Stop Telling Us To Empathize With Trump Supporters

There was a story in the Washington Post yesterday entitled, “What is this election missing? Empathy for Trump voters.” It almost made me want to laugh. Because if there’s one thing that this election isn’t short on, it’s articles telling underrepresented groups that we should have compassion for people who support a hateful, racist, and sexist ignoramus.

Three things:

1. There’s no evidence that Trump voters are disproportionately poor or working class.

“Exit polling from the primaries found that Trump voters made about as much as Ted Cruz voters, and significantly more than supporters of either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Trump voters, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver found, had a median household income of $72,000, a fair bit higher than the $62,000 median household income for non-Hispanic whites in America.

A major study from Gallup’s Jonathan Rothwell confirmed this. Trump support was correlated with higher, not lower, income, both among the population as a whole and among white people. Trump supporters were less likely to be unemployed or to have dropped out of the labor force. Areas with more manufacturing, or higher exposure to imports from China, were less likely to think favorably of Trump.”

2. There’s a strong wave of Trump support among Republican voters from once homogenous towns that have seen influxes in minority residents. In other words, racism and xenophobia seem to be a much bigger driving force toward Trump than “economic anxiety.”

“Small towns in the Midwest have diversified more quickly than almost any part of the U.S. since the start of an immigration wave at the beginning of this century. The resulting cultural changes appear to be moving the political needle…Among GOP voters in this year’s presidential primaries, counties that diversified rapidly were more likely to vote for [Trump]…Unemployment is actually lower in rapidly diversifying counties than in the country on the whole, a sign that concerns over lost jobs are weighing less on voters in these areas.”

3. Hateful attitudes toward women are a strong predictor of Trump support.

“Three political scientists who studied the connection between sexism, emotions, and support for Trump found that the more hostile voters were toward women, the more likely they were to support Trump.

‘The hostile sexism is highly correlated, but the benevolent sexism really is not,’ Wayne said. ‘I found this result particularly interesting in the aftermath of some of the fallout from Trump’s tape…There were a lot of Republicans saying they were against Trump’s statements because of their daughters and wives.’

Trump, in other words, isn’t just drawing from a base of people who have traditional views about women’s roles. He’s getting support from people who are hostile toward women’s economic and legal equality and who think feminism is making America worse.”

In sum: Calling for empathy around “economic anxiety” not only privileges the white male anger in Trump’s base, but also perpetuates a narrative that does not paint the full picture.

So stop telling underrepresented groups to be compassionate toward those who support a candidate that wants to strip our rights away. It’s not 1950 anymore, and we’re not going back.