Election Issues Blog

With everything that is going on with Trump, and the wall, the repealing of DACA,the Muslim ban, and the ICE situation, I wonder what the attitude was around immigration before the 2016 election. While there are legitimate concerns surrounding immigration about the impact with demographic change, as well as certain economic concerns, much of the conversation concerning immigration is charged with xenophobia, bias, and racism. I believe that this is mainly due to the media’s representation of the crisis in the middle east, paired with peoples’ internal fears of the “other” and changes. Often people have a desire to team up into an “us versus them” ideology. This has been seen throughout history. Peasants versus the aristocracy, Jews versus Christians, Democrats versus Republicans, Blacks versus Whites, and countless other examples. The ‘Us versus immigrants” pits two large demographic groups in the U.S. against the “outsiders” that are immigrants.This being “white people versus brown people” and “Christians versus Muslims” disguised as being against crime and terrorism.  This is the thing that makes Trump such a powerful demagogue; he unites people together based on biases and opinions people held personally, but never felt comfortable saying them. Trump says these sorts of things in a way that resonates with these people’s prejudice, and in a way that is show and interesting. While it plays on old racism that has been seen in the past for decades, I feel like the islamophobia that occurs is even more of a recent phenomena, starting with the attacks on 9/11. This fear of terrorism has conflated to fear of Muslims and people from the Middle East. Especially with the ISIS attacks happening around the 2016 election that became just another thing on everyone’s radar.