He, and he alone, could Make America White Again.

[kpete]

If there is one consistent thread through Mr. Trump’s political career, it is his overt connection to white resentment and white nationalism. Mr. Trump’s fixation on Barack Obama’s birth certificate gave him the white nationalist street cred that no other Republican candidate could match, and that credibility has sustained him in office — no amount of scandal or evidence of incompetence will undermine his followers’ belief that he, and he alone, could Make America White Again.

.............

Although you will never hear this from Mr. Sessions, men are the greatest beneficiaries of affirmative action in college admissions: Their combination of test scores, grades and achievements is simply no match for that of women, whose academic profiles are much stronger. Yet to provide some semblance of gender balance on campuses, admissions directors have to dig down deep into the applicant pool to cobble together enough males to form an incoming class.

Part of what has been essential in this narrative of affirmative action as theft of white resources — my college acceptance, my job — is the notion of “merit,” where whites have it but others don’t. When California banned affirmative action in college admissions and relied solely on standardized test scores and grades as the definition of “qualified,” black and Latino enrollments plummeted. Whites, however, were not the beneficiaries of this “merit-based” system. Instead, Asian enrollments soared and with that came white resentment at both “the hordes of Asians” at places like the University of California, Los Angeles, and an admissions process that stressed grades over other criteria.

That white resentment simply found a new target for its ire is no coincidence; white identity is often defined by its sense of being ever under attack, with the system stacked against it. That’s why Mr. Trump’s policies are not aimed at ameliorating white resentment, but deepening it.His agenda is not, fundamentally, about creating jobs or protecting programs that benefit everyone, including whites; it’s about creating purported enemies and then attacking them.

In the end, white resentment is so myopic and selfish that it cannot see that when the larger nation is thriving, whites are, too. Instead, it favors policies and politicians that may make America white again, but also hobbled and weakened, a nation that has squandered its greatest assets — its people and its democracy.

the rest:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/05/opinion/sunday/white-resentment-affirmative-action.html?ref=opinion

[leftofcool]

1. That is Trump's whole objective. Hillary tried to warn us.

[dalton99a]

4. Indeed.

[lunasun]

2. We were just talking about affrmtv action removable and laughing ah how whites

think they will get more when it's based on tests and grades .
Even foreign students will out score most we were saying
Ban foreign students then American Asians will fill the slots .
None of us knew about what California has done already to prove our theory. I will forward this on to the group I was with yesterday
Having a superior attitude is the not same as having superior tests score and grades
Schools benefit from diversity esp to reflect the community they are in IMO
People with talent are needed in some curriculums and stnd tests may not be the best entrance vehicle

[CincyDem]

3. The unsaid message of his 5th Avenue claim...

"I could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and my supporters would still love me [because I'd still be white]."

A lot of us have been saying this from the beginning. Good to see it start getting some main stream ink.

[dalton99a]

5. Yep.

[Gothmog]

6. Trump's base are the true nut cases/racists in the GOP base