My Take | Anti-immigrant racism helped propel Donald Trump back into White House
Trump exploits how some Americans love cheap labour of undocumented migrants, but resent their presence in an increasingly non-white society
Democrat Kamala Harris failed to capitalise on her gender and ethnicity in her presidential bid. That’s because she was seen as being too much a part of the mainstream establishment.
At some point, though, the United States will have a woman president, probably someone from an ethnic minority at that. Demographic trends alone seem to favour such a candidate in the coming years. However, the same trends are also behind the return of Republican Donald Trump, thanks to his many angry white supporters who fear a future where they will become an ethnic minority in their own country.
In 1990, roughly three in four Americans identified themselves as white. Today, it has dropped to about 58 per cent. By the middle of this century, if not before, it’s projected to fall below 50 per cent.
No one understands that cultural-racial fear and anxiety better than Trump, and he has masterfully exploited it for political gain, not least his successful attack on the border control and immigration policies of Joe Biden’s administration, much of which was in response to Trump’s own failed policy.
Trump’s racially exclusionary rhetoric, repellent to many, helped send him back to the White House.
All across Western societies, immigrants, especially those from developing countries, are experiencing a backlash. Liberal ideology about the virtue of a racially mixed society has caused resentment and given rise to the far-right and their virulent anti-immigrant racism.
