Among Trump voters, the group most discriminated against in America is… white people. Followed by Muslims, Blacks, Jewish people and Latinos. They’re convinced that it’s white people who bear the burden of racial discrimination and they’re becoming increasingly tired of their “endless persecution.”
I converse often with several members of the “oppressed group” in the comments section of a blog I follow. Ostensibly about Constitutional Law and Politics, it seems the comments on every topic, quickly devolve into supporting everything Trump while blaming black people, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and liberals in general for the woes of the world.
While their statements are relatively fact-free. The sentiments behind them are very real. They appear to view life as a zero-sum game in which every gain by any ethnic group, takes away from white people what is rightfully theirs. They can’t abide Affirmative Action because a 15% or so guarantee of minority participation would only leave 85% for them. They disavow the notion of voter suppression, shouting “Voter ID, Voter ID” and ignoring all the laws that accompany those requiring a photo ID whose sole purpose is to suppress votes. The Klan and Neo-Nazis “while deplorable” are the victims and it’s their First Amendment Rights that must be supported. The real bad guys are Antifa, and worst of all that “violent, racist, Black Lives Matter.”
Rather than the caricature of the Trump voter as being dumb rednecks. Many of these people are intelligent and employed as teachers, lawyers, and business professionals, they have above average incomes, they’re also usually anonymous.
I proposed to them that anyone can be racist but that discrimination requires power and the ability to keep someone else down. I asked for anyone to provide an example of a time where they had been discriminated against? I generally got crickets but there were a couple willing souls who volunteered examples.
One recalled, “Some of my students accused me of being a racist!” I asked how was that discrimination? The teacher reluctantly agreed that even if the charge was false it wouldn’t be discrimination.
Another was certain there were jobs he didn’t get because of his, race, age, and gender. I asked, “How can you be certain it was discrimination?” No reply.
Ta-Nehisi Coates just published a piece in The The First White President which I encourage everyone to read. It’s long and requires readers full attention and a couple of re-reads. “Whiteness” is in a death spiral and demographics is going to overcome every advantage they’ve historically had. The reaction of many is to maintain power by any means fair and unfair. That means gerrymandering, voter suppression, redistricting, mass incarceration and basically resegregation of schools under this Department of Education.
Some of the people I “chat” with, resort to calling me racist for pointing out that which they deny. I have a “victim mentality” for acknowledging and documenting what they cannot accept as true. For if they accepted the reality of racism in America, they’d have to admit they were complicit.
I engage in these conversations because it amuses me. I also learn what their thinking is, how they explain away the obvious. It also explains how the most privileged group in the world, perceives of themselves as victims. That and having a right-wing media including Fox News, Breitbart, and InfoWars, saying exactly that every day. It’s sad to know what they’ve allowed themselves to believe. It’s why they support the policies they do, why we have a Trump, and why they stand by him. The inevitability of them being the minority so frightens them, in their mind that makes them victims.
ENIGMA IN BLACK 
A salutary and timely comment.
History shows that every group and every community has the inbuilt capacity to consider itself victimised and unfairly treated.
There are of courses many cases with good cause; the danger lies there in turning their historical suffering into some glorious romance to be celebrated; thus justifying acts of violence and vilification of another folk who only have an ancestral link with the past injustices
Where the group is actually part of the majority and feels its grip on authority and superior position in threatened by the growing equality of other groups the position becomes even more serious. They adopt the persona of an oppressed minority while having access to the levers of a privileged majority, the step to verbal then physical violence is a short one.
In this day and age where internet access in universal minority groups are able to organise their own counter-violence and thus the chances of escalation increase.
Some of these ‘Threatened White Folk’ would do well to look and learn from the history of communal violence across the world in the last 50 years. The hijacking and perversion of Islam is simply the most reported.
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Excellent summary!
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Thank you.
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