Current Events > The foundation of Donald Trumps presidency is the negation of Barack Obamas

(+) Yeah! (+)

Legacy

Ta-Nehisi Coates dropping another fucking gem

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/537909/


It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump’s predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness—that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump’s forefathers and barred others from it. Once upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the Wilderness and then into the White House. Their individual triumphs made this exclusive party seem above America’s founding sins, and it was forgotten that the former was in fact bound to the latter, that all their victories had transpired on cleared grounds. No such elegant detachment can be attributed to Donald Trump—a president who, more than any other, has made the awful inheritance explicit.

His political career began in advocacy of birtherism, that modern recasting of the old American precept that black people are not fit to be citizens of the country they built. But long before birtherism, Trump had made his worldview clear. He fought to keep blacks out of his buildings, according to the U.S. government; called for the death penalty for the eventually exonerated Central Park Five; and railed against “lazy” black employees. “Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” Trump was once quoted as saying. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” After his cabal of conspiracy theorists forced Barack Obama to present his birth certificate, Trump demanded the president’s college grades (offering $5 million in exchange for them), insisting that Obama was not intelligent enough to have gone to an Ivy League school, and that his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, had been ghostwritten by a white man, Bill Ayers.

A long, but very worthwhile read for those of the non troll persuasion
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there is some truth to this
but at the same time, Hillary is white and she was his opponent, not Barack Obama
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as if Obama's legacy is tarnished because of some buffoon lol. give the world some credit.
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I'll post parts I found more interesting than others for those who can't get through all of it

To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a “piece of ass.” The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy—to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But Trump’s counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people, and even more is possible.
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Why is racism considered okay when directed at white people?

That's so dumb.
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Another dumb racial victimization activist. Move along.
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Yeah this isn't exactly a secret. He's been doing everything he can to get rid of rules and policies connected to Obama even when it's detrimental to the public like the most recent one regarding flood rules

The Admiral posted...

dumb

oh c'mon the dude is a brilliant writer. you just jelly of his prose.
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lilORANG posted...

The Admiral posted...

dumb

oh c'mon the dude is a brilliant writer. you just jelly of his prose.

His writing skills are not the issue. His crazy worldview is.
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The Admiral posted...

lilORANG posted...

The Admiral posted...

dumb

oh c'mon the dude is a brilliant writer. you just jelly of his prose.

His writing skills are not the issue. His crazy worldview is.

Is that because they don't align with your own worldview?
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Widely renowned award winning writer or notorious internet race troll...such a hard choice
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It's not just Trump, the GOP as a whole has made it its mission to erase the Obama presidency from the books
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FrisbeeDude posted...

It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact

Yeah, I don't think I'll read anymore past this
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UnholyMudcrab posted...

FrisbeeDude posted...

It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact

Yeah, I don't think I'll read anymore past this

Were you even awake during the 2016 campaign? Trump said and did a ton of shit that would have ruined a non-white non-male candidate
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The scope of Trump’s commitment to whiteness is matched only by the depth of popular disbelief in the power of whiteness. We are now being told that support for Trump’s “Muslim ban,” his scapegoating of immigrants, his defenses of police brutality are somehow the natural outgrowth of the cultural and economic gap between Lena Dunham’s America and Jeff Foxworthy’s. The collective verdict holds that the Democratic Party lost its way when it abandoned everyday economic issues like job creation for the softer fare of social justice. The indictment continues: To their neoliberal economics, Democrats and liberals have married a condescending elitist affect that sneers at blue-collar culture and mocks the white man as history’s greatest monster and prime-time television’s biggest doofus. In this rendition, Donald Trump is not the product of white supremacy so much as the product of a backlash against contempt for white working-class people.

“We so obviously despise them, we so obviously condescend to them,” the conservative social scientist Charles Murray, who co-wrote The Bell Curve, recently told The New Yorker, speaking of the white working class. “The only slur you can use at a dinner party and get away with is to call somebody a redneck—that won’t give you any problems in Manhattan.”

“The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes,” charged the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, “is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now.”

That black people, who have lived for centuries under such derision and condescension, have not yet been driven into the arms of Trump does not trouble these theoreticians. After all, in this analysis, Trump’s racism and the racism of his supporters are incidental to his rise. Indeed, the alleged glee with which liberals call out Trump’s bigotry is assigned even more power than the bigotry itself. Ostensibly assaulted by campus protests, battered by arguments about intersectionality, and oppressed by new bathroom rights, a blameless white working class did the only thing any reasonable polity might: elect an orcish reality-television star who insists on taking his intelligence briefings in picture-book form.

My chest can't take all this fire
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UnholyMudcrab posted...

FrisbeeDude posted...

It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact

Yeah, I don't think I'll read anymore past this

His very own supporters argue this shit when they opine on the reasons why Trump won. Addy himself does it every chance he can get.
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Trump was (and still is!) held to such ridiculously low standards, it's not even funny anymore
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if Trump won just because he was a white man

how did Obama beat two white men years before?

And why didn't Hillary or Bernie get the white man ride into office?
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So many typically-white conservatives and liberals are anti-"identity politics" and Coates just rakes them over the coals here. It's great.

darkphoenix181 posted...

if Trump won just because he was a white man

how did Obama beat two white men years before?

And why didn't Hillary or Bernie get the white man ride into office?

All covered in the article bud

darkphoenix181 posted...

if Trump won just because he was a white man

how did Obama beat two white men years before?

And why didn't Hillary or Bernie get the white man ride into office?

Cause white men got tired of identity politics. You yourself have even trotted that line out. Cant really present an argument for "this is why Trump won" and cry foul when other people use your own logic to explain why Trump won.
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Rofl what a victim the writer is.

Whiteness!! Oppression!!! Whiteness!! Oppression!!!

Lol
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Could you imagine if a black man said "I love to grab 'em by the pussy?"

Could you imagine if a Latino woman mocked a disabled reporter?

Could you imagine if literally anybody else had insulted a Gold Star family?
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HylianFox posted...

Could you imagine if a black man said "I love to grab 'em by the pussy?"

Could you imagine if a Latino woman mocked a disabled reporter?

Could you imagine if literally anybody else had insulted a Gold Star family?

Couldn't imagine Bush or McCain getting away with any of this actually despite being white.
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A_Good_Boy posted...

darkphoenix181 posted...

if Trump won just because he was a white man

how did Obama beat two white men years before?

And why didn't Hillary or Bernie get the white man ride into office?

Cause white men got tired of identity politics. You yourself have even trotted that line out. Cant really present an argument for "this is why Trump won" and cry foul when other people use your own logic to explain why Trump won.

? not sure what you think I said

btw your statement is a paradox
"white men got tired of identity politics" is why the identified with the guy who shared their identity

your statement actually would suggest it would be if Trump unlike other candidates didn't use identity politics and that non-use resonated more than the way he looks but I am sure you didn't mean that
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darkphoenix181 posted...

Couldn't imagine Bush or McCain getting away with any of this actually despite being white.

And Trump wouldn't have been able to get away with any of that either if he wasn't running against the worst presidential candidate in modern U.S. history.

Let's be clear: Trump didn't win or "get away" with that stuff because he's white. He won because Hillary was absolutely shit and the Democrats had their heads too far up their ass to realize this. Against even a mediocre candidate, Trump would have gotten crushed.
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hmm another thought


is the reason Bill Clinton wasn't impeached unto actual removal from office for cheating on his wife because of his white skin hmm?


imagine if Obama did that?
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FrisbeeDude posted...

It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact.

Wow, it took no time flat for this guy to prove that his knowledge of politics can be summed up as "muh privilege".
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The Admiral posted...

Let's be clear: Trump didn't win or "get away" with that stuff because he's white. He won because Hillary was absolutely shit and the Democrats had their heads too far up their ass to realize this. Against even a mediocre candidate, Trump would have gotten crushed.

i finally agree with Addy on something!

well said. the dems really lost that more than trump winning.

shit, they didnt even visit strongholds like wisconsin b/c they just assumed they would vote dem.
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FrisbeeDude posted...

Widely renowned award winning writer or notorious internet race troll...such a hard choice

Widely renowned by who? Most of the organizations that recognize work like this as something other than drivel are garbage, too.
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Capn Circus posted...

FrisbeeDude posted...

Widely renowned award winning writer or notorious internet race troll...such a hard choice

Widely renowned by who? Most of the organizations that recognize work like this as something other than drivel are garbage, too.

Lmao this guy "who is he renowned by?! Doesn't matter, even if you haven't told me yet, they're trash too!"
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Imainge trying to argue that Hilary fucking Clinton, one of the most accomplished politicians in history, was in fact, one of the worst to ever run for president. It's absurd.
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A Novel Idea posted...

So many typically-white conservatives and liberals are anti-"identity politics" and Coates just rakes them over the coals here. It's great.

its hilarious you think this is exclusive to whites.

Pathetically sad to be so far removed from reality that you think any conservative or liberal is playing anything but identity politics at this point.
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FrisbeeDude posted...

Imainge trying to argue that Hilary fucking Clinton, one of the most accomplished politicians in history, was in fact, one of the worst to ever run for president. It's absurd.

Lmao, one of the most accomplished policitian in history.. You're delusional and way too far up Hillarys ass still.
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BootyGif posted...

The Admiral posted...

Let's be clear: Trump didn't win or "get away" with that stuff because he's white. He won because Hillary was absolutely shit and the Democrats had their heads too far up their ass to realize this. Against even a mediocre candidate, Trump would have gotten crushed.

i finally agree with Addy on something!

well said. the dems really lost that more than trump winning.

shit, they didnt even visit strongholds like wisconsin b/c they just assumed they would vote dem.

Go ahead, read the article. Coates has an exhaustive list of what abhorrent things you cosigned because you found Clinton unpalatable. With the added bonus of, because you're white and male, a lot of the abhorrent things probably didn't matter to you because you were more likely more concerned with lower capital gains tax and a weird affection for this mythical, exemplary "white working class" when you went to the ballot box than anything based in reality or uplifting people outside of your tribe.

I didn't like and voted for neither candidate in a blue state.

FrisbeeDude posted...

Imainge trying to argue that Hilary fucking Clinton, one of the most accomplished politicians in history, was in fact, one of the worst to ever run for president. It's absurd.

so as an accomplished white person

how could she have lost?

the premise is Trump was white = win

but last I checked Hillary was also white
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A Novel Idea posted...

BootyGif posted...

The Admiral posted...

Let's be clear: Trump didn't win or "get away" with that stuff because he's white. He won because Hillary was absolutely shit and the Democrats had their heads too far up their ass to realize this. Against even a mediocre candidate, Trump would have gotten crushed.

i finally agree with Addy on something!

well said. the dems really lost that more than trump winning.

shit, they didnt even visit strongholds like wisconsin b/c they just assumed they would vote dem.

Go ahead, read the article. Coates has an exhaustive list of what abhorrent things you cosigned because you found Clinton unpalatable. With the added bonus of, because you're white and male, a lot of the abhorrent things probably didn't matter to you because you were more likely more concerned with lower capital gains tax and a weird affection for this mythical, exemplary "white working class" when you went to the ballot box than anything based in reality or uplifting people outside of your tribe.

I didn't like and voted for neither candidate in a blue state.

Oh, I thought you were just uninformed when I first responded to you. Now I see you're just a seething racist.
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FrisbeeDude posted...

Capn Circus posted...

FrisbeeDude posted...

Widely renowned award winning writer or notorious internet race troll...such a hard choice

Widely renowned by who? Most of the organizations that recognize work like this as something other than drivel are garbage, too.

Lmao this guy "who is he renowned by?! Doesn't matter, even if you haven't told me yet, they're trash too!"

Tell us, then. Who is this person I've never heard of renowned by?
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Yep he does not care how successful something is if Obama had a hand in it it must be destroyed.
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Asserting that Trump’s rise was primarily powered by cultural resentment and economic reversal has become de rigueur among white pundits and thought leaders. But evidence for this is, at best, mixed. In a study of preelection polling data, the Gallup researchers Jonathan Rothwell and Pablo Diego-Rosell found that “people living in areas with diminished economic opportunity” were “somewhat more likely to support Trump.” But the researchers also found that voters in their study who supported Trump generally had a higher mean household income ($81,898) than those who did not ($77,046). Those who approved of Trump were “less likely to be unemployed and less likely to be employed part-time” than those who did not. They also tended to be from areas that were very white: “The racial and ethnic isolation of whites at the zip code level is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support.”

An analysis of exit polls conducted during the presidential primaries estimated the median household income of Trump supporters to be about $72,000. But even this lower number is almost double the median household income of African Americans, and $15,000 above the American median. Trump’s white support was not determined by income. According to Edison Research, Trump won whites making less than $50,000 by 20 points, whites making $50,000 to $99,999 by 28 points, and whites making $100,000 or more by 14 points. This shows that Trump assembled a broad white coalition that ran the gamut from Joe the Dishwasher to Joe the Plumber to Joe the Banker. So when white pundits cast the elevation of Trump as the handiwork of an inscrutable white working class, they are being too modest, declining to claim credit for their own economic class. Trump’s dominance among whites across class lines is of a piece with his larger dominance across nearly every white demographic. Trump won white women (+9) and white men (+31). He won white people with college degrees (+3) and white people without them (+37). He won whites ages 18–29 (+4), 30–44 (+17), 45–64 (+28), and 65 and older (+19). Trump won whites in midwestern Illinois (+11), whites in mid-Atlantic New Jersey (+12), and whites in the Sun Belt’s New Mexico (+5). In no state that Edison polled did Trump’s white support dip below 40 percent. Hillary Clinton’s did, in states as disparate as Florida, Utah, Indiana, and Kentucky. From the beer track to the wine track, from soccer moms to nascar dads, Trump’s performance among whites was dominant. According to Mother Jones, based on preelection polling data, if you tallied the popular vote of only white America to derive 2016 electoral votes, Trump would have defeated Clinton 389 to 81, with the remaining 68 votes either a toss-up or unknown.

Cont.
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Part of Trump’s dominance among whites resulted from his running as a Republican, the party that has long cultivated white voters. Trump’s share of the white vote was similar to Mitt Romney’s in 2012. But unlike Romney, Trump secured this support by running against his party’s leadership, against accepted campaign orthodoxy, and against all notions of decency. By his sixth month in office, embroiled in scandal after scandal, a Pew Research Center poll found Trump’s approval rating underwater with every single demographic group. Every demographic group, that is, except one: people who identified as white.

The focus on one subsector of Trump voters—the white working class—is puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind of theater at work in which Trump’s presidency is pawned off as a product of the white working class as opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes the very authors doing the pawning. The motive is clear: escapism. To accept that the bloody heirloom remains potent even now, some five decades after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on a Memphis balcony—even after a black president; indeed, strengthened by the fact of that black president—is to accept that racism remains, as it has since 1776, at the heart of this country’s political life. The idea of acceptance frustrates the left. The left would much rather have a discussion about class struggles, which might entice the white working masses, instead of about the racist struggles that those same masses have historically been the agents and beneficiaries of. Moreover, to accept that whiteness brought us Donald Trump is to accept whiteness as an existential danger to the country and the world. But if the broad and remarkable white support for Donald Trump can be reduced to the righteous anger of a noble class of smallville firefighters and evangelicals, mocked by Brooklyn hipsters and womanist professors into voting against their interests, then the threat of racism and whiteness, the threat of the heirloom, can be dismissed. Consciences can be eased; no deeper existential reckoning is required.

It's like...the feelings of black and brown people over the past 3 years perfectly encapsulated
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darkphoenix181 posted...

FrisbeeDude posted...

Imainge trying to argue that Hilary fucking Clinton, one of the most accomplished politicians in history, was in fact, one of the worst to ever run for president. It's absurd.

so as an accomplished white person

how could she have lost?

the premise is Trump was white = win

but last I checked Hillary was also white

"Ummm... ummm....oh she's a woooooomaaan and Trump is a maaaayn so REASONS!!" - the left
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FrisbeeDude posted...

His political career began in advocacy of birtherism,

Except it actually goes back way further than that, so even that's objectively wrong.

FrisbeeDude posted...

A long, but very worthwhile read for those of the non troll persuasion

Why would non-trolls want to read trolling? Makes no sense.
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FrisbeeDude posted...

Part of Trump’s dominance among whites resulted from his running as a Republican, the party that has long cultivated white voters.

Does this guy's memory not span back further than the 70's or something
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Such succinct refutations of the articles salient points, and all from people that refuse to actually read it.
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The left would rather talk about class than race. What a blatant fucking lie. Neither side cares about class more than race.
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Zeeak4444 posted...

A Novel Idea posted...

So many typically-white conservatives and liberals are anti-"identity politics" and Coates just rakes them over the coals here. It's great.

its hilarious you think this is exclusive to whites.

Pathetically sad to be so far removed from reality that you think any conservative or liberal is playing anything but identity politics at this point.

"Typically white?" Did you read that part? I'm talking about the tendency of (typically-white) intellectuals from both camps, including folks like Bernie Sanders and Mark Lilla (both of whom get dragged sufficiently), to use the bludgeon of "identity politics" to shut down any mention of race in these discussions, particularly how white people--themselves included--tend to benefit disproportionately from policy and public sentiment. The discussion about the opiod epidemic in the essay is a great example of that.

Zeeak4444 posted...

The left would rather talk about class than race. What a blatant fucking lie. Neither side cares about class more than race.

You'd have known this if you actually bothered to read the article.
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But realistically speaking even if Trump won because he's white, the progressives have only themselves to blame for pushing so much PC politics down our throats, and so much ant-whiteness that it's no surprise that people rebelled.

When you treat people equally and as individuals instead of a stereotypical demographic, then people can come together. When you treat people as identities and nothing more, then you create opposing tribes.
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Capn Circus posted...

FrisbeeDude posted...

Widely renowned award winning writer or notorious internet race troll...such a hard choice

Widely renowned by who? Most of the organizations that recognize work like this as something other than drivel are garbage, too.

The problem is that you're treating a troll like he was a person.
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