Abstract

Abstract This essay examines how President Trump’s vacillations between overt and colorblind racism represent the intensification of white racial anxieties in anticipation of an impending demographic shift toward a nonwhite majority. Trump’s contradictory rhetoric on race becomes legible in the context of white ambivalence, a condition that entails that white identity, history, and culture be respected as morally superior but, at the same time, not be characterized as white supremacy. Examining a selection of Trump’s campaign and postelection rallies, I show how white ambivalence constitutes a perverse mixture of overweening and explicit valorizations of people of color and, simultaneously, a forceful disavowal of racial conversations that might otherwise implicate white identity in the legacy of white supremacy.

Journal
Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Published
2020-06-01
DOI
10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.2.0195
Open Access
Closed
Topics

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (3)

  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. Rhetoric & Public Affairs
  3. Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Also cites 20 works outside this index ↓
  1. Paul Elliott Johnson, "The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump's Demagoguery," Women's Studies in Commu…
  2. and Casey Ryan Kelly, "The Wounded Man: Foxcatcher and the Incoherence of White Masculine Victimhood," Commun…
  3. 5. See Angelique M. Davis and Rose Ernst, “Racial Gaslighting,” Politics, Groups, and Identities 7 (2019): 761-74.
  4. 7. Eric King Watts, “Postracial Fantasies, Blackness, and Zombies,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studi…
  5. 14. See Kristen Hoerl, “Selective Amnesia and Racial Transcendence in News Coverage of President Obama’s Inau…
  6. 16. See also Jeffery L. Bineham, "How The Blind Side Blinds Us: Postracism and the American Dream," Southern …
  7. David C. Oh and Omotayo O. Banjo, "Outsourcing Postracialism: Voicing Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Outsourc…
  8. Jonathan P. Rossing, "Deconstructing Postracialism: Humor as a Critical, Cultural Project," Journal of Commun…
  9. and Catherine Squires et al., "What Is This 'Post-' in Postracial, Postfeminist … (Fill in the Blank)?" Journ…
  10. 17. Lisa A. Flores and Christy-Dale L. Sims, “The Zero-Sum Game of Race and the Familiar Strangeness of Presi…
  11. 21. Lawrence D. Bobo, “Somewhere between Jim Crow and Post-Racialism: Reflections on the Racial Divide in Ame…
  12. 27. Maureen A. Craig and Jennifer A. Richeson, “More Diverse Yet Less Tolerant? How the Increasingly Diverse …
  13. 30. Lisa M. Corrigan, “On Rhetorical Criticism, Performativity, and White Fragility,” Review of Communication…
  14. 35. Matthew Houdek, “Racial Sedimentation and the Common Sense of Racialized Violence: The Case of Black Chur…
  15. 38. Lisa A. Flores, “Between Abundance and Marginalization: The Imperative of Racial Rhetorical Criticism,” R…
  16. 44. For more on the updated rhetoric of the White Man’s Burden, see Dana L. Cloud, “‘To Veil the Threat of Te…
  17. 49. See Wil S. Hylton, “Down the Breitbart Hole,” New York Magazine, August 16, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com…
  18. 67. Tomaz Cajner et al., “Racial Gaps in Labor Market Outcomes in the Last Four Decades and over the Business…
  19. 80. Stephen M. Underhill, “Urban Jungle, Ferguson: Rhetorical Homology and Institutional Critique,” Quarterly…
  20. 83. See Mills, Black Rights/White Wrongs; and Anjali Vats and LeiLani Nishime, “Containment as Neocolonial Vi…
CrossRef global citation count: 17 View in citation network →