# Donald Trump: The First White President \[article in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 7, 2017, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725 "2017-09-07T13:01:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/81 "2017-09-07T19:05:47Z")
> [@treis](#): > > Of course Trump ran in 2012. > > [Donald Trump bows out of 2012 US presidential election race | Donald Trump | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/16/donald-trump-us-presidential-race) But, you claim that he ran against Obama in 2012. You said, “If Trump was the revenge of white America against a “nigger” presidency then he should have had success in 2012” He wasn’t running against Obama, he was running against Romney. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/82 "2017-09-07T19:07:12Z")
Note that there is no entry in the [Donald Trump Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#Early_involvement_in_politics) for a 2012 presidential campaign (and just a few sentences about him speculating about running), and the page for the [2012 Republican Presidential primary campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_presidential_primaries,_2012) doesn’t have a single mention of Trump. Donald Trump did not run for President in 2012. There was no Trump 2012 Presidential campaign. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/83 "2017-09-07T19:08:17Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > But, you claim that he ran against Obama in 2012. > > You said, “If Trump was the revenge of white America against a “nigger” presidency then he should have had success in 2012” > > He wasn’t running against Obama, he was running against Romney. He wasn’t running against Romney either. He wasn’t running against anyone in 2012. He didn’t run for President in 2012. Saying “I might run for President” for a few months doesn’t actually equal running for President. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/84 "2017-09-07T19:08:52Z")
> [@treis](#): > > The campaign Trump ran in 2012 is far closer to what the article describes. He lost badly then. […] Of course Trump ran in 2012. I think you need a clearer definition of “ran”. According to your own cite, Trump formally announced in May of 2012 that he wouldn’t seek the Republican nomination, but AFAICT he never officially declared candidacy. What does “unofficially campaigning” mean? ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/85 "2017-09-07T19:09:01Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > The article is here: > > [Donald Trump Is the First White President - The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/) > > Wow. I’m still processing it, but what an incredible article. The premise (as I understand it) is that Trump’s racism – above and beyond any recent presidential candidate – was the key to his success, and it was largely due to a backlash against having a black president. I think he makes a good case. I read the article. It was a steaming pile of bullshit, and one of the more racist things I’ve read lately. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/86 "2017-09-07T19:15:44Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I think you need a clearer definition of “ran”. According to your own cite, Trump formally announced in May of 2012 that he wouldn’t seek the Republican nomination, but AFAICT he never officially declared candidacy. What does “unofficially campaigning” mean? I don’t think it means anything. Trump never filed any FEC paperwork, he never hired any campaign workers, he never held any fundraisers, and he never declared that he was running for President. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/87 "2017-09-07T19:17:36Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > He wasn’t running against Romney either. He wasn’t running against anyone in 2012. He didn’t run for President in 2012. Saying “I might run for President” for a few months doesn’t actually equal running for President. True, I was giving treis more benefit of the doubt than I probably should have, trying to turn his claim into something that could actually be evaluated rationally, but you are right, I had to stretch too far to make it fit. Your claim of Trump didn’t run in 2012 is much more accurate than tries’s claim that he did, but there is a touch of nuance in there that is probably not relevant to treis’s argument. My point was only that treis seemed to think that Trump ever had any sort of electoral challenge against obama, which is utterly untrue, any challenge that could be argued that trump did mount would have been against romney, which he admits was a halfhearted and unofficial attempt. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/88 "2017-09-07T19:23:06Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > This is not helping your case. A rhetorical flourish that doesn’t help your argument, ironically. The “irony” here is that you yourself DEFENDED the quote under analysis by claiming its conclusion was just a “rhetorical flourish”! Now, you are claiming that just the fact if MAKING one “doesn’t help” an argument. I’m just expressing slight exasperation that your argument - so far - basically boils down to ‘you don’t know enough about it, and you don’t understand it’. Never once do you actually address the SUBSTANCE of my arguments. You attack the poster, not the post. > [@](#): > > Correct. Unfortunately, you then go on in your post to disregard your own understanding of the argument! > > No, it doesn’t. You just stated it correctly and it doesn’t contain either that assumption or the conclusion you are pretending it is trying to reach. That’s just the point. The “argument” in the quoted section is a pure “straw man” - in fact, a very good example of that informal fallacy. No-one in the world ever actually makes the argument that it is attacking. What they inevitably mean by “racism is but one component in the rise of Trump”, is that ‘one component - and not the major or primary component - in the rise of Trump is racism. Therefore, it makes no sense to analogize the rise of Trump with things like lynching, in which other factors may play a role, but which is really ‘about’ racism’. Lots of things have racism as “a component”, but they are not all alike. In some cases the “component” is small, and in others it is large; what the folks disagreeing with the article are saying, when they say “racism is just one part of the rise of Trump”, is that racism isn’t as LARGE a component as this article claims. The argument in the article is addressing an argument no-one actually makes, in an attempt to assume its conclusions. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/89 "2017-09-07T19:23:41Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > I read the article. It was a steaming pile of bullshit, and one of the more racist things I’ve read lately. I am utterly unsurprised by your opinion of the article or by your characterization of it. ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/90 "2017-09-07T19:27:01Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I think you need a clearer definition of “ran”. According to your own cite, Trump formally announced in May of 2012 that he wouldn’t seek the Republican nomination, but AFAICT he never officially declared candidacy. What does “unofficially campaigning” mean? It means you’re campaigning but don’t want the burden of complying with FEC regulations. If people want to deny Trump tried to run for president in 2012, well to each his own, but he clearly was. Here’s a contemporary article about him pulling out: > [@](#): > > “I had no idea I would get hammered in the way I’ve been hammered,” Donald Trump declared in New Hampshire on May 11, five days before he dropped out of a presidential race he never formally entered. > > Trump knew when he went to New Hampshire that he was about to be hammered again, this time on the front page of The New York Times, which, two days later, reported that hundreds of buyers at condo projects that bear his name were suing him. Trump then went on CNBC—in what turned out to be his last presidential TV interview—and blasted the author of the Times piece, Michael Barbaro, as well as NBC’s investigative chief, Michael Isikoff, and even one of the show’s hosts, Simon Hobbs. Two weeks earlier, Trump had been roasted by the president at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and now, anyone with a question to ask looked at him as if he had barbecue fork in hand. > > As late as this May 13 CNBC appearance, Trump was talking about two possible deadlines for his decision to run— May 22 and before June. Instead, he quit abruptly on May 16, reneging on his promise to attend the Tea Party’s South Carolina event on May 19. He has hinted that NBC forced his hand with its deadline for a $120 million, two-year, Celebrity Apprentice renewal offer. But, as inevitable as it may always have been that he would pull the plug on his presidential show, Trump appeared to depart in a hurried attempt to stanch the flow of bad press, no matter how hard he now wants to disguise it. His refusal to rule out a return to the campaign trail when he called in to Fox TV last Monday was surely just more bravado tease. > **[Inside Donald Trump's Empire: Why He Didn’t Run for President in 2012](http://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-donald-trumps-empire-why-he-didnt-run-for-president-in-2012)** > > With lawsuits pending and shady partners, Trump’s business empire could not withstand the scrutiny of a presidential campaign, and even his kids might have been muddied. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/91 "2017-09-07T19:32:27Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > I’ve read some of these already, but as an exercise I will re-read them, trying to set aside my disagreement with Coates, generally. FWIW, I didn’t mean to suggest that this exchange changed my views or made me understand Coates better. When I read it, I thought Chait had the better of the argument. Re-reading it now, I think less of Chait’s argument, but also think they are sort of talking past each other in large swathes. I only pointed to it as an example of where I was on these issues before buckling down and devoting some serious time to it. What changed my views, or rather, helped me understand and evaluate arguments about the pervasiveness and effects of white supremacy in 2017, was book-length treatments of racism that held my hand through two main areas: (1) explaining the origins of black poverty in 2017, bridging gaps in my education about the period between slavery and Civil Rights, as well as gaps about what happened after 1968; (2) explaining the intellectual history of racial ideas (and their uses) in America and how they are connected to other ideas about class, the economy, and crime (essentially understanding why what Lee Atwater famously said was true). I don’t agree with everything I read, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to either. But having read it, I understand where Coates is coming from when he talks about the long history of the role of the interests of the “white working class,” beginning in antebellum America. If I were introduced to that concept for the first time in an essay, I don’t think I would have grasped it well enough to understand the role it was playing in that essay’s argument, or successfully evaluate the quality of that argument. That’s all just me. I know other people paid more attention in college history classes, have an easier time grasping and incorporating new information, or can more easily set aside their own identities and prejudices when grappling with this stuff (or all three). For me, it took work at the library. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/92 "2017-09-07T19:36:04Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > The “irony” here is that you yourself DEFENDED the quote under analysis by claiming its conclusion was just a “rhetorical flourish”! > > Now, you are claiming that just the fact if MAKING one “doesn’t help” an argument. There are more than one type of rhetorical flourish. Some add to understanding, some do not. I do not believe the claim was made that “just the fact if MAKING one “doesn’t help” an argument”, but rather the one that you chose to use was what was not helping your argument. > [@](#): > > I’m just expressing slight exasperation that your argument - so far - basically boils down to ‘you don’t know enough about it, and you don’t understand it’. Never once do you actually address the SUBSTANCE of my arguments. You attack the poster, not the post. > That’s just the point. The “argument” in the quoted section is a pure “straw man” - in fact, a very good example of that informal fallacy. No-one in the world ever actually makes the argument that it is attacking. > > What they inevitably mean by “racism is but one component in the rise of Trump”, is that ‘one component - and not the major or primary component - in the rise of Trump is racism. Therefore, it makes no sense to analogize the rise of Trump with things like lynching, in which other factors may play a role, but which is really ‘about’ racism’. Primary, maybe not. There are many reasons that people chose to vote for trump, desperation, gullibility, ignorance, stuff like that. But, there were quite a number of people that voted for him because he had the backing of white supremacists. Wehn David Duke endorses you, then you have to accept that racism is not an insignificant part of what is getting you votes. Lynching was not all about racism either. It was mostly about a bunch of people who felt that another person had done something that was worth killing them in a painful and humiliating way. Some called it the rule of law, some called it keeping order in society, some just enjoyed the torture that came with it. There are many components to lynchings, and the idea that they were done primarily due to racism was not accepted by most until recently, and is still not accepted by all now. To accept that racism was a component of lynching means that you have to accept that people will be motivated to do some pretty shitty things due to their feelings of racial bias. The same as accepting that racism was a component of trump being elected. Other factors may play a role, but racism definitely put him over the top. Racists are definitely feeling like they got a win when trump was elected. Yes racism is “only” a component of trump’s election, but it is a pretty major component that ignoring will not make go away. > [@](#): > > Lots of things have racism as “a component”, but they are not all alike. In some cases the “component” is small, and in others it is large; what the folks disagreeing with the article are saying, when they say “racism is just one part of the rise of Trump”, is that racism isn’t as LARGE a component as this article claims. > > The argument in the article is addressing an argument no-one actually makes, in an attempt to assume its conclusions. You are, right here, making the argument that racism was just some small tiny bit of his campaign, that it hardly made an effect at all. Are you no-one? You are making that exact argument you are claiming that no-one is making. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/93 "2017-09-07T19:36:06Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Never once do you actually address the SUBSTANCE of my arguments. You attack the poster, not the post. Nonsense. The post you’re responding to detailed why your post was wrong. Namely, you’ve misunderstood the argument you think you’re responding to. > [@Malthus](#): > > The argument in the article is addressing an argument no-one actually makes, in an attempt to assume its conclusions. You continue to conflate the thesis of the article with the point of a single paragraph. You are upset that he did not, in that single paragraph, address the question of the proportion of the role of racism. That’s quite true, but of course he did so throughout the rest of the lengthy essay, with many paragraphs detailing the racist elements of the central aspects of Trump’s campaign, and many other paragraphs rebutting the idea that it was about class. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/94 "2017-09-07T19:39:40Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > But that is a poor analogy of what this article is about. If you are continuing the analogy, it would be like explaining something entirely different, like why people like grapes. If we are going to use a different analogy then, wherein the reader is to be convinced of the value of reading spanish, then it would be as if the article were 97% english, with just a couple dozen words that you may need to look up, if you had not been exposed to them already. Actually, it is a good analogy. The article is presumably addressed to Democrats who are NOT “aware”, in an attempt to convince THEM of its merit. If it can ONLY be understood by the “aware”, if others quite literally are UNABLE to understand it, it CAN’T do what it is supposed to be doing. > [@](#): > > Awareness is about fighting your personal ignorance. Faith is about being willfully ignorant. Reason is a different subject. The mental tool kit used to make people less ignorant doesn’t change if the ignorance is “personal” or not. “Aware” appears to be something like “enlightened” - a self-congratulatory in-phrase for those who have accepted a certain set of ideas. > [@](#): > > I think part of the problem is that you are thinking that the author wrote this as a persuasive piece, not as an informative piece. He is not trying to convince you what is happening, he is trying to explain why it is happening. If its only purpose is to “inform” those who already believe it to be true, it isn’t very useful. > [@](#): > > If you do not accept some of the basic premises, like the idea that white supremacism was a thing, and is trying to make a comeback, then the author is certainly going to fail in convincing you of the reasons why that is. I already accept both of those premises. Yet I am not convinced by the arguments in this article. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/95 "2017-09-07T19:42:34Z")
> [@treis](#): > > It means you’re campaigning but don’t want the burden of complying with FEC regulations. If people want to deny Trump tried to run for president in 2012, well to each his own, but he clearly was. Here’s a contemporary article about him pulling out: > > [Inside Donald Trump's Empire and Why He Didn’t Run for President in 2012](http://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-donald-trumps-empire-why-he-didnt-run-for-president-in-2012) Did you even read your own cites? “five days before he dropped out of a presidential race he never formally entered.” Maybe he “tried to run for president”, but he never actually ran for president, so it’s not like he tried very hard. If you never enter a race, can it be said that you were in it? If I do a bunch of walking, and think, “I could win the boston marathon”, and so I get there, and tell the news that I’m thinking about running in the marathon, because I think I could win it, but months before the race starts, I take a couple steps along the track and decide, that this is too much work, did I ever race in the boston marathon? In any case, in case you are trying to play some sort of pedantic game with things, he also, in no way shape or form, officially or unofficially, ran for president in 2012. He “dropped out” in May of 2011. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/96 "2017-09-07T19:42:58Z")
> [@treis](#): > > It means you’re campaigning but don’t want the burden of complying with FEC regulations. If people want to deny Trump tried to run for president in 2012, well to each his own, but he clearly was. Here’s a contemporary article about him pulling out: > > [Inside Donald Trump's Empire and Why He Didn’t Run for President in 2012](http://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-donald-trumps-empire-why-he-didnt-run-for-president-in-2012) That’s not a presidential campaign. At best, that’s playing with the idea of a presidential campaign – an idea which he ended up rejecting. This is very, very silly. Trump was the lone birther (and by far the most prominent birther in the country) to run for the nomination in 2016 with a party electorate that had a huge birther element. It’s entirely reasonable to surmise that his birtherism was a big factor in his success. Any comparison to 2012 is silly, since he didn’t run in 2012. If he had run, he might have won. He was getting mocked and “hammered” just as much (or much more!) at the beginning of the 2016 cycle, and he ended up winning that one. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/97 "2017-09-07T19:52:47Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Nonsense. The post you’re responding to detailed why your post was wrong. Namely, you’ve misunderstood the argument you think you’re responding to. Again, there was no “argument”. Merely a dismissal. It ought to be obvious that I do, in fact, know what argument he’s making, so your continual statement to the contrary - isn’t advancing the debate. > [@](#): > > You continue to conflate the thesis of the article with the point of a single paragraph. You are upset that he did not, in that single paragraph, address the question of the proportion of the role of racism. That’s quite true, but of course he did so throughout the rest of the lengthy essay, with many paragraphs detailing the racist elements of the central aspects of Trump’s campaign, and many other paragraphs rebutting the idea that it was about class. I’m pointing out why the single paragraph you chose to quote makes a crappy rebuttal argument. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/98 "2017-09-07T19:55:44Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Actually, it is a good analogy. The article is presumably addressed to Democrats who are NOT “aware”, in an attempt to convince THEM of its merit. > > If it can ONLY be understood by the “aware”, if others quite literally are UNABLE to understand it, it CAN’T do what it is supposed to be doing. Once again, I see it as more of an informative piece than a persuasive, so persuading you is not it’s purpose, so that you are unpersuaded does not mean that it fails. If people are not aware of the roots of racism in the country, and the current pervasiveness of it, those people are not the target audience. The target audience are people who are able to understand the nuance of things that he is discussing. Not ever article ever written has to be for you. If anything, the article brings up interesting facts and talking points for those who are aware of the dangers of racism to or country to use in discussions with their peers and acquaintances. > [@](#): > > The mental tool kit used to make people less ignorant doesn’t change if the ignorance is “personal” or not. Personal ignorance is what you are unaware of, as opposed to general ignorance that most are unaware of. For instance, in general ignorance, most people do not know that there is a mcdonalds with turquoise arches, but then, most people don’t care. Personal ignorance is something that much of society does know, but that you do not. Much easier to educate yourself. > [@](#): > > “Aware” appears to be something like “enlightened” - a self-congratulatory in-phrase for those who have accepted a certain set of ideas. That is how it has come to be defined by those who dismiss such things, and prefer willful ignorance to knowledge. The people who make fun of smart people for knowing things. > [@](#): > > If its only purpose is to “inform” those who already believe it to be true, it isn’t very useful. It isn’t useful to those who would reject it, sure, but it is useful to those who are able to understand what it is that he is getting at. > [@](#): > > I already accept both of those premises. Yet I am not convinced by the arguments in this article. You disagree that white supremacists helped him get in power? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/99 "2017-09-07T20:00:39Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > There are more than one type of rhetorical flourish. Some add to understanding, some do not. I do not believe the claim was made that “just the fact if MAKING one “doesn’t help” an argument”, but rather the one that you chose to use was what was not helping your argument. Quite right - there are different types of flourishes. Mine was a mere expression of exasperation. The one in the article was part of the actual argument. Please explain why an expression of exasperation undermines the argument. > [@](#): > > Primary, maybe not. Then “lynching” makes a crappy analogy. > [@](#): > > There are many reasons that people chose to vote for trump, desperation, gullibility, ignorance, stuff like that. But, there were quite a number of people that voted for him because he had the backing of white supremacists. Wehn David Duke endorses you, then you have to accept that racism is not an insignificant part of what is getting you votes. > > Lynching was not all about racism either. It was mostly about a bunch of people who felt that another person had done something that was worth killing them in a painful and humiliating way. Some called it the rule of law, some called it keeping order in society, some just enjoyed the torture that came with it. There are many components to lynchings, and the idea that they were done primarily due to racism was not accepted by most until recently, and is still not accepted by all now. To accept that racism was a component of lynching means that you have to accept that people will be motivated to do some pretty shitty things due to their feelings of racial bias. The same as accepting that racism was a component of trump being elected. Other factors may play a role, but racism definitely put him over the top. Racists are definitely feeling like they got a win when trump was elected. One could equally argue that ‘lack of interest in a lackluster Democratic candidate put him over the top’. The analogy with lynching is an extreme stretch. Did many voters vote for Trump because of racism? Certainly. Yet a Black man could (and did) get elected. Obviously, racism isn’t the PRIMARY factor explaining Trump’s win. > [@](#): > > Yes racism is “only” a component of trump’s election, but it is a pretty major component that ignoring will not make go away. I have no interest in making it go away. I have an interest in seeing things as they are. > [@](#): > > You are, right here, making the argument that racism was just some small tiny bit of his campaign, that it hardly made an effect at all. Are you no-one? You are making that exact argument you are claiming that no-one is making. No, I’m not. Read it again. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2017, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/100 "2017-09-07T20:03:12Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > I’m pointing out why the single paragraph you chose to quote makes a crappy rebuttal argument. Let’s recap. You posted this: > [@](#): > > The fact that the Republican party has, over the past couple of decades, increasingly slipped into insanity **isn’t traceable to whiteness alone, but to a whole host of factors**. There is a strand of Christian crazy to it too (remember Ben Carson? He was a crazy, but Black, Republican candidate). (emphasis mine) _Quoting that post_, I posted this, from the article: > [@](#): > > This relatively recent rightward movement evinces, to Packer, a shift “that couldn’t be attributed just to the politics of race.” This is likely true—the politics of race are, themselves, never attributable “just to the politics of race.” The history of slavery is also about the growth of international capitalism; the history of lynching must be seen in light of anxiety over the growing independence of women; the civil-rights movement can’t be disentangled from the Cold War. **Thus, to say that the rise of Donald Trump is about more than race is to make an empty statement** , one that is small comfort to the people—black, Muslim, immigrant—who live under racism’s boot. Coates had anticipated your argument, that Trump’s rise isn’t traceable to whiteness alone, but to a whole host of factors, and responded by noting that the same can be said for lots of historical phenomenon for which race was a critical factor. That is, merely observing that other factors at play is not, in itself, a rebuttal of his thesis. A separate rebuttal of his thesis–not made in the sentence that began this exchange–is that the proportion of the role of racism in the rise of Trump is relatively low compared to other forces. Neither he, nor I in quoting him, was responding to that different argument in that paragraph. The response to the idea that the proportion of the role of race is low is basically the entire essay–many paragraphs of argument and evidence. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725.md?page=6)