Donald Trump, Race and Identity Politics - New York Times
To the Editor:
In “Donald Trump’s Racial Ignorance” (Sunday Review, Dec. 18), Michael Eric Dyson notes, “It seems more than a little reactionary to blame the loss of the election on a brand of identity politics that even liberals were slow to embrace.”
I disagree. The McGovern-Fraser Commission reforms after the 1968 Democratic Convention — which have been in effect and expanded upon over the years — established identity politics as the main driving force behind all Democratic national campaigns since then.
The Democrats lost the presidency in November because it seemed to many Americans that Democrats were more interested in where some people go to the bathroom than in attending to the economic needs of people who have been written off and left behind.
Mr. Dyson is, however, quite correct about Donald Trump. He and the people he has appointed are woefully ignorant of the issue of racial equality. They have no real interest whatsoever in addressing the concerns of African-Americans and continue to support measures that disenfranchise people of color in most of the South and states like Wisconsin and Texas.
If the Democrats are ever to regain the power they have lost during the past eight years (the House, the Senate, a majority of governorships and a majority of state legislatures), they will have to balance their decades-long lurch into “diversity” issues with political realities.
STEVEN MORRIS
Mount Pleasant, S.C.
To the Editor:
Michael Eric Dyson raises some thorny issues about how race and class are approached, even by progressive politicians. Those of us who are white, born in this country, cisgender and not of a minority religious faith can have the luxury of turning away from identity politics in order to focus on economic inequality. But if we do so, we cannot work effectively to combat the hard-right agenda that awaits us in a few short weeks.
It’s time for all of us who are interested in social, economic, racial and environmental justice to recognize that fighting for those things requires us to embrace, rather than deride, identity politics so that everyone’s rights can be protected.
AMY LAIKEN
Chicago
To the Editor:
Donald Trump is ignorant about many issues, race included, but Michael Eric Dyson is wrong to include Bernie Sanders when he says racial ignorance “exists among liberals and the white left, too.” Mr. Sanders protested segregated housing in the early 1960s while a student at the University of Chicago. His pursuit of economic and social justice embraces identity politics.
The interests of the white working class and African-Americans are not mutually exclusive, and, in fact, the two groups must combine forces for the benefit of both in order for the Democrats to take back control of at least the Senate in 2018 and the White House in 2020. Our very survival as a nation may very well depend on this union.
RICHARD B. LUPTON
Westerville, Ohio
To the Editor:
Michael Eric Dyson provides an important lens into the challenges that President-elect Donald Trump has with the black community. African-Americans are not being seen as individuals, but rather as representatives of an entire group.
In 2014 Mr. Trump tweeted, “Sadly, because President Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won’t see another black president for generations!” It is hard to imagine anyone making the same assessment about a white man.
It’s pretty simple: For Mr. Trump to know black America, he needs to begin by seeing us as individuals! This will go a long way in ending his implicit bias.
JULIAN KENNETH BRAXTON
Boston
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