Donald Trump’s Appeal: Is “Whitelash” an Adequate Explanation?

Mohammad Amaan Siddiqui

doi:10.22151/politikon.56.3

Authors

Mohammad Amaan Siddiqui American University of Sharjah https://orcid.org/0009-0007-0820-7072

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.56.3

Keywords:

Whitelash, Donald Trump, Populism, Hillary Clinton, Political Correctness, Democracy

Abstract

Scholars have expounded in diverse ways the rise of former US president Donald Trump. One proposition has been that his appeal to white middle-class people was successful. This concept connects to whitelash—the idea that there was a backlash against political liberalism, inclusiveness, and progressive politics from white people. However, this article demonstrates that whitelash does not provide an adequate explanatory framework to understand Trump’s electoral victory. Rather, whitelash is merely one phenomenon leveraged by appealing to voters’ whiteness through what is more accurately identified as right-wing populism. Moreover, relying on the concept of whitelash to explain the rise of former US president Donald Trump tends to ignore other issues regarding American democracy and the presidential elections of 2016. These include Trump’s upper hand in election strategies, the poor record of the Clinton family, voter turnout, and wider critiques of democracy itself. While there is some value in using the concepts of whitelash and whiteness to assess Trump’s presidency, replacing whitelash with different interpretive approaches extends a more robust and broader understanding of Trump’s electoral victory.

Author Biography

Mohammad Amaan Siddiqui, American University of Sharjah

Mohammad Amaan Siddiqui is a final-year undergraduate student at the American University of Sharjah, majoring in International Studies and minoring in Economics and Environmental Policy. Amaan is an aspiring political scientist. He runs a personal blog, The Vigilant Mind (thevigilantmind.com), and has experience working with think tanks like TRENDS Research & Advisory and the Middle East Institute. Over the years, Amaan has received grants funding projects investigating Indian ultranationalism, online feminism, and South Asian emigration. His interests also include international relations, comparative politics, public policy, political economy, and Marxism.

References

Ahmed, Sara. 2007. “A phenomenology of whiteness.” Feminist Theory 8, no. 2: 149-168. DOI: 10.1177/1464700107078139.

Akin, A. I. (2018). "Social Networks and Petitions: The Question of Participation in Social Movement Action," ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global: The Arts; Sociology Database.

Alcoff, Linda Martin, and Satya P. Mohanty. 2006. “Reconsidering identity politics: An introduction.” In Identity Politics Reconsidered. Palgrave Macmillan, 1-9. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bhambra, Gurminder K. 2017. “Brexit, Trump, and ‘methodological whiteness’: On the misrecognition of race and class.” British Journal of Sociology 68 no. S1: 214-232. DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12317

Banaji, Shakuntala. 2018. “Vigilante Publics: Orientalism, Modernity and Hindutva Fascism in India,” Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture, 25, no. 4: 333-350. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2018.1463349.

Blake, Charles, and Jessica Adolino. (2011). ‘Immigration policy,’ In Comparing public policies: issues and choices in industrialized countries, 100-158. Washington, D.C: CQ Press.

Bogaards, Matthijs. 2017. “Lessons from Brexit and Trump: Populism is what happens when political parties lose control.” Zeitschrift Für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 11, no. 4: 513–518. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-017-0352-y

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2018. “‘Racists,’ ‘class anxieties,’ hegemonic racism, and democracy in Trump’s America.” Social Currents 6, no. 1: 14-31. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329496518804558.

Borjas, George. J. 2016. “Yes, immigration hurts American workers.” Politico, September/October 2016. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216/.

Bump, Philip. 2017. “Places that backed Trump skewed poor; voters who backed Trump skewed wealthier.” The Washington Post, Last modified December 29, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/12/29/places-that-backed-trump-skewed-poor-voters-who-backed-trump-skewed-wealthier/.

Drost, Ellen A. 2011. Validity and reliability in social science research. Education Research and Perspectives 38, no. 1: 105-123.

Embrick, David G., J. Scott Carter, Cameron Lippard, and Bhoomi K. Thakore. 2020. “Capitalism, racism, and Trumpism: Whitelash and the politics of oppression.” Fast Capitalism 17, no. 1: 203-224.

Erlich, Reese. 2007. The Iran agenda: The real story of U.S. policy and the Middle East Crisis. New York: Routledge.

FactCheck.org. 2015. “The ‘king of whoppers’: Donald Trump.” Last modified December 21, 2015. https://www.factcheck.org/2015/12/the-king-of-whoppers-donald-trump/.

Feinberg, Ayal, Regina Branton and Valerie Martinez-Ebers. 2022. “The Trump Effect: How 2016 Campaign Rallies Explain Spikes in Hate,” PS: Political Science & Politics 55, no. 2: 257-265.

Finchelstein, Federica, and Urbinati, Nadia. 2018. “On populism and democracy.” Populism 1, no. 1: 15-37. https://doi.org/10.1163/25888072-01011001.

Fry, Geoffrey K. 2008. “Parliament and ‘morality’ Thatcher, Powell, and populism.” Contemporary British History 12, no. 1: 139-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/13619469808581473.

Geary, Daniel, Camilla Schofield and Jennifer Sutton. 2020. “Introduction.” In Global white nationalism, Manchester: Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526147080.00007

Gilens, Martin, and Benjamin I. Page. 2014. Testing theories of American politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3: 564-581. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595

Golomb, Jacob, and Robert S. Wistrich. 2002. Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism?: On The Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Gruszczynski, Lukasz and Jessice Lawrence. 2019. “Trump, International Trade and Populism.” In Netherlands Yearbook of International Law: Populism and International Law, edited by Janne Nijman and Wouter Werner, 19-44. T.M.C. Asser Press: The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-331-3_2.

Howell, William. G., and Terry M. Moe. 2020. Presidents, populism, and the crisis of democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hall, Kira, Donna M. Goldstein and Matthew Bruce Ingram. 2016. “The hands of Donald Trump: Entertainment, gesture, spectacle.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6, no. 2: 71-100. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.14318/hau6.2.009.

Hughey, Matthew W. 2022. “Whitelash: unmasking white grievance at the ballot box.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 45, no. 3: 539-541. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2021.1939093.

Kelly, Casey Ryan. 2020. “Donald J. Trump and the rhetoric of White ambivalence.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 23, no. 2: 195-223. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.2.0195.

Kellner, Douglas. 2017. “Brexit plus, whitelash, and the ascendency of Donald J. Trump.” Cultural Politics 13, no. 2: 135-149. https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-4129089.

Kølvraa, Christoffer. 2022. “Populism as Para-politics: Play, Affect, Simulation.” In Methodologies of Affective Experimentation, edited by Britta Knudsen, Mads Krogh, and Carsten Stage, 47-68. Palgrave Macmillan.

Lijphart, Arend. 2014. “Comparative politics and the comparative method.” American Political Science Review 65, no. 3: 682-693. https://doi.org/10.2307/1955513.

Lippard, Cameron D., Scott Carter and David G. Embrick. 2020. Protecting whiteness: Whitelash and the rejection of racial equality. Washington: University of Washington Press.

Macdonald, Bobbie. 2020. “Less than half of young Americans voted in the last presidential election.” Our World in Data. Last modified November 02, 2020. https://ourworldindata.org/usa-electoral-turnout.

Mansbridge, Jans, and Stephen Macedo. 2019. “Populism and democratic theory.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 15: 59-77. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-101518-042843.

McCreery, Michael. 1964. “Notes on the lower middle class and the semi-proletariat in Britain.” Encylopedia of Anti-Revisionism. Accessed January 8, 2023. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.firstwave/mccreerynotes.htm

Morgan, Stephen. L. and Jiwon Lee. 2017. “The white working class and voter turnout in U.S. presidential elections, 2004 to 2016.” Sociological Science 4: 656-685. DOI: 10.15195/v4.a27.

Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser 2012. “Populism: corrective and threat to democracy.” In Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or corrective for democracy?, edited by Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, 205-222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McDermott, Monica, and Annie Ferguson. 2022. “Sociology of whiteness.” Annual Review of Sociology 48: 257-276. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-083121-054338.

Nizaruddin, Fathima. 2021. “Role of public WhatsApp groups within he Hindutva ecosystem of hate and narratives of “CoronaJihad.”” International Journal of Communication 15, no. 2021: 1102-1119. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/16255/3370

Patterson, Thomas. 2016. “News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters,” HKS Working Paper No. RWP16-052. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2884837#.

Patel, Leigh. 2017. “Trump and settler colonialism.” CTheory. https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/ctheory/article/view/16713/7176.

Pew Research Center. 2016. “Demographic trends and economic well-being.” Last modified June 27, 2016. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/06/27/1-demographic-trends-and-economic-well-being/.

Pew Research Center. 2018. “An examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters.” Last modified August 9, 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/.

Plagemann, Johannes, and Sandra Destradi. (2019). Populism and Foreign Policy: The Case of India,’ Foreign Policy Analysis. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/ory010.

Ramos, Andrew. 2022. “In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West.” Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research. https://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/article/view/22537.

Russo, Juan. 2021. “Polarisation, radicalisation, and populism: Definitions and hypotheses.” Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science 48 (March): 7-25. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.48.1.

Sandel, Michael. J. 2018. “Populism, Trump, and the Future of Democracy.” Open Democracy. Last modified May 9, 2018. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/populism-trump-and-future-of-democracy/

Scanni, Francesco Maria. 2021. “Populist government and constitutional democracy: Radical incompatibility or possible coexistence?” Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science 51(December): 55-73. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.51.4.

Scott, Deena A. Isom, and Tia Stevens Andersen. 2020. “‘Whitelash?’ status threat, anger, and white America: A general strain theory approach.” Journal of Crime and Justice 43, no. 4: 414-432. https://doi.org/10.1080/0735648X.2019.1704835

Sengupta, Nikhil, Danny Osborne and Chris G. Sibley. 2018. “On the psychological function of nationalistic ‘whitelash.’” Political Psychology 40, no. 4: 759-775. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12563.

Shrock, Douglas, Shantel Gabrieal Buggs, Bertan Buyukozturk, Kristen Erichsen, and Andre. 2021. “Signifying aggrieved white selves: Trump supporters’ racial identity work.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 8, no. 2: 233264922110207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23326492211020780.

Singh, Shivam Shankar. 2019. How to win an Indian election: What political parties don’t want you to know. London: Penguin Ebury Press. ISBN-10: ‎0143446843.

Stavrakakis, Yannis. 2018. “Populism, anti-populism and democracy.” Political Insight 9. no. 3: 33-35. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/2041905818796577.

Stepney, Paul. 2014. “The legacy of Margaret Thatcher—A critical assessment.” Open Journal of Social Sciences 2: 134-143. http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=41915.

The Wilson Foundation. 2008. “Nietzsche and the Nazis.” https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/_/nietzsche-and-the-nazis.

USAFacts. 2023. “Wealth inequality across race: What does the data show?” Last modified April 6, 2023. https://usafacts.org/articles/wealth-inequality-across-races-what-does-the-data-show/.

Varshney, Ashutosh. 2021. “Populism and nationalism: An overview of similarities and differences.” Studies in Comparative International Development 56: 131-147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-021-09332-x.

Wedekind, Peter. 2020. “From the ‘end of history’ to the ‘end of liberalism.’” Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science 45(June): 59-74. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.45.3.

Woods, A. 2019. “Americans don’t know much about nation’s history: Survey.” New York Post. Last modified February 15, 2019. https://nypost.com/2019/02/15/americans-dont-know-much-about-nations-history-survey/.

Zembylas, Michalinos. 2019. “The affective modes of right-wing populism: trump pedagogy and lessons for democratic education.” Studies in Philosophy and Education: An International Journal 39, no. 2: 151–166. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09691-y

Zohlnhofer, Reimut. 2009. “How politics matter when policies change: Understanding policy change as a political problem.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 11, no. 1: 97-115. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876980802648300.