what is happening. And I hope that the campaign’s very intentional embrace of explicit racism causes you to reconsider your vote. Because, if you do end up voting affirmatively for Trump you are affirming your knowing support of racist tactics. And that action, ultimately, suggests you might be a racist too.
I shared a Xeet earlier today from Partick Skinner, a return intellegence agent who is now a homicide investigator in the Atlanta area. This applies a much to all of us as it does to our political leaders:
Addendum: I have heard some Trump supporters and anti-anti-Trumpers defend Vance by claiming that Democrats circulating the rumor that he had relations with a couch are as bad, if not worse. That’s a bullshit excuse for two reasons. First, there wasn’t an intentional xenophobic or racial aspect to that attack. Second, that attack wasn’t being used to attack an entire community of people, none of whom are running for the highest offices in the land. None of those folks are public figures.
This gets us to the biggest difference. The attacks on J. D. Vance, while not tasteful, were not punching down. They were attacking someone who had chosen to stand for Vice President. As I have highlighted in the past, attacking Haitian Migrants through spreading false rumors is the epitome of punching down. Its a prime example of powerful people bullying more vulnerable people. And that is something that both Vance and Trump have a well-established record of engaging in.
Much like the fables about the Inuit having 100 words for snow, because they need to differentiate the 100 types of snow, Americans need 100 words for racism. There’s a world of difference between an unconscious bias, a gentle ignorance of how others experience systemic issues, making racist statements in a presidential debate, setting fire to a cross on someone’s lawn, taking part in a lynching, and setting up camps.
The word “racism” is doing a lot of work, and it makes people defensive because it lumps their unthinking comment in with the Klan. We need something to indicate misdemeanor racism — the “dude, five years ago, that would have been funny, but now… eesh.”
For a while we had “that’s mighty white of you” but it fell out of favor.
I don’t want the academics to create a new vocabulary, as academics are the people who came up with the term white privilege” so they cannot be trusted. (When the privilege is that the boot on your neck has a softer sole, I’m not sure “privilege” is the right word)
We need a bunch of very high Gen Z kids to create this new vocabulary for us. Possibly under research conditions where Gen X and Millennial linguists are keeping them supplied with edibles, and a team of Boomers are saying why they are offended with various suggestions beyond the level of offense. Maybe the default white man will be “skibidi insensitive” or something.
Ok, now I’ll read the rest of this post.
This – 1000x this!
I would only add that Vance and Trump are bullying the vulnerable, because the GOP base wants them to. The thing that Trump has done that makes his base love him the most is he gave them permission to come out of hiding and to state their quiet bigoted parts out loud.
It’s just [Trump & Vance] being racist and crazy for power and profit because there is a market for it.
Most people have implicit biases that can be reinforced by a well-crafted story that will sidestep critical thinking and cause them to believe it to be true and repeat it. You can quibble that these people were always racist/sexist/Marxist/classist/whateverist since they have those implicit biases, but the well-crafted story makes their behavior and speech a lot more racist/sexist…
People are gullible. I’m positive there are lots of things that I think are true that really aren’t.
I don’t want to completely excuse the person repeating or believing the racist story, but there’s a world of difference between those who are duped and those who deliberately deal in this stuff.
I think most of us would recognize people who believe that Covid vaccines are killing everyone, and then get Covid and die are closer to victims than villains. Falling for claims that Haitian immigrants are eating pets is not that far from this scenario, except for the painful death at the end.
@Gustopher:
I think they’re closer to accomplices than victims.
And I say this when a close relative the other day told me that they heard taking too many vaccines was a bad idea, and that you can get COVID from taking too many COVID vaccines….
On related matters to the topic, I know a great many racist jokes involving Blacks, Asians, Italians, Irish, Galicians*, Mexicans, Jews, Muslims, and more. Some are funny, but all are rather mean and intended to ridicule or belittle the group depicted.
I don’t tell these jokes.
Most people, I dare say, don’t tell them, either. Though there was a fashion for a while to use a made up ethnic group, the Ruritarians, and tell jokes about them. I don’t do that, either.
I will confess now and then I do adapt some such joke to a specific person, usually the Weirdo Felon of the tiny stock. this is mean and definitely intended to ridicule or belittle the subject of the joke, but it is not racist.
*Galician jokes, I’m told, arose in Spain but were not meant as a put down of Galicians in general, but rather of Franco in partciular, who was born in Galicia. I can’t confirm this, but it makes sense.
I don’t get it. Does JD think his kids won’t get attacked? Is “hillbilly” an appellation without any sting in his life?
The other difference between the Haitian lie and the couch joke: no one is going into a mall, a synagogue or a convenience store with an AR-15 and shooting a bunch of people because they mistakenly think JD Vance actually did a couch.
So, just like the UK Reform party.
Aside: I’m curious… Is there any town in the US named “Springfield” that is particularly prosperous or in good shape?
@Hal 10000: and, it has to be said, almost no one believed that JD Vance actually had relations with a couch. (I’d say no one, but crazy people exist). It was, in part, a reaction to I don’t know how many years of bad faith attacks from the right. Refuting the attacks didn’t work, because the people doing the attacking didn’t actually care.
BTW, my father once ate a cat. He was a slave laborer at the HASAG facility in Częstochowa working for the Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft (AG is the German equivalent of Inc.) The program involved vernichtung durch arbeit i.e. annihalation via labor. Hard work and 600 kcal/day will kill you in about 60 days. No one eats a cat as a culinary choice. If there are people in his state who are that desperate, shouldn’t a US Senator, a human being, look into their plight? Isn’t that your simple duty, Mr. Vance? Our legislators have an affirmative duty to protect their constituents. Flood, earthquake, or nutritional desperation are calls to help. Mocking is not something a human being does. You have failed as a human being, Mr. Vance.
I will be interested in the sentence of Joseph versus what the drunk who got road rage and passed an SUV on the right side and killed Johnny Gaudreau and his brother who were riding bikes on the shoulder.
@Kathy: There’s a scene in the 2005 movie, Guess Who?, a remake of the classic film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? In the film, Zoe Saldana brings her white fiancé, played by Ashton Kutcher, home to meet her Black family. Over dinner, her dad, played by Bernic Mac, goads Kutcher’s character to tell any Black jokes he knows. Kutcher’s character starts with some mild and genuinely funny jokes, but then keeps going, becoming more and more offensive. Saldana’s character later chides him, saying he never should have started telling the jokes in the first place.
I had a similar experience in college in the late ’80s. I, likewise, grew up hearing and telling a lot of racial and ethnic jokes. One evening at dinner, a multiracial group of us were telling such jokes, which started out mild and funny, but gradually grew more and more offensive. That’s when I decided, like Saldana’s character, that we shouldn’t be involved in telling those jokes in the first place.
Another college experience, relevant to Slugger’s question: I was talking with a group, and said something about “hillbillies,” a term I associated with the old TV show. A woman in the group stiffened and replied, “You mean people from Appalachia, like me?” I was super embarrassed and apologized profusely, and never again used that term. Until that moment, I hadn’t considered that it might be offensive.
It’s often said that one of the benefits of college is not just what you learn in the classroom, but what you learn from meeting and interacting with so many different types of people. That was certainly true for me.
@Pylon:
Just a minor point of clarification, the Gaudreaus weren’t on the shoulder. They were in the lane, where they are supposed to be, by law. Furthermore, there’s no shoulder on that particular stretch of road. It’s lane, white line, grass.
Source: I ride that road. I’m doing research based on cyclists attitudes in the wake of their deaths, and working with some local organizations on some related local initiatives.
@Argon: Springfield, Virginia, just up the road from me, is doing just fine.
The greater indictment of JD Vance stems from the fact that he is not stupid. He is an utterly shameless opportunist who likely has some psychological scars from his “hillbilly”childhood.
@Argon:
The Philly suburbs have 2 Springfields (one in Montgomery County, and one in Delaware County), which causes no end of confusion for local media. Both are doing OK.
@Hal 10000:
Sadly the first bomb threat has come in. Hopefully things stop with this:
https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/springfield-city-hall-evacuated-due-to-unspecified-threat/LEJGCXXHZRHT3HH3HYHABRZGT4/
@Charley in Cleveland:
Agreed. And at the same time, it’s also clear that he’s more than ok with taking actively racist actions in the service of that shameless opportunism.
I shall suggest that Democrats should lose the academese archness, replate with the uni Activity room smell of “punching down” and just say bullying. Bullying the little guy.
Punching down is Lefty language: I am not saying you are wrong but using Lefty Language loses you potential sales.
Ordinary Joe and Jane language – “bullying the little guy”
Nice, simple, true, doesn’t assume your audience is coded in
(oh and yes Lounsbury is also an egg-head intello (although not a BoBo) who expresses himself in non-prol friendly ways entirely true, but I don’t have an electoral sale to make and humanity is full of hypocrisy, including me)
@Lounsbury:
Wierd, here’s my text you quoted:
I had thought that “bullying” in the second sentence was the verb for of the noun “bully.” Then again, like Kurt Vonnegut, English is my second language and sadly I have no first one.
FWIW I appreciate the self awareness of your final parenthetical.
@Lounsbury: Yeah, I am an academic. I appreciate academese, but it is intended for other academics.
Meanwhile, I just went to a 50th High School Reunion, communing with classmates who are realtors, small business owners, construction workers, border patrol agents and teachers. I try for language that they can relate to. I find that growing up with them (about half of them went to K-12 with me) is incredibly valuable in the grounding it gives me, and the sense of target audience.
One of the things I seek in my own writing is language for concepts that are solid, but sound strange and foreign because of the kinds of concerns – legitimate for them, but maybe not everyone – that academics have.
FWIW, I think Harris and Wallz (especially) are doing pretty good at this. This is the purpose of “weird”, for instance.
And also, I do appreciate your self description. Don’t tell me you are mellowing!!?
@Matt Bernius: yes you did use bullying but you led and lead with Punching Down – it struck me worth it to me to note how (notably to my non-north american ears) this is strange, US academese inflected speech when the very easy and ordinary phrase can be used and gain easier hearing.
@Jay L Gischer: And yes I also believe and am appreciate that Harris and especially Wallz – I feel it is one of the strong hopeful point of getting outside of the Uni-academic centric language and framings to framins with more common appeal (and not in effect sneering (although denierd heatedly) at such audiences for not sharing the preferred framing).
I do hope I am not mellowing my world is not kind to mellowing, however I would never be a successful venture financier were I not self-aware. Perhaps I need to make my self-jokes more obvious in the future.