In his opening salvo as a candidate for the office of president, Donald Trump issued the following statement: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Needless to say, Donald Trump’s poll numbers among prospective Latino voters have literally cratered. Record numbers of Latinos are registering to vote, specifically to defeat Donald Trump at the polls. To put it another way, Donald Trump has not only lost friends, but created new enemies among the Latino voting bloc.
Trump would of course remind us that we do in fact have an immigration problem. There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in America, and a large number of those immigrants hail from Mexico, America’s southern neighbor. Although there have been several high-profile crimes involving illegal immigrants, the evidence suggests that undocumented immigrants have a far lower propensity to commit crimes than average American citizens. The reasons for this difference are obvious; they want to stay under the radar. And many of them are fleeing crime, poverty and political oppression to in their own countries. They want peace, too.
Perhaps Trump’s language might be construed as impolitic, by some—but by no means all—members of the voting public. In fact, his words resonated among another segment of the public that views illegal immigration as a drain on working-class Americans. Many of them feel that undocumented immigrants harm Americans by undercutting wages and burdening public services for which they do not contribute (their share of taxes to support). Again, the evidence is somewhat mixed on this account. Wages paid to undocumented immigrants by small businesses tend to make them more competitive, and it is estimated that undocumented immigrants are net contributors to Social Security, because their wages are often taxed, but they cannot claim the benefits by reason of their immigration status.
Trump revisited the issue in part of his controversial denouncement of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Judge Curiel is overseeing a lawsuit involving Trump University, and Trump believes that the case should have been dismissed on its merits. However, in complaining about the case, Trump assailed the judge, saying that his “Mexican heritage” posed an “absolute conflict” of interest because Trump has promised to build a border wall. But Curiel is neither “undocumented” nor an immigrant (he was born in the U.S.). Given that he is a U.S. citizen, why would he have an “inherent conflict of interest” over Trump’s proposal to build a wall?
That “inherent conflict” would only arise, if one were to assume (without evidence) that an American judge of Mexican descent must be opposed to Trump’s plan because of his heritage. That further begs the question of whether Trump himself construed his opening salvo as a protest against the problems of illegal immigration, or in fact, a coded racial attack against all people of Mexican descent in America.
Dog whistle politics are not unfamiliar in America. Democrats are certainly known to use the specter of “civil rights” abuses to drum up Black votes; Republicans have consistently campaigned on the platform of “law and order,” using images of Black criminals to scare voters into supporting more conservative policies. Republican operative Lee Atwater described what he called the “Southern Strategy”—a means of appealing to racial divisions without explicitly mentioning race.
But Donald Trump has gone well beyond innuendo to specifically name the culprits. He uses none of the qualifiers that usually accompany such attempts at coded communication. So, for example, he openly called for a blanket (albeit “temporary”) ban on “Muslim” immigration to the United States. This proposal is clearly seen by many Muslims as a direct attack on their religion. Trump’s surrogates have suggested that Muslim beliefs are inherently incompatible with the American way of life.
Though Trump has not targeted Blacks specifically, his polling numbers among Blacks rank among the lowest of any Republican presidential candidate in recent memory. The reasons for this poor showing are simple. Not only is Hillary Clinton extremely popular among Blacks, but also she is seen as inheriting the mantle of America’s first Black President, Barak Obama. The more Trump attacks Obama and Hillary, the worse he fares among Black voters.
But there is another subtext. Blacks are not merely concerned with their own fate as African-Americans. They view the broader fight for civil rights and nondiscrimination as a moral obligation that they inherited from years of struggle against slavery and de jure segregation in this country. In some ways, Blacks see equal rights as their major contribution to the American social fabric, and they are not going to give it up easily just because they are not the population being singled out for oppression—this time around. “There but for the grace of God go I,” seems to be the governing sentiment among Black voters.
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