Hate in America: The Trump Effect As a straight white male, I have little room to talk about what it is like to be discriminated against. I don’t know what it’s like to be alienated, harassed, or threatened because of my skin color or sexual preference. I couldn’t say how it feels to be labeled as a second-class citizen. My religion isn’t subject to controversy, nor is my ethnicity. I can’t imagine how terrible it must be to feel unwelcome. Isn’t America supposed to be the land of opportunity? Wasn’t this country built upon immigration, where all people could come and start a new, better life? That dream is dead. Well, maybe the dream wasn’t necessarily meant for everybody all along, anyway. Think about it: slavery was abolished little more than 150 years ago in America, and even then, blacks suffered segregation and atrocious civil rights violations well …show more content…
Let’s be honest; Trump’s biggest selling points were a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and a ban on Muslims. “Both the harassment since the election and the energy on the radical right are the predictable results of the campaign that Trump waged for the presidency — a campaign marked by incendiary racial statements, the stoking of white racial resentment, and attacks on so-called “political correctness” (SPLC). I’m not saying that Donald Trump necessarily intended to spark violence and harassment while running his campaign, but he created an environment where he didn’t exactly discourage it either. By labeling Mexican immigrants and Muslims as the enemy, radicals took the idea and ran with it. Across the country, Hispanics, not just Mexicans, are falling victim to hate based crime and harassment. The same can be said for Muslims, whom since 9/11 have been unjustly stereotyped as terrorists in America. Trump used this fear and hate to his advantage to “win” the