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By P.K.Balachandran/Daily Mirror
Colombo, August 7: Though touted as a “melting pot” of diverse races and ethnicities, racism is deeply entrenched in the United States. It catches the public eye during slanging matches in election campaigns.
In the on-going Presidential election campaign, Democratic candidate Kamal Harris is portraying herself as a liberal and as a unifying force, but also as a “Black” though she is part Asian, her mother being from India.
The Republican candidate, Donald Trump, on the other hand, is unabashedly parading himself as White supremacist to catch the votes of the White majority.
In fact, Trump recently went out of the way to bring race into his contest against Harris when he questioned Harris’ credentials to call herself “Black”. Questioning Harris’ racial identity during a panel discussion at the National Association of Black Journalists’ Conference in Chicago, he said that Harris was Indian American until she “became Black” for political gain.
Trump said he had known Harris “a long time, albeit indirectly,” and claimed that at that time she was only promoting Indian heritage. “I did not know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. All of a sudden, she made a turn and … she became Black!”
“Is she Indian or is she Black?” he asked.
MAGA Movement
Trump has turned out to be the latest exponent of the MAGA movement which is an acronym of “Make America Great Again”. But MAGA is actually a movement to promote White supremacy. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica the MAGA movement emerged during the 2016 Presidential campaign of Donald Trump. It was founded on the belief that the US was once a “great” country but it lost this status owing to foreign influence, both via immigration and multiculturalism and via globalization, or the increased integration of multiple national economies.
MAGA members think that this fall from grace can be reversed through “America first” policies that would provide a greater degree of economic protectionism, and greatly reduce immigration, particularly from developing countries. Promotion of “traditional American values” will also help “Make America Great Again.”
Actually it was Ronald Reagan who started MAGA. In the 1980 Presidential campaign, he popularized the catchword “Let’s Make America Great Again.” But it is Trump who has emerged as the quintessential White supremacist. He quickly attracted strong support among conservative White working-class voters.
As President, Trump used executive orders to make good on some of his promises to MAGA voters. Just a week into his term he signed an executive order which banned the entry of Muslims coming from seven countries.
Trump launched his campaign in 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” who are “bringing crime” and “bringing drugs” to the US. His campaign was largely built on building a wall to keep these immigrants out of the US. In January 2017 he signed an executive order directing “the immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border” with Mexico.
According to Britannica, the MAGA movement remains a powerful force in American politics. In late 2022 an estimated 4 in 10 Republicans identified themselves as “MAGA Republicans.”
Speaking about immigration in a bipartisan meeting in January 2018, Trump reportedly asked, in reference to Haiti and African countries, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He then reportedly suggested that the US should take more people from countries like Norway.
Trump tweeted later that year that several Black and brown members of Congress — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — are “from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and that they should “go back” to those countries.
Cultural Issues
Among the most engaging subjects in the on-going campaigns of the Democrats and the Republicans for the November 2024 election are rising immigration from the Global South; the burgeoning impact of racial and ethnic diversity in the US population; perceived changes in American family values; women’s control over their bodies in terms of their reproductive rights; and rising crime.
According to Kiara Afonseca of ABC News, the question of identity, including race, sexual orientation, gender, have been “lightning rod subjects” of hundreds of bills in US State legislatures. Americans have been seeking to define the nation’s values, she says.
Religion is also in the forefront of the election campaigns. Trump is calling upon all Christians to vote for him. Harris, on the other hand, is campaigning for women’s reproductive rights and the right to abortion, which Trump and his hard core Christians supporters abhor.
When Vivek Ramaswamy was in the race for the Republican party nomination, TV anchors used to grill him on his religion identity asking him if he, being a Hindu, could truly represent a predominantly Christian America.
Kiara Alfonseca quotes Christopher Sebastian Parker, Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle, to say that the “culture war” began in the post-Civil War period, when Americans grappled with the question on how to integrate formerly enslaved Blacks into society.
Bitterly resisting integration of any kind, White supremacists in the Southern States called for “Redemption” or the removal of rights for Black Americans.
According to the African American Policy Forum, even now, at least 16 states have passed or implemented policies that restrict lessons or programmes related to race. Several more legislatures are considering such restrictions.
Feeling threatened, the American right wing began asserting White exclusivism through its own interpretation of Christian values.
By the 1980s, “culture wars” had taken a regular shape becoming part of the ideology of political parties. Led by Ronald Reagan, the Republican party grew increasingly aligned with religious conservatives, seeing the traction the issue got among the Whites.
Sex/Gender
The other factor that triggered right wing White activism was the acceptance that the LGBTQ were getting from American society and its polity. It seemed as if the institution of family was crumbling in America.
This laid the foundation of the anti-Trans movement. More than 220 bills specifically targeting transgender and non-binary people, were presented in US State legislatures to prevent gender-affirming care for transgender youth and access to public restrooms etc.
Abortion
According to Washington Examiner Abortion is the top subject for 1 in 8 voters in the 2024 election following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
A new poll from the healthcare policy think tank KFF found that 12% of voters said that abortion is the “most important issue” in the election season. And over half of all other voters, 52%, said it is a “very important issue but not the most important.”
But surveys also indicate that a new bloc of abortion voters has arisen, largely composed of those who want to see abortion “legal in all cases.” This group disproportionately represents Black, Democratic, female, and young voters.
A total of 55% of voters would prefer to see some sort of federal government protection of abortion rights, including 77% of Democrats and 58% of independents. Only 36% of Republicans and 35% of Republican women would like to see a prohibition of abortion nationwide.
Immigration
The Council on Global Affairs/ipsos survey conducted in April 2024 found that 54% of Americans felt that “controlling and reducing illegal immigration” should be a very important foreign policy goal for the US.
Republicans supported increased deportations (89%), an expanded border wall with Mexico (87%), and increased penalties on businesses for hiring people without legal work authorization (85%).
But Democrats broadly favoured policies that make it easier for immigrants to legally come to, and stay in the United States.
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