Republican campaign weaponised white fears

on human rights, where the army remained segregated into black and white units until 1948, where 17 states practised segregation until 1964, was one where in the 2010s millions of whites became anxious about their slide into minority status.

White Americans are projected to become a minority by 2042. In 1950, when Trump was 4 years old, the US was 87.5 percent non- Hispanic white, 10 percent black and only 2.1 percent Hispanic. By 2010, when Trump turned 64, the US had become 63.7 percent non-Hispanic white, 16.3 percent Hispanic and 12.3 percent black. No other developed state has ever undergone ethnic change so rapid.

All American figures mask much starker changes on the ground. In 1980, nearly half of US counties were 98 percent white. Today fewer than 5 percent are. Racial anxiety is deep in white American ethnicity. Now Trump has weaponised it. Historians will sum up the surging resentment, protest and truther movements that accompanied the election of the first black president as emanations of a deep-seated fear, even fury that power was shifting.

Historians will dwell on the still-obscure debates that exist today in the Republican Party between the reformers who favoured a compromise on immigration – and thus ethnic change – to win over the Hispanic vote and the reactionaries who wanted to suppress non- white turnout through blatant gerrymandering and drive up their white vote with brash identity politics. Trump abruptly answered this question for the Republican Party. This former registered Democrat began cynically promoting the idea that Barack Obama was “born in Africa” to underscore the fact he was black as ethnically the US became a new country.

To understand what Makes America Great Again, you need to separate the signal from the noise – and his blathering noise is all over the place. The unspoken signal is crystal clear: keep America white. Data confirms resentment of ethnic change fuelled Trump’s crushing victory in the primaries. Areas most unsettled by mass immigration were the ones most likely to back Trump. The last 15 years have seen America’s Hispanic geography grow dramatically.

Midwestern towns, a decade ago nearly 100 percent white, that have seen Hispanics soar into a sizeable minority, were the most likely to back Trump. These are precisely the states – Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio – he believes hold, for him, the keys to the White House. Looking from the future at the trend lines, the collapse of Christian America is even starker than white America. Historians will argue this explains why evangelicals were willing to vote for a man who so clearly did not live by their values – as he promised to keep them dominant.

Hegemonic groups, as they shrink, are at their most vulnerable to populists. White American Christians are a minority – the rise of American atheism means they are now only 47 percent of the population and their share of the electorate is collapsing. In 1994, white Christians made up 74 percent of American voters. By 2016, white Christians had shrunk to 58 percent of the electorate. – The Independent

People in Seattle gather in protest against the election of Donald Trump as US president.