Donald J. Trump and the Rhetoric of White Ambivalence

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 con...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Rhetoric & public affairs 2020-06, Vol.23 (2), p.195-223
Main Author: Kelly, Casey Ryan
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1094-8392
1534-5238
DOI:10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.2.0195