Story by Holt Templeton, photograph by Charles Deluvio

After the surprise election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, many stopped to wonder, “how did this happen?” Trump’s rhetoric was emotional and pointedly bigoted. Upon closer inspection, however, these attributes, including the blatant racism, were at the very center of his appeal. Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric, in conjunction with the dominant group reactions of xenophobia and ethnocentrism, aided his victory in the 2016 election. Enabled by racist psychological mechanisms, such as scapegoating and economic insecurity, Donald Trump successfully preyed on the prejudices of American voters, garnering their support.

From the onset of Trump’s campaign, racism was an intrinsic part of his platform. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists…It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America,” Donald Trump said of Hispanic immigrants in his campaign announcement speech (Time). His specific focus on Hispanic immigrants gave his fearmongering a clear racial slant—according to Trump’s platform, Latino immigrants were a threat and a source of crime. Even those who pose no legal threat endangered working class America’s employment: “[Americans] can’t get jobs, because there are no jobs, because China has our jobs and Mexico has our jobs.” This assertion came after he greatly exaggerated the unemployment rate as upwards of eighteen percent (Time). Within his very first political speech, Donald Trump began weaving the implicit narrative that because of immigrants of color, nearly one in five Americans are unemployed.

Throughout the multitude of rallies and speeches that followed, Trump stood fast to his anti-immigrant rhetoric. In a Phoenix rally, Trump blamed Latino immigrants for much of American crime. He backed this up with more immigrant fearmongering, naming cherry-picked homicide cases, of which all the victims were white. The solution, he revealed later in the speech, was the construction of a wall spanning the southern border. More than just an ineffective, expensive immigration deterrent, the “…powerful, beautiful…” southern wall (New York Times) would stand as a towering symbol of American isolationism—a message to the world recasting America as no longer a country of immigrants.

As evidenced by his 2016 victory, these sentiments resonated with many Americans. More specifically, his narrative found support in white Americans. According to the Pew Research Center, whites constituted eighty-eight percent of his voters. This fact mirrored the target demographic of Trump’s platform—throughout his speeches, tweets, and interviews, Trump successfully exploited dominant group characteristics, namely xenophobia and ethnocentrism.

Xenophobia was a central theme of his proposed immigration reforms. As seen above, Trump peddled a narrative of Latino infiltration, disruption, and violence. He extended his hostility to East Asia and the Middle East as well, to whom America is “losing” in battles of economy and immigration, according to Trump. As he succinctly put in his campaign announcement speech, “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems” (Time). These so-called problems usually presented themselves in the form of people of color, as implied by the Trump campaign.

Somewhat more subtly, Donald Trump supported ethnocentrism in his campaign. “We also have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. Sometimes it’s just not going to work out. It’s our right, as a sovereign nation, to choose immigrants that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish and love us,” Trump stated at a Phoenix rally (New York Times). This declaration clearly endorses the notion that immigrants who cannot adopt white American culture are unwelcome in our country. In reference to immigrants from the Middle East, he made little distinction between Islamic extremists and peacefully practicing Muslims. “I think Islam hates us,” said Trump in a 2016 CNN interview, broadly overgeneralizing a vast, diverse group of people. Even in his iconic campaign slogan, what does “Make America Great Again” truly mean? It is not a stretch to claim that Trump equates greatness with whiteness.

Throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump expressed anti-black sentiments. “Look at how much African-American communities are suffering…I say it again, what do you have to lose? Look, what do you have to lose? You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed, what the hell do you have to lose?” Trump asked an almost all-white audience in Dimondale, Michigan (C-Span). Rather than inspire hope, this quote served to demean black communities and inspire fear in whites. In multiple speeches, Trump invoked the problematic “law and order” talking point, an oft-used dog-whistle (ABC News, Washington Post). His repeated use stood as a promise to continue over-policing black neighborhoods, a problem that persists to this day.

In 2016, many Americans faced pressing economic stressors. Under economic duress, race relations remained tense, offering a psychological catalyst for Trump’s scapegoating. In his announcement speech, he stated plainly that China and Mexico were to blame for American unemployment (Time). In his uncharacteristically polished speech in Charlotte, North Carolina, Trump accused China of taking one in four manufacturing jobs from the city. Mexican and Latin American immigrants were to blame for crime, specifically homicide and rape (Washington Post). Across his radical statements, people of color were the most common scapegoats for America’s problems.

Armed with racist rhetoric, Donald Trump successfully exploited the prejudices of white Americans to win the 2016 presidential election. Through means of xenophobia and ethnocentrism, Trump struck a chord with the white voting base, harnessing America’s bigotry. Economically supported scapegoating aided his rise, as he conferred blame to minority groups, particularly immigrants. Reading his speeches, one can find a compelling and simply cast narrative. It is one in which villainous minorities endanger good white Americans whose only hope is conveniently found in the classically rich, white, male hero: Donald J. Trump.

Works Cited

Blake, Aaron. “Donald Trump's Best Speech of the 2016 Campaign, Annotated.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 19 Aug. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/19/donald-trumps-best-speech-of-the-2016-campaign-annotated/.

“Donald Trump Campaigns in Dimondale, Michigan.” C-Span, 2016, www.c-span.org/video/?414147-1%2Fdonald-trump-campaigns-dimondale-michigan.

“An Examination of the 2016 Electorate, Based on Validated Voters.” Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy, Pew Research Center, 6 June 2020, www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/.

News, ABC. “ FULL TEXT: Donald Trump’s 2016 Republican National Convention Speech.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 2016, abcnews.go.com/Politics/full-text-donald-trumps-2016-republican-national-convention/story?id=40786529.

Schleifer, Theodore. “Donald Trump: 'I Think Islam Hates Us'.” CNN, Cable News Network, 10 Mar. 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/03/09/politics/donald-trump-islam-hates-us/index.html.

Staff, TIME. “Donald Trump's Presidential Announcement Speech.” Time, Time, 16 June 2015, time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/.