“Least Racist [Leader]:” an Exploration of Donald J. Trump’S Racial Dialect (53Pp.)
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Hilling, Alexis Paige, M.A. August 2021 Sociology Racism and the “Least Racist [Leader]:” An Exploration of Donald J. Trump’s Racial Dialect (53pp.) Thesis Advisor: Dr. Tiffany Taylor Former President Donald J. Trump fell under constant criticism for his racial rhetoric. In Trump’s case, racism emanated strongly from both his speeches and endless Tweets. This included his expression of overt racism directed toward specific people of color and even other political leaders such as United States Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. What is missing from these examinations of Trump is how he also strategically exhibits colorblind rhetoric. Given that the new racism of colorblindness is the hegemonic form over overt racism, a fuller analysis of how the two coexist and work together to create various leader’s racial dialects is necessary. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the racial dialect, or strategic switching from overt racism to colorblind racism employed by Trump, which works to perpetuate the white racial frame. I conduct a qualitative content analysis of Donald Trump’s 2016 election speeches, starting with the announcement of his candidacy in 2015 and ending with his election victory in November 2016. My findings show that Trump, in his rally speeches, consistently drew upon the utilization of the white racial frame. Specifically, within my sample, I saw that he used a combination of hard (overt) and soft (colorblind) racial framing to create his racial dialect. The overall rhetoric utilized by Trump fell into an "us versus them" dichotomy, which deemed United States citizens the "us" while all others became the "them." He drew heavily upon the hard racial frame when discussing “illegal immigrants,” Syrian refugees, and others deemed as “undeserving.” However, when talking about citizens of color or Black Americans, Trump switched to the soft racial framing of colorblindness in a nationalist appeal to rally white voters and voters of color, specifically token Americans of color and honorary whites. Racism and the Least Racist [Leader]: An Exploration of Donald J. Trump’s Racial Dialect A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Alexis Paige Hilling August 2021 © Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials Thesis written by Alexis Hilling B.A., West Virginia University, 2018 M.A., Kent State University, 2021 Approved by ___________________________________, Advisor Tiffany Taylor, PhD ___________________________________, Chair, Department of Sociology Richard Adams, PhD ___________________________________, Interim Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Mandy Munro-Stasiuk, PhD TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................ v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................................... 4 Racial Formation, Racial Threat, and White Ignorance ............................................................ 4 The Current Upholding of White Supremacy: Racial Framing and Colorblindness .................. 6 People of Color and Complicity to White Supremacy: Honorary Whiteness and Tokenism ... 10 CHAPTER III METHODS........................................................................................................ 14 Purpose of Study ................................................................................................................... 14 Data and Analysis ................................................................................................................. 14 Methodological Issues and Limitations .................................................................................. 17 CHAPTER IV FINDINGS ........................................................................................................ 18 Us Versus Them Dichotomy ................................................................................................. 18 Racial Framing at the Individual Level.............................................................................. 20 Racial Framing of National Leaders.................................................................................. 26 One American People ............................................................................................................ 30 CHAPTER V DISCUSSION..................................................................................................... 38 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 42 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION On top of a global pandemic, 2020 was marked by a mass resurgence of protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, against police brutality and broader racial inequality in the United States. These protests were highly criticized by many citizens, political leaders, and former President Donald Trump. Trump went as far as to threaten military action against demonstrators whom he referred to as "thugs" (Romm and Chiu 2020). Racial unrest in the US continues and is certainly not a new phenomenon, but unrest surrounding the aftermath of the George Floyd murder has taken center stage within the last year and was overall unsurprising given the state of race relations over the last several years. The conviction of Derek Chauvin for Floyd's murder is a step in the right direction, although the fight is nowhere near over as white supremacy still has a stronghold on our systems and institutions. Therefore, this racial unrest will continue until real strides toward systemic change are made. This unrest increased well before 2020 when we saw an increase during both the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Both before and after the election of President Barack Obama, we saw a rise in white supremacist hate groups (Giroux 2009) and the emergence of the Tea Party (Zeskind 2012). The rise of these groups, the resulting racist rhetoric, and the rise in "old-fashioned racism" only continued throughout the 2016 election cycle and was rampant within the Donald Trump campaign. Previous research has often focused on the overt and easily recognizable, or "old- fashioned" racism exhibited in Trump's America and by Trump himself (Abramowitz 2018; Konrad 2018; Abramowitz and McCoy 2019). Within the broader United States population, we saw an increase in this rhetoric and incitement of violence against people of color deemed as not 1 belonging in the country. According to the F.B.I Uniform Crime Report (UCR), in 2018, interpersonal attacks motivated by bias or prejudice reached a 16-year high, with a significant increase in violence against Latinxs people (FBI 2018). The presence of racism in Trump's case emanates strongly from both his speeches and endless Tweets. One example of the overt racism expressed by Trump included Tweeting that United States Representatives Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, three of which were born in the US, should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came" (Luo 2019). What is absent from these analyses is how colorblind rhetoric (Bonilla-Silva 2010) is strategically exhibited by Donald Trump. Given that the new racism of colorblindness is the hegemonic form over overt racism (Bonilla-Silva 2019), a fuller analysis of how the two coexist and work together to create various leader's racial dialect is necessary (Wingfield and Feagin 2012). The goal of this paper is to address this gap in the exploration of Donald Trump. Therefore, Donald Trump's racial dialect will be explored through an analysis of his 2016 campaign speeches, with a focus on how he switches from overt racism when discussing "illegal immigrants" and all others standing in the way of the American dream for "legitimate" citizens, to colorblind racism when attempting to appeal to citizens of color and Black Americans, often under the guise of bringing together "all" American citizens. To truly understand the current presence of racism in the United States, we need to first and foremost understand the invention of racial categories and hierarchical organization created to benefit white, European settlers through the exclusion and domination of people of color. Even though racial categories and racism are ever-evolving, the system created on white supremacist ideals persists. How it has been able to persist is also ever-changing. While 2 generally held under the guise of white ignorance, the current upholding of systemic racism is done so through the utilization of both overt and covert forms of racism in which white Americans, some Americans of color, and some Black Americans draw upon to understand racial differences and justify differential treatment. Given that major strides toward racial equality have been made, it should come as no surprise that there has been backlash evident in the current racial rhetoric. In this paper, I will start by discussing the historical emergence of racial categories and racism. After laying this groundwork, I will briefly discuss how racial threats to whiteness may be a driving force in the current racial rhetoric we see used in the United States by both average (white) citizens and political elites. I will then review contemporary literature