1 Donald J. Trump, Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police, (New York, May 1 ,1989), accessed online on January 21, 2018, http://assets.nydailynews.
com/polopoly_fs/1.1838466.1403324800!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/trump21n-1-web.jpg?enlarged 2 Donald J. Trump, “announcement on presidential candidacy” (speech, New York, June 16, 2015), Time, accessed online on January 21, http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/ 3 Donald J.
Trump, “third presidential debate” (debate, Las Vegas, Nevada, October 19, 2016), Politico, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/full-transcript-third-2016-presidential-debate-230063 4Fredrickson, White Supremacy, 22-24. See also Gary B. Nash , Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1982); Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest (New York: Norton, 1976)5 Donald J.
Trump, “speech at Ohio rally” (speech, Youngstown, Ohio, July 27, 2017), Time, accessed online on January 21, http://time.com/4874161/donald-trump-transcript-youngstown-ohio/ The third episode of Donald Trump characterizing non-whites as brutes was after he became President of The United States. During a speech in Youngstown, Ohio he spoke about the criminal gang MS-13. He said the following “The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people, these beautiful, beautiful, innocent young people will, will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. And you’ve seen the stories about some of these animals. They don’t want to use guns, because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough. So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die.
And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long.”5 Again, the same characterization is made here. Trump specifically talks about MS-13, which is a violent Mexican gang, targeting “beautiful” young girls. The young girl’s innocence is contrasted by the extreme violence of the Mexican “predators”. He doesn’t mention the girl’s colour, but he doesn’t have to. One has to only ask what crowd Trump is speaking to, to realize what he means by “beautiful girl”. It was clear from the beginning of his campaign that he was appealing to angry whites, and after he became president this continued. Look at any picture taken at the rally in Youngstown and it will quickly become clear that almost all attendees were white.
Put all of this together and it is obvious that the “beautiful” girl he is talking about is white and the criminals who violated her are not.The second episode of Trump’s portrayal of non- whites as sexual deviants was during his presidential campaign. In the speech he gave to announce his candidacy, he talked about Mexicans. His specific words were as follows: “They Mexico are sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs.
They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”2 Later he referred to Mexicans as “Bad Hombres.”3 Trump continuously made these references throughout his campaign. The same implication is made here as in 1989.
Non-whites are characterized as rapists. It is, of course, true that he was speaking about Mexicans instead of blacks this time. One might say that this changes the whole dynamic of the situation, but this would be inaccurate. The ideology of white supremacy was never accurate or consistent and fundamental ideas about other races could change according to the needs of white supremacists.
For instance, in the early days of colonization some Europeans saw a possibility of trade with the native population of their colonies. This encouraged some of the early colonizers to portray the Indians as gentle and open to the idea of trade, instead of savages. Others who aimed to eliminate the Indians and steal their land did portray Indians as savages.4 This example shows how racist ideology can easily be altered to fit the needs of the white supremacists. The same goes for the black brute stereotype, in the Jim Crow era, blacks and mulattos were the only ones characterized as brutes.
This time Mexicans are also included but the underlying idea is the same, non-whites have a dangerous tendency to violate white women. Trump’s campaign rallies were mostly visited by white people, who also make up a large part of his political base. Whether Trump is talking about blacks or Mexicans or any other non-white group for that matter, the fact remains that he specifically appeals to whites by characterizing non-white males as a danger to white womanhood.The advertisement Donald Trump published in several New York City newspapers in the wake of the violent rape of Trisha Meili in 1989 can be connected to this tradition of portraying blacks as brutes. Trisha Meili was a young white woman who was raped in Central Park in 1989. Five black suspects were quickly rounded up and confessed to the crime.
Donald Trump spent large sums of money to publish advertisements that called for the execution of the suspects. The ad spoke of criminals who “beat and rape helpless woman.”1 The same dynamic is at play as roughly as around the 1900s. Trisha Meili was a white woman raped by black assailants (this turned out to be false later). The ad didn’t mention the attackers were black and that the victim was white. It doesn’t contain any overt racist language like the language used in the Jim Crow era, but it’s no coincidence that this case drew so much attention. Around the same day Trisha Meili was raped, a black woman was brutally raped and thrown off a building, but Trump didn’t publish ads about that horrific attack.
No, he specifically chose the incident were a white woman was raped by black teens and by doing so incited anger towards non-white males and stigmatized them as rapists. Even after the Central Park Five were exonerated, Trump refused to believe that they were innocent.
