When Harvard Business School researchers Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca and Dan Svirsky (pdf) conducted field experiments on Airbnb, they found that both hosts and guests were discriminating against racial minorities. Other researchers have found evidence of discrimination in places from Craigslist to carpools. New online tools are giving us the ability to treat faraway strangers as though they were neighbours — and we do, in good ways and in bad.
.. While browsing for shades in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, I warned my young son not to play with the merchandise: a sign forbade children to touch the sunglasses.
The shopkeeper bustled over and reassured me that the rule did not apply to my son. “It’s for the Arab kids,” she told me, beaming. “They just drop the sunglasses on the floor.”
Why Blacks Loathe Trump
This is the same Breitbart that the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to in an April “Hatewatch” report:
“Over the past year however, the outlet has undergone a noticeable shift toward embracing ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas — all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’”
.. “The Alt-Right is a loose set of far-right ideologies at the core of which is a belief that “white identity” is under attack through policies prioritizing multiculturalism, political correctness and social justice and must be preserved, usually through white-identified online communities and physical ethno-states.”
.. approximately one-fourth of the 3.3 million Muslims in this country are African-American. Indeed, the Muslim faith has deep roots in the black community because many Africans brought to this country as slaves were Muslims.
How Trump Remixed the Republican ‘Southern Strategy’
in July 2005, Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ken Mehlman acknowledged the party’s “Southern Strategy” and directly apologized: “I am here as Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”
.. Manafort’s appointment, followed by the ousting of Corey Lewandowski in June, was widely seen as a move to professionalize Trump’s disorganized campaign staff just ahead of the convention. But along with credentials earned from working with top GOP politicians (and a raft of international dictators from the Philippines to Somalia), Manafort also brought decades of experience as an overseer of the Southern Strategy.
.. And it was Manafort who arranged for Ronald Reagan to kick off his post-convention presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three young civil rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964.
.. Notably, all eight of the men who were convicted of involvement in these murders would have been free to attend Reagan’s speech. Seven were convicted in 1967, but the longest jail sentence any of them served was six years, and the person who orchestrated the murders—a Baptist preacher named Edgar Ray Killen—was not convicted until the case was reopened in 2005. As in much of the South, the inability of courts in Mississippi to seat juries that would carry out meaningful justice for the perpetrators of these murders is a good indication of racial attitudes that persisted even late into the 20th century.
.. He has characterized illegal immigrants rather than black Americans as a threat to white women’s safety. And he has redirected the Christian Right’s focus away from its preoccupation with a “godless Communism.” In its place, Trump has exploited the perception of Islam’s growing power abroad
What We Learned About Trump’s Supporters This Week
To simplify somewhat, analysts have been divided into two camps when it comes to what’s driving support for Trump. One group places a great deal of emphasis on economics as the crucial factor, while another group places more weight on racism and bigotry as the key explanation. The two are, of course, intertwined: a Trump voter who is struggling economically might like Trump’s views on trade deals and his attacks on non-whites.
.. In his economic speech on Monday, and in a later interview, he outlined several policies that the econocentric analysts often point to as evidence of his appeal to the working class: protectionism, restrictionist immigration policies, a commitment not to change Social Security and Medicare benefits, huge spending on infrastructure, and a willingness to borrow more for some spending programs, rather than a guarantee to pay down the debt.
.. “The results show mixed evidence that economic distress has motivated Trump support,” he writes. “His supporters are less educated and more likely to work in blue collar occupations, but they earn relative high household incomes, and living in areas more exposed to trade or immigration does not increase Trump support.”
.. if anything, more affluent Americans tend to favor Trump
.. “more subtle measures” of “longevity and intergenerational mobility” are key to understanding Trump. In other words, Trump voters aren’t living as long as they should be, and they seem to have serious concerns about whether their children will be as prosperous as their own generation is.
.. This analysis provides clear evidence that those who view Trump favorably are disproportionately living in racially and culturally isolated zip codes and commuting zones. Holding other factors constant, support for Trump is highly elevated in areas with few college graduates, far from the Mexican border, and in neighborhoods that stand out within the commuting zone for being white, segregated enclaves, with little exposure to blacks, Asians, and Hispanics.
.. what is known to social scientists as “contact theory,” essentially argues that living in overwhelmingly white enclaves increases one’s chances of being a racist, as “Limited interactions with racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and college graduates may contribute to prejudicial stereotypes, political and cultural misunderstandings, and a general fear of rejection and not belonging.”
.. It means that simply improving economic conditions isn’t enough. The Trump voter, according to this research, is driven not by simple economic self-interest but by something deeper and more psychological. Rothwell’s view is much more in line with the argument that Trump voters are whites who feel that their privileged place in America is threatened
.. it will take a more sophisticated and nuanced Republican leadership to figure out an agenda that speaks to their legitimate demands without exploiting their worst fears.