The Ellimist
I actually don't think that Trump himself is ideologically racist or misogynist, and only mildly homophobic if he is. He may or may not be a xenophobe or hate Muslims. Nearly all of his policy positions can be worded in a way as to technically not be about race or gender. After all, when he made that infamous rape remark, he was just talking about undocumented immigrants, and admitted that some of them were good people. The only recent time when he said something outright prejudiced was when he mentioned the Muslim ban.
The problem here is that Trump's supporters don't have these nuances. They hate "radical Islamic terrorism", but put no effort into separating that from peaceful Muslims. They dislike undocumented immigrants, but still turn their noses at perfectly legal immigrants with darker skin tones.
There's plenty of statistics to back this up, but it seems like that doesn't resonate well among many people, so we can look at the anecdotes. I've already had several people in my friends circle of minority ethnicities experience hateful words from passing Trump supporters on the line of "go back to Iran" or whatever. None of them were terrorists or violent, and some were incredibly successful and accomplished. But that doesn't matter to Trump supporters, because they aren't good at making case-by-case judgments.
Is it politically incorrect to say that Trump supporters tend to be stupid? They're blue college workers without college degrees - most of them are not exactly Rhodes scholars. In fact, many of them probably struggled to get through high school. That sounds spiteful of me to say, but it's true. The college educated/non-college educated split seems to me as a clear proxy for intelligence.
So yeah, lots of people are legitimately afraid of being targeted, both by Trump's policies and his supporters. And even if you personally haven't experienced it, it's still there.
The problem here is that Trump's supporters don't have these nuances. They hate "radical Islamic terrorism", but put no effort into separating that from peaceful Muslims. They dislike undocumented immigrants, but still turn their noses at perfectly legal immigrants with darker skin tones.
There's plenty of statistics to back this up, but it seems like that doesn't resonate well among many people, so we can look at the anecdotes. I've already had several people in my friends circle of minority ethnicities experience hateful words from passing Trump supporters on the line of "go back to Iran" or whatever. None of them were terrorists or violent, and some were incredibly successful and accomplished. But that doesn't matter to Trump supporters, because they aren't good at making case-by-case judgments.
Is it politically incorrect to say that Trump supporters tend to be stupid? They're blue college workers without college degrees - most of them are not exactly Rhodes scholars. In fact, many of them probably struggled to get through high school. That sounds spiteful of me to say, but it's true. The college educated/non-college educated split seems to me as a clear proxy for intelligence.
So yeah, lots of people are legitimately afraid of being targeted, both by Trump's policies and his supporters. And even if you personally haven't experienced it, it's still there.