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Movement for a Better US: report declares fear and hatred is everywhere and that white supremacy is widespread and virulent
There’s nothing more frightening in America today than an angry White man
From Louisville to Concord, from Chicago to Dallas, from St Louis to North Carolina, the latest poll suggests some of the most important election concerns are America’s state of political divisiveness and its escalating hostility toward minorities.
Like many elections, this one has been pushed to the edge by a pro-bully rally on the outskirts of Washington, DC, whose threats were paid and exaggerated and amplified into a national epidemic.
Trump apologists might object to that charge, to categorise his actions and words and policies as an “epidemic” is a purely rhetorical response to a man who wins every one of his polls and whose own rhetoric is plastered across every bus stop and billboard.
Asked whether America is on a course of spiralling hostility and confusion, this study will reveal that it feels like more than a slogan for US politics.
Meanwhile, the Boston-based Intersection found that 61% of African Americans and 68% of Mexican Americans were concerned that they or someone in their immediate family may be a victim of racial or ethnic violence.
Altogether, the report said that a majority of Americans felt that racism and discrimination was common in society today – with 63% of respondents believing that racism is “fairly common”, including 41% of white respondents. In part, this comes from believing that white supremacist groups are now more active and dangerous than they were in the early 2000s.
The study also found that in the absence of investigations into real voter suppression (unfounded fears of multiple voting and similar nonsense that is known by the secretive name of the “voter integrity” movement), voters were able to express their prejudice anonymously. Forty percent of black respondents and 47% of Mexican Americans said they were open about being racist at work.
A strong majority of whites, however, said they were either not racist at all or declined to answer.
This study, conducted in response to all 60 gubernatorial races, and assessing more than 3,000 Americans, found this to be an overwhelmingly troubling sentiment.
The interrelation between these two surveys, only released on Monday, shows that unlike more general election concerns, racism and its intersection with hostility towards minorities is clearly on the rise.
Given how much power this election has been largely monopolised by a man who could easily lose (down to 10% or so in recent polls), it’s not hard to see why.
The depth of anger and anger at the spectacle of a man destroying civil rights-minded infrastructure, without a change in his own values and views, is especially striking.
But the country is not “on a course of spiralling hostility and confusion”; its citizens have trouble understanding that Trump is exacerbating existing divisions and his words and actions are feeding into an acute political insanity.