Our latest book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Our next book will look at the 2024 race. Kamala Harris is a woman of mixed-race ancestry. Trump has a history of exploiting racial division.
He is playing a double game here. On the one hand, he has questioned her Black identity, both in his remarks to the National Association of Black Journalists and in a social media post:
In polls earlier this year, Trump was overperforming among Black men. It is likely that he was trying to hold onto his gains by convincing a segment of Black voters that Harris is inauthentic. Like Barack Obama, she is Black but not descended from people held to slavery in the United States.
So far Harris is surging among Black survey respondents but Trump is still doing better than previous GOP candidates. Some surveys suggest that young Black voters are more conservative than their elders.
The other side of the game is a naked appeal to old-fashioned white racism. See below. How can the campaign do both? One word-siloing. The decline of the MSM and the rise of hyperspecialized online media make it possible to get away with sending conflicting messages to different groups.
The Trump campaign went full racist. wow. pic.twitter.com/qJc9r4ITHf
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) August 13, 2024
