How Racists Think
Trump's oddball campaign showcases a toxic tendency to over-generalise
"Trump" by Isaszas is marked with CC0 1.0.
Donald Trump’s eccentric second campaign for US President gives us an excellent insight into the way that racists think. Let’s start with his confusion about how to categorise his opponent, Vice President (VP) Kamala Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.
"I didn't 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," Trump told National Association of Black Journalists in July. "So I don't know. Is she Indian? Or is she black?"
Identities can be complex and multi-layered - a fact that is unlikely to be news to most of us. However, Trump insists on “assuming that human beings can be classified like insects,” in George Orwell’s infamous words. The reality TV star turned politician assumes that knowing the correct category is enough to understand a person. You don’t need any more information. So, which category should he put Harris in? “Is she Indian? Or is she black?”
Orwell says that people who seek to categorise human beings like insects also assume that “whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’.” Trump does this too, with a definite bias towards non-Jewish white people, who he sees as the default standard.
For example, earlier this year, Trump said that one of his priorities if elected will be to address a “definite anti-white feeling” in America. In 2017, he privately described white supremacists at Chalottesville as “my people.” It is worth noting that a racist preference for one’s own ethnic group can be a symptom of a narcissistic personality.
Trump has decidedly mixed feelings about Jewish people, who are often filed as white in the somewhat clunky racial categories used in the US. For example, in 2015, he gave a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, where he said he was a negotiator “like you folks.” He went on to say: “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t negotiate deals? Probably more than any room I’ve ever spoken.”
In Trump’s mind, the stereotype of Jewish money-grubbing merchants is true. If you know someone is Jewish, you know all you have to know about that person. He thinks this is probably a good thing, although he also has a track record of antisemitic statements and defending avowed antisemites too.
Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, has revealed that the President told him that genocidal Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler “did some good things” in a private conversation while in office. In 2022, Trump invited a Holocaust denialist to dinner.
In 2017, Trump publicly said there were “some very fine people” on both sides of the Charlottesville white supremacy rally and counter-rally. One side included neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates and white nationalists, with many chanting antisemitic slogans and waving swastikas. White supremacists often have contradictory attitudes to Jewish people, portraying them as simultaneously inferior and all-powerful. Conspiracy theories often do the heavy lifting for these views.
More recently, Trump said it would be the fault of the Jewish community if he loses in November (his pre-emptive version of the stab-in-the-back myth). The statement appears to align with conspiratorial beliefs about Jewish people being all-powerful. Back here in the real world, only around 2.5% of the US population are Jewish; which goes up to 3.3% in the most important battleground state of Pennsylvania. If Trump loses in November, people with more realistic worldviews will realise it was because he has insisted on continuing to run an oddball campaign long after the Democrats persuaded President Joe Biden to step to one side and then united around Harris.
Of course, whenever anyone describes Trump in negative terms, he always throws the same insult back at his critics, whether or not it makes sense. He has been accusing the Democrats of being antisemitic during the campaign. The logic, such that it is, seems to be that his support for hardline Israeli nationalists gets him off the hook for any stereotypes he holds about Jewish people. Trump seems to struggle with the idea that not all Jewish people everywhere in the world feel enthusiastic about Israel’s nationalist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
While it is true that members of the left-wing fringe of the Democrats are often gullible about the importance of antisemitism within Palestinian nationalist circles, the US Jewish community until recently has tended to solidly back the party. That appears to be changing, with a recent poll suggesting the community is now split down the middle ahead of the November election.
When it comes to black people, Trump definitely doesn’t allow any ambiguity at all. As far back as the 1970s, he and his father were sued by the Department of Justice for discriminating against African Americans in the rental market. They lost, but failed to implement the rules and had to go to court again. During a coffee break, he told an opposing lawyer: “You know, you don’t want to live with them either.”
Trump clearly sees black people as being different from the white default, as well as inferior to it and probably dangerous too. In 1989, he took out a full-page article in all New York newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty. He said he wanted the black youths who were accused of beating and raping a jogger in Central Park “to be afraid.”
The defendants were acquitted in 2002 after DNA from the crime was matched to an imprisoned serial rapist. Trump said the acquittal and the subsequent settlement were “a disgrace.” He maintained that the suspects were probably guilty anyway, despite a distinct lack of any evidence whatsoever.
Trump’s views on undocumented immigrants, many of them non-white people from Latin America and the Caribbean, are just as uncomplicated as his views on black people. He has repeatedly said that they are “poisoning the blood” of the US and has warned that some of them are “not people.” The right-wing candidate has called for mass deportations, possibly accompanied by detention camps. Research shows that genocide is always preceded by dehumanisation, which makes Trump’s rhetoric particularly dangerous when combined with such heavy-handed policy suggestions.
Mass deportation is a policy that falls under the category of an idea that sounds better to some non-economists than it does to most economists. The reason is simple. While it is true that immigration puts downward pressure on wages for low-skilled jobs, it also makes services cheaper. The two tendencies tend to cancel each other out on balance. Also, less dramatic measures - like tougher border controls, deporting illegal immigrants who are caught committing crimes and cracking down on employers who give jobs to undocumented workers - tend to be more effective anyway.
In the recent debate with Harris, Trump made the surprising claim that immigrants have been eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, sparking a frenzy of memes (such as this one). He has refused to back down, despite no evidence whatsoever for the speculation. The accusations come from a conspiracy theory about non-white Haitian immigrants to the town, most of whom have their papers in order. In Trump’s mind, the rumours are convincing because this is the kind of thing that he expects people who look like this to do.
Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has even admitted that he spins these yarns to get people talking about the problems of immigration without worrying too much about whether they are true or not. There are disturbing parallels with Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, who said that he believed in “the inner truth” of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated antisemitic tract.
Hedgehog Views on Ethnic Groups
One of the main themes in Sharpen Your Axe is the distinction between hedgehogs (one model of reality) and foxes (multiple models). Trump is a hedgehog. He thinks that racial stereotypes are true in a fundamental way. Any divergence from his expectations triggers extreme cognitive dissonance (an uncomfortable feeling we all get when faced with contradiction).
We can see this clearly with Trump’s reaction to Barack Obama, his predecessor as president. Whatever stereotypes Trump has of black people, they don’t include words like “professorial” or “thoughtful.” In order to make the cognitive dissonance go away when faced with a professorial and thoughtful black man, the television personality gleefully spread “birther” conspiracy theories. These barely made logical sense - if you haven’t seen Obama’s roasting of Trump in 2011, I strongly suggest you set aside five minutes and click on this link.
Trump, who has been found liable for sexual abuse, is also infamous for his misogyny. It is not surprising that Harris gets under his skin as a black and Asian woman. She has been beating him in terms of crowd size, which is one the metrics he cares about the most. He is not handling it well, as discussed here by his niece Mary Trump (a psychologist). Conspiracy theories about artificial intelligence (AI) boosting the apparent size of Harris’ crowds work the same way as his birther speculation - they are ways to make the cognitive dissonance go away.
We already mentioned that Trump is worried about “anti-white feeling.” This anxiety translates into narratives about the alleged failures of diversity measures. He strongly believes that white people face discrimination in the US today. This is not backed by the evidence, to put it politely.
As a result of this worldview, the former president and his supporters are currently trying to turn diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) into a slur to undermine Harris. The idea is that Biden tipped Harris to be his running mate in 2020 as part of a box-ticking exercise because of her ethnic and gender characteristics without caring too much about her previous experience.
The claim is wafer-thin, depending as it does on the assumption that white men should be the default. Harris, who was a successful prosecutor before entering politics, is much better qualified than Trump’s own 2024 pick of Vance as his running mate. Vance’s brief career as a venture capitalist before entering politics failed to set the world alight, even though he did write a moderately interesting book about his upbringing at the start of his career.
If we go a little deeper, it is fair to say that the racial categories that have developed in the US over the centuries have little basis in biology. Some basic maths shows us that we don’t have enough ancestors between us to support the idea of discrete racial groups, as previous columns have discussed. We are all mongrels, as well as cousins. People like Harris and Obama, who have parents from different ethnic groups, are much more typical of most of human history than Trump might realise.
Finally, it is worth returning to Orwell’s essay, which was on the multiple category errors made by nationalists. It is striking that many of the thought processes behind nationalism are the same as those behind racism. If you are interested in having a grown-up worldview, which moves beyond racism and nationalism, you will have to understand the limitations of stereotypes and generalisations as a way of understanding reality. Any attempt to categorise people like insects is doomed to failure. Exceptions will always be the norm.
The comments are closed, as always when we discuss populists. If you subscribe, though, you can hit reply to the email. I might not get to it immediately, but I will reply when I get a chance. See you next week!
Previously on Sharpen Your Axe
Troubling maths for racists (part one and part two)
Further Reading
Notes on Nationalism by George Orwell
How to Argue with a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality by Adam Rutherford
Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny by Amartya Sen
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