Sometime in the distant future, long after this wretched period of American fascism is over, maybe historians will finally come up with a reasonable explanation for why so many people of color voted for such an obviously (and openly) racist like Donald J. Trump for president, even though he obviously (and openly) held them in utter contempt.
Because from where I sit, in the here and now, it defies reason and logic. Trump’s history of racism is long and well documented, which we’ll get to later.
But here’s a good starting point:
When Trump first announced his intention to run for president in 2015 – long before I ever imagined America was stupid enough to actually elect him – his very first order of business was to label Mexican immigrants “criminals, drug dealers and rapists.”
That was the way he decided to dip his toe into presidential politics – by demonizing a whole segment of the U.S. population, tens of millions of people, nearly all of whom spend their days working hard, raising families, paying taxes, contributing to the economy, striving for better lives, and doing many of the jobs that the vast majority of native-born Americans have no interest in doing.
That should have immediately disqualified him for the White House. Instead, it elevated him among a certain segment of the population – mostly white people, but also, incredibly, some of the very people he demonized.
More recently, in the space of only a few weeks this holiday season, Trump has:
- Launched vicious attacks against Somali immigrants to the U.S., saying they should “go back to where they came from,” that their country is “no good,” that he doesn’t “want them in our country,” and that America would “go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage.”
- Hinted at war with little old brown-skinned Venezuela for alleged drug terrorism ties that don’t really exist, although little old Venezuela does have a shitload of oil that might come in handy.
- Paused green card and immigration applications from 19 countries – all of which are either in Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Caribbean, but none from Europe and other lily-white countries.
Oh, and there’s this: At the recent convention of Turning Point USA – a faux-Christian gathering of aspiring Gestapo officers – Trump’s vice president, the sleazy and eternally grinning Big Tech whore J.D. Vance, said this:
“In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.”
Now, that’s an amazing statement. Simply amazing.
Personally, I’ve never once in my entire long life heard a single white person apologize for being white. Heck, I’m 75% white myself (25% Filipino) – or maybe 50% white, if my Armenian blood doesn’t count as “white.”
I grew up around white people. I’ve known just a shitload of white people.
I can’t recall a single instance when a white person apologized for being white – not ever, not once, not even close.
*****
I can understand how a lot of white folks would get all warm and gooey hearing J.D. Vance’s words, or reading about Trump’s racist policies. That’s just what happens when you’ve been in power forever and have no interest in giving up that power anytime soon.
What I will never understand is how any non-white person would support a regime that so clearly wants to oppress them. But goddamn, a lot sure do.
Here are a couple of U.S. election stats, courtesy of the Pew Research Center.
- In 2020, Joe Biden won Hispanic voters by 25 percentage points, and Hispanic voters supported Hillary Clinton by an even wider margin in 2016. But Trump drew nearly even with Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters, losing among them by only 3 points.
- Trump nearly doubled his support among Black voters between 2020 and 2024: 8% voted for him in 2020 vs. 15% [in 2024].
Now, it must be said: The vast majority of black voters were against Trump in 2024, and most Hispanic voters went against him as well.
But enough black and Hispanic voters pulled the lever for him to pretty much guarantee his victory – even after we all knew exactly how corrupt, dishonest, racist and deranged he is.
It will always mystify me how any brown or black American could possibly see Trump as a better alternative in the 2024 election than anyone else in the world.
But a lot did. They sure as shit did. Even though his opponent was a woman of color.
And now they seem to regret it, based on the 2025 off-year elections that recently concluded.
Hispanic voters who swung toward Trump in 2024 “boomeranged back to Democrats” in 2025, Politico reported. That was also the case with black voters, according to The Center for Politics.
I don’t really know what to read into the 2025 results, other than the fact that when you are not white and you vote for a known racist – and he makes good on that racism even after you helped him win office again – then maybe you feel a little, I don’t know: betrayed.
*****
Trump is not the only racist president in American history – not by a long shot. In fact, he’s part of a long tradition of racist (and white, and male) presidents.
The difference with Trump is that he embraces and celebrates racism in a way that leaves no doubt about where he stands. The dude simply loves trying to fuck over non-white people.
Way back in 1973 – when Trump was but a young douchebag learning the finer points of real estate from his corrupt, racist Dad – the two were sued by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly refusing to rent apartments in predominantly white buildings to black tenants. They ended up settling the suit, because that’s what guilty people do.
In 1989, as an older douchebag, Trump “infamously” took out full page newspaper ads calling for New York state to “reinstate the death penalty as five black and Latino teenagers were set to stand trial for beating and raping a white woman in Central Park.”
Those five black and Latinos were eventually exonerated of all charges — years later, after spending time in prison for crimes they didn’t commit — but Trump never once apologized for what he did. Of course he didn’t.
But let’s cut to the present, shall we? And I’ll just use a couple passages from recent blogs:
Already this year, the administration has rounded up thousands of brown-skinned Latinos and sent them to detention facilities, foreign prisons or just back over the border – all without the normal Constitutional or legal protections. Everyone is fair game: babies, children, mothers, the elderly and infirm, refugees, whoever.
Similar actions have been taken against brown-skinned Arabs and Muslims who came to the U.S. to study – legally – but found themselves on the wrong side of the Middle East debate. Pro-Palestinian activists have been snatched off the streets in broad daylight and in clear violation of free speech rights and the law of the land.
At the same time authorities have been rounding up brown-skinned people, they’ve warmly embraced white Afrikaner refugees who claim to be victims of racist government policies back in South Africa. As near as I can tell, the refugees’ main problem with current South African policies is that those policies no longer favor white colonists who spent generations oppressing brown and black people under apartheid.
Meanwhile, the Trump regime has wiped away historical records, online documents, books, artifacts and monuments dedicated to the accomplishments of black Americans – all while keeping white Nazi propaganda on the library shelves at our finest military academies.
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I don’t know what can be said all this that hasn’t already been said. You could write 48,000 volumes about Trump’s racism and it wouldn’t matter to some people. He is what he is, and America is what it is, and people either care or they don’t.
The only reason I’m writing about it now is because I have to get it out of my system. I won’t have much impact on anyone but myself, but at least I’ll have that.
I’m old enough to remember the 1960s Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his way and Malcolm X in another way. I was a young lad at the time, and didn’t exactly grow up in the most enlightened segment of America (white, suburban, the South).
But I have a clear recollection, at least in my own consciousness, that Martin Luther King, Jr., was fighting the good fight, and those who opposed him were on the wrong side of history.
I was in grade school when he was assassinated. My main memory of it was that it was an act of evil that was widely condemned.
Now, all these decades later, I have to wonder how Donald Trump reacted when he heard about it. He was a college student at the time, who chickened out of serving in Vietnam because he was born rich and could get away with it.
I wonder if Young Donald Trump even cared that MLK was shot down dead in Memphis. No, check that – I’m 100% sure he didn’t care.
What I don’t know is if he was secretly happy about it.
No, check that – I’m 100% sure I know.
I won’t share what my answer is. But I bet a lot of other people know – including the people who suffered the most because of that assassination, but still voted for Trump 40-odd years later.
That’s what mystifies me. That, I will never understand.
Image: AI generated. Any resemblance to actual people is purely coincidental.
Vance Cariaga 