Race has been at the forefront of American politics since the country’s founding, and it is currently a major point of contention between political parties and within communities.
A study completed by the Pew Research Center in early June surveyed voters’ perspectives on the degree to which black Americans are still impacted America’s history of slavery, and if white Americans receive social benefits others do not.
While 51% of all registered voters believe white people benefit from advantages, 79% of Biden supporters surveyed said America’s history continues to have at least a fair amount of impact. Only 27% of Trump supporters believed slavery’s legacy continues to affect black people in the U.S.
This disagreement highlights the drastic difference of how Americans look at issues, especially those involving racial discrimination. Demeaning comments have become more popular and acceptable over the last three presidencies, despite a large portion of the population feeling more needs to be done in terms of equality.
One example of this potentially racist mindset being supported on a large scale is the rally President-elect Trump held on Oct. 27.
An article by Associated Press’ Jill Colvin and Michelle L. Price summarized the night’s atmosphere and remarks made before Trump took the stage two hours late. Speakers included comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and many politicians, including House Speaker Mike Johnson.
“With just over a week before Election Day, speakers at the rally Sunday night labeled Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage’, called Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris ‘the devil’, and said the woman vying to become the first woman and Black woman president had begun her career as a prostitute,” the article said. “Trump’s childhood friend David Rem referred to Harris as ‘the Antichrist’ and ‘the devil.’”
It’s not just politicians that have been scrutinized for racially charged comments lately. The night after Trump’s rally, Mehdi Hasan, a British-American Muslim broadcaster and outspoken critic of the war in Gaza, got into a small argument with commentator Ryan Girdusky over who of the two had been labeled an antisemite.
Hasan said he’s a supporter of Palestinians and was used to the inaccurate label, to which Girdusky replied: “Well I hope your beeper doesn’t go off,” in reference to the exploding pagers in Lebanon that killed 42 people in September, including at least 12 civilians, and wounded more than 3,000.
Some may hear these remarks and feel anyone offended by them is oversensitive. Others may feel racial inequality is a thing of the past, an issue erased with the elimination of slavery or the U.S. electing an African American president. The University of Baltimore’s newspaper, The Elm, published an article by Wendy Shaia in July that counters that argument.
“The rhetoric starts as a simple dream that everyone should be able to agree with: Let’s return to a simpler time when this society was based on values that allowed us all to thrive,” Shaia wrote. “Sounds perfect, right? But what exactly are those values, and why do they require that we suppress the histories of entire groups of people, change our education of our children, and ban books that expose people to different ways of thinking?”
These beliefs build the foundation of voters’ political beliefs, and the issues America houses lead people to form opinions that sway how and who they vote for. While some issues, such as tax reform or trade policies, be argued casually between parties, the right to live safely should never have become a belief that can be argued against.
