Marshall Memorial Fellowship: Diversity vs. the Trump Insurgency
Donald Trump has become the presumptive nominee for the Republican presidential nomination by pledging to “Make America Great Again.” The issues that have propelled his candidacy – immigration, trade, opposition to political correctness – and the demographic characteristics of his supporters point inescapably to the meaning of his central slogan: Trump proposes to “take the country back” (another recent clarion call on the U.S. right) from all those pesky groups that in recent decades have sought a place under the American sun: women, African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims. Anyone, in short, who does not conform to an obsolete, reactionary prototype of the white male voter.
The strength of anti-immigrant feeling in the Republican Party goes beyond Trump. Its virulence is not so hard to understand: it stems from the sense, among many white lower-middle and working class voters, that the world – in the age of globalization, outsourcing and the digital divide – is leaving them behind. But the political influence of this sentiment can have calamitous consequences for the United States.
On my travels across the country as part of the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, I encountered African-American pastors, Latino city administrators and educators, Korean-American lawyers, Native American business executives, a Greek-American congressman, leaders of the Jewish community – the list goes on. I learned of the efforts of companies like Google to tackle the overwhelming preponderance of white men in the tech sector and about women leaders breaking new ground in male-dominated sectors like transportation. I heard about police departments that seek to become more representative of the communities they serve and of public schools looking for the best ways to engage with the different languages, interests and cultural origins of their students. I attended a ceremony of welcome for Syrian refugees in Baltimore and met twin sisters of Native American descent – among the first from their small village in Alaska to go to college – who now hold prominent positions in business and the non-profit sector.
This has always been the great strength of the United States: its embrace of diversity, its willingness to include, integrate and celebrate anyone who is willing to work hard and play by the rules, no matter where they come from or what they believe in. This is the main reason why the homegrown Muslim-American community is less fertile ground for the poisonous seeds of Islamic fundamentalism than its counterparts in various European societies. It also partly explains why the U.S. has healthier demographics than most European countries, and why it remains the most powerful magnet for international talent.
These days, however, it seems that too many Americans – especially on the conservative end of the spectrum – forget the benefits of diversity. Squeezed by decades of wage stagnation, battered by the financial crisis of 2008-9 and its aftermath, angry at a political establishment they rightly view as too beholden to all kinds of powerful special interests, they fall prey to false narratives of what went wrong and pernicious, unworkable promises of restoration.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is nothing new in the U.S. – it’s almost as old as the country itself. One of the first such movements were the Know Nothings, who grew to prominence in the 1850s, in opposition to German and Irish immigrants. The Trump insurgency, its latest incarnation, has thrived on defiantly ignoring most facts about current affairs and public policy. Its potency represents a real threat to the future of the U.S., since it rejects the most vital element in the success of the country over the past 150 years.
Yannis Palaiologos, Journalist, Kathimerini Newspaper, Athens is a Spring 2016 Marshall Memorial Fellow.