Wrong on the key specifics. And even more wrong on the larger meaning. That’s the dual bottom line on the extraordinary screed last week against diversity in general, and immigration in particular, from Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson. … Carlson said explicitly what is often left implicit: how much […] Read more »
Why did Republicans become so opposed to immigration? Hint: It’s not because there’s more nativism.
… The Republican Party has long been the party of both business and nativists. For most of its history, the party’s business wing has reined in the nativists. But aside from a few individual industries, businesses overall are less interested in open immigration — freeing Republican members of Congress to […] Read more »
Why Trump voters need the immigrants they want to turn away
The irony in President Donald Trump’s hostility to immigration, expressed again in reports of his vulgar comments about Africa and Haiti last week, is that in appealing to the racial and cultural resentments of his political base he is directly threatening their economic interests. The equation is unmistakable: as America […] Read more »
The Nationalist’s Delusion
… Less than three weeks before the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump declared himself “the least racist person you have ever met.” Even before he won, the United States was consumed by a debate over the nature of his appeal. Was racism the driving force behind Trump’s candidacy? If so, […] Read more »
White-on-White Voting
… The 2016 results suggest that residents of a diminishing number of decisively white American towns and small cities — even those which supported Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 — can now be politically mobilized around race, ethnicity, multiculturalism and immigration. None of the nation’s whitest municipalities and counties […] Read more »
Why the Virginia Governor’s Race Could Echo Across the Country
The Virginia gubernatorial contest has unexpectedly become a test case of the explosive politics of race in the Donald Trump era. The outcome could tug the Republican Party much further toward Trump-style racial provocation and polarization next year. Or it could warn the GOP that such positioning carries too high […] Read more »