‘US election results reflect a clear racist undercurrent’

Fifty-eight percent of white voters voted for Donald Trump while 88 percent of Afro-Americans and 65 percent Hispanics voted Hillary Clinton.

This was disclosed by Dr Charles Amjad Ali, a professor at the University of Chicago in the US.  He imparted this information while talking to a compact group at the offices of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) on Friday evening.

The subject of his talk was, “Casualties behind Trump and the future internal and external trajectories”.

“The rise in spray-painted Swastikas, hate crimes, and race-based violence certainly points to a strong racist undercurrent in the election,” he said.

However, Dr Ali said that white/blue collar workers, lower middle-class voters who had been feeling marginalised, dispossessed and disadvantaged rallied behind US president-elect Trump because they felt that Trump would smash the system that had kept them back.

“Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick of the establishment economics, establishment politics and the media establishment,” said Dr Ali. 

However, he said that there were highly affluent white voters who were not at all disadvantaged who voted for Trump in droves. He said that there was clear indication that Trump’s racist/xenophobic agenda sat well with the white voters. 

He said that eight years of Obama’s rule heightened racism among white voters, allowing it to erupt into a cesspool of hatred in this election.

Commenting on other aspects of the election, he said that Clinton failed to mobilise voters to the desired level, especially the educated white middle class. 

Talking about projections for the future, he said that fascist, racist, misogynistic and xenophobic hate-mongering had always been a part of the American collective psyche but had thus far been submerged but had now come out into the open. 

For example, he said that according to statistics gathered, there had been a whole lot of hate crimes since Trump’s election:  120 anti-immigrant hate crimes; 80 against blacks; and 35 against Muslims.

He predicted greater intolerance on a structural level with classification of Muslims and crackdowns on “criminal illegal immigrants”.