Donald Trump’s pledge to fight what he calls “anti-white feeling” in the U.S. will likely embolden allies who seek to dismantle government and corporate programs created to battle racism and boost diversity in American life.
Some high-profile supporters of the former president, now the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, say policies for safeguarding people of color in classrooms, workplaces and charities should be repurposed to protect the rights of white people as well.
“I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country,” Trump told Time in an interview published on Tuesday. “I don’t think it would be a very tough thing to address, frankly. But I think the laws are very unfair right now.”
Trump did not specify examples of anti-white bias nor policy prescriptions in the interview.
I think they are looking at it specifically as their “white heritage” not the white heritage. The Daughters of the Confederacy movement made a big concerted effort to mythologize Confederate history which was easy in America where people are used to making uncomplicated heroes and sages of their historical personages. They put those figures literally on a pedestal and created a culture of reverent pride around them. People learned to value those connections so now - when the dismantling of those pedestals is happening they feel like something is getting taken away that they liked.
It’s a difficult conversation to logic them out of because a lot of them learned this stuff from school where the texts all follow the well trodden fallen heroes narrative. For a lot of them that’s the last educational authority they really trusted because they were kids.