Thursday’s New York Times was in panicky mode over President-elect Donald Trump, especially from an immigrant and minority perspective, with the paranoia on full display in “Trump Win Has Blacks, Hispanics and Muslims Bracing For a Long 4 Years,” by Julia Preston, Katharine Seelye, and Farah Stockman.
This purported “news” story even recycled leftist Van Jones cries of “Whitelash” -- as if an African-American president didn’t actually win a second term in office a mere four years ago, and that black turnout plummeted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 compared to Obama in 2012.
Throughout the long and contentious presidential campaign, they saw themselves on the front lines of the country’s power struggle -- insulted and antagonized by Donald J. Trump and courted in near-desperation by Hillary Clinton.
Now that Mr. Trump has emerged victorious, Latino, black and Muslim voters, each with their own issues and agendas, are bracing for a long four years. Some Latinos already felt threatened on Wednesday and feared that Mr. Trump would pursue his mass deportation pledge, tearing apart their families and communities. Black voters anticipated an era under Mr. Trump in which intolerance would become acceptable. And Muslims worried that they would be branded as terrorists because of their beliefs.
....
On the morning after the vote, many said they felt more vulnerable, just because of what they looked like or what they wore. And none felt particularly reassured by Mr. Trump’s vow in his victory speech on Wednesday to “bind the wounds of division” and “come together as one united people.”
In New York, Cesar Vargas, an immigrant rights leader, said he had received “a torrent” of death threats on Twitter and Facebook on Tuesday and Wednesday. “We are going to come and find you,” one message said.
In Washington, several dozen young immigrants gathered in front of the White House early Wednesday for a comforting vigil, where, they said, they were accosted by several men who had come to celebrate Mr. Trump’s victory. “Trump will build the wall!” the men shouted.
The Times got on its amnesty-for-illegals hobbyhorse.
But after news of the victory by Mr. Trump -- who had described Mexican immigrants as criminals, disparaged a Mexican-American judge and promised to cancel a program that gave nearly 800,000 of them protection from deportation -- waves of shock spread among Latinos, then raw fear.
....
When election results on Tuesday night started pointing to a Trump victory, Ibrahim Rashid, a sophomore at Boston University, began getting nervous.
Given Mr. Trump’s vow to bar Muslims from entering the United States in an attempt to curb terrorism, Mr. Rashid, an American citizen who is Muslim, worried that his family -- Pakistani nationals who live in Dubai -- could never visit him here again. And he ached for a young cousin in Michigan whose classmates were mean to her after Mr. Trump won a mock election at school, prompting her to cry all day.
....
Nadeem Mazen, a member of the City Council in Cambridge, Mass., who is deeply involved in Muslim matters, said that local Muslim leaders were “shocked by the outcome” and unprepared to deal with it.
“We’re all scrambling,” he said. “It will take years for us to catch up when we have to spend all our time defending ourselves against hate speech.”
Mrs. Clinton spent considerable effort courting black voters. She formed bonds with the mothers of black men who had been killed by the police, giving them a prominent place on stage at the Democratic National Convention. President Obama and his wife, Michelle, served as her most powerful surrogates.
It wasn’t enough. Although black voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Mrs. Clinton -- 88 percent to 8 percent for Mr. Trump nationwide -- the number of black voters who made it to the polls lagged behind the last two presidential elections. As the results came in, black voters reflected on what they meant.
“I just realize that people are more racist, sexist and misogynist than I ever realized,” Johanne Blain, a Haitian-born graduate of Wellesley, said at an alumnae watch party at the college on election night. “Today is kind of like the end of the world.”
So blacks came out for Barack Obama but not Hillary Clinton -- but it’s Donald Trump supporters who are motivated by race?
Now, black voters are grappling with the idea of a president-elect whose tone, personal history and policy pronouncements fly in the face of so much of the social justice agenda many have fought decades for, including gains made under Mr. Obama.
“When people say Trump’s presidency will be bad, it’s not theoretical,” DeRay Mckesson, a Black Lives Matter activist, said on Twitter. “This is real life.”
Times reporters tried to racialize the movement against the radical Black Lives Matter movement and the current fever of hysterical political correctness on campus.
In many ways, Mr. Trump presented himself as the antidote to the Black Lives Matter movement, which has protested the killings of black men by the police over the past two years. While young black activists demanded that college campuses curb speech that could be considered offensive to minorities, Mr. Trump railed against “political correctness.” While black activists protested police killings and racial profiling, Mr. Trump promised to restore “law and order” and expand New York’s contentious “stop and frisk” policing policy nationwide.
Far from ruining Mr. Trump’s chances of being elected, his remarks lay at the heart of his appeal to white voters, who expressed resentment over what they consider political correctness gone overboard.
The NYT circulated a popular left-wing meme:
“Welcome to the #WhiteLash,” Van Jones, a CNN political commentator, said on Twitter, a play on “backlash.”
....
The celebration of Mr. Trump’s election by far-right groups sent a wave of fear through African-Americans across the country. Social media sites on Wednesday were full of reports of racial slurs that have been hurled by Trump supporters, and of fears of hard-won civil rights being rolled back.
