Discrimination among the Voters of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders

Prejudice is a preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members. Discrimination is unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members (Myers, 2005). Each instance begins with a negative feeling and can possibly lead to acting on said negative feeling. Everyone knows about the prejudice and discrimination that happened to black people way back in the day when we were slaves, moving into indentured servants, and finally to fully free individuals with the institution of Jim Crow Laws; but what people do not know or think about is the prejudice and discrimination that happen today.

In today’s time, these things are not as overt as they were back in the day where everyone knew where they stood with other people; today, since people are worried about “political rightness” they are not as explicit with their racism.

As people should know, Donald Trump is running in the 2016 Presidential Election and he is doing shockingly well with his supporters. Another pretty well known fact is not about him, but more so about his supporters, who mostly seem to be racist white people that have an incredible hatred for people of color.

In the news recently, we see and hear about the black people that get beaten and thrown out of Trump Rallies based on the sheer fact that these people are black. In the news just recently, the CEO and president of the Free Hugs Project went to a Trump Rally in Wisconsin and was met with undoubtedly racist people and comments that would make someone think about the state that our country is in today (Dicker, 2016).

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His name is Ken Nwadike, he is just a regular young man who founded the Free Hugs Project to spread love, inspire change and raise awareness of social issues [freehugsproject.com]. All he wanted to do was go out and just give people hugs. Nwadike did this as a social experiment to see what would happen iof he actually went through with it. It is a safe assumption to say that he knew what would happen if he went out to this rally where he was not welcomed, but he did the experiment anyhow. While Nwadike was at the rally, he was met with comments such as “go back to Africa,’ ‘I don’t want any drugs,’ and ‘black is good, white is better”.

These comments just prove that the people who support Trump are absolutely prejudiced against black people if they have no problem saying these things to a black man they have never even met on the street. The article came after the video that was taken to see what would happen when Nwadike went to the Trump Rally. In the video, a man told Nwadike that he hated him, when asked why the gentleman replied with something along the lines of “because you’re black.” Someone else asked him if he was a Trump supporter when the answer was no, she responded very harshly saying that she did not want to speak to non-Trump supporters.

Nwadike did the same thing at a Bernie Sanders Rally in California and was met with much more pleasant response. The people at this rally were very excited and were absolutely willing to give him all of the hugs. This experiment seems like it might be a little skewed because of the locations of the two rallies. One rally was in Wisconsin where the people are not as free spirited and liberal while the other was in California where almost everything is acceptable and people are much more accepting. Though the experiment was a little skewed, the fact still remains that Nwadike was met with prejudice and discrimination in the twenty-first century.

In an article by Richeson and Sommers, Toward a Social Psychology of Race and Race Relations for the Twenty-First Century, the authors explain race from a biological level and how people can be placed in racial or ethnic groups based on things beyond just skin color; such as disease in the family, socioeconomic status, etc. The article goes on to talk about the Social Identity Theory which “suggests that people sort others rapidly and with minimal effort… (Richeson, Sommers, 2016).”

This theory gives us a reason as to why we are divided as a culture. This theory also hints to a “we” versus “them” mentality where each group focuses on the things that brings and keeps their members together. Relating back to the topic article, when Nwadike went to the Trump Rally, the supporters were the ingroup and the black man was a representation of the outgroup. According the article by Angela Krumm and Alexandra Corning, the issue of people of color being removed from Trump rallies due to them being “rowdy” or “causing a scene” would be the officers in charge covering.

“Covering is the process of relying on the availability of alternative explanations for the interpretation of one’s ambiguous statements or behaviors in the hope of minimizing others’ ascription of prejudiced motives (Krumm, Corning, 2008).” People cover because they do not want to seem like they are bad people for their prejudice actions.