Another new study has emerged that links Donald Trump’s victory to the underlying racist and sexist beliefs held by conservative voters. While other factors played a role in his election, the new study shows that it was the racist and sexist tone of the campaign that ultimately won Trump the White House. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript of the above video:
There are a lot of people in this country right now, both Trump supporters and those who voted against him, who still want to tell us that racism and sexism did not put Trump into office. It was a myriad of factors, everything from economic anxiety to fear about immigration and Muslim terrorism to just flat-out Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate, and that’s why Trump won.
Granted, all of those things played a role in Trump’s victory, but you can not deny the role that racism and sexism played, not only to give Trump the White House, but to elevate him during the primaries. Before you get mad at me and say that I’m wrong, guess what? That’s not my opinion. That’s the results from yet another study, this time out of the University of Massachusetts, School of Political Science, where they looked at polls. They looked at voter attitudes. They looked at voter statements. They interviewed people. They came to the conclusion that Donald Trump won the White House mostly, not all, mostly because of racism and sexism in the United States.
Before you go thinking that every Donald Trump voter is some guy out there in a white hood burning crosses in people’s front yards, that’s not what these researchers were looking at. They asked specific questions and looked at the answers and were able to extrapolate data from that. Questions such as, “Do you feel that racism is a problem in society?” If you say no, that gets counted because it is, as a partially racist belief. Racism obviously is a problem in society. To say that it’s not, shows that you have some kind of negative attitude towards people who talk about it.
The same goes with sexism. This one was actually a little bit more interesting because this sexism study that they included did not include people who look at traditional gender roles and believe that society should follow those. Things like men should work, women should raise children. Those were not included. What they were looking at was hostility towards women. That’s what they found overwhelmingly in these Donald Trump supporters, both in the primary and in the general election.
A lot of people don’t quite understand that political science is still a science. Those of us who have degrees in it understand that when you go to college and you learn about this, it is mostly about polls and understanding data and being able to extrapolate the main points out of that and use that to come to logical conclusions. Political science is a science. That’s what these professors at the University of Massachusetts are trying to tell us. That based upon all the available data, the largest factors in Donald Trump’s primary and electoral success were racism and sexism.
I know a lot of Donald Trump supporters still refuse to believe that. They say, “Look, I voted for Donald Trump because I’m worried about my job.” Well, that’s great. Are you worried about your job because you think an immigrant’s going to come over here and steal it? Because if you are, that’s racism. You got to understand that folks. You’re voting based on an irrational fear of someone that doesn’t look like you, that doesn’t think like you, that doesn’t speak like you. You may not overtly be a racist or a sexist, but these scientist know exactly what they’re doing when they ask these questions. You may have underlying feelings that you don’t even quite know are there, but they’re there.
Study after study following this election has proven this. Anyone who claims to the contrary that racism and sexism did not play a large role in Donald Trump’s victory is lying to themselves. The data is clear. Donald Trump voters, overwhelmingly, hold racist and sexist views.
