A New York University professor is being criticized after claiming in a Washington Post op-ed that “multiracial whiteness” was behind Hispanic and black voters supporting President Trump.
“What are we to make Latino voters inspired by Trump?” professor Cristina Beltran wrote in the op-ed. “And what are we to make of unmistakably White mob violence that also includes non-White participants?”
“I call this phenomenon multiracial whiteness — the promise that they, too, can lay claim to the politics of aggression, exclusion and domination,” she explained.
Beltran claimed that being white is no longer a person’s racial identity, but white is also a “political color,” which sometimes leads to a “discriminatory worldview in which feelings of freedom and belonging are produced through the persecution and dehumanization of others.”
“Multiracial whiteness offers citizens of every background the freedom to call Muslims terrorists, demand that undocumented immigrants be rounded up and deported, deride BLM as a movement of thugs and criminals, and accuse Democrats of being blood-drinking pedophiles,” Beltran wrote.
Beltran wrote that she was surprised to see so many Hispanic and black Trump supporters rallying for the president last week on Capitol Hill, and it was “unsettling” that “a quarter to a third of Latino voters voted to re-elect Trump.”
Multiracial whiteness, Beltran claimed, is partially to blame for those Trump voters.
“In the politics of multiracial whiteness, anyone can join the MAGA movement and engage in the wild freedom of unbridled rage and conspiracy theories,” Beltran wrote.
Beltran’s essay was quickly panned on Twitter, including by Federalist co-founder Ben Domenech, who wrote, “‘Multiracial whiteness’ is just another term for struggling with the fact that some of the people who disagree with you are brown.”
“Multiracial whiteness” is just another term for struggling with the fact that some of the people who disagree with you are brown.
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) January 17, 2021
“How does anyone take the WaPo seriously when they run articles like this?” author John Lott Jr. tweeted. “So the blacks and Hispanics who support Trump are white supremacists too?”
How does anyone take the WaPo seriously when they run articles like this? So the blacks and Hispanics who support Trump are white supremacists too? pic.twitter.com/JnJRZGzQMj
— John R Lott Jr. (@JohnRLottJr) January 19, 2021
“Fascinating attempt to reconcile the fact that so many non-whites voted for Trump (more than 2016), and that some of the key participants in the Capitol riot and related groups are non-white: ‘Multiracial whiteness’: they’re white even when they’re not,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted.
Fascinating attempt to reconcile the fact that so many non-whites voted for Trump (more than 2016), and that some of the key participants in the Capitol riot and related groups are non-white:
“Multiracial whiteness”: they’re white even when they’re not.https://t.co/FVoxiOLA9w
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 18, 2021
Trump’s support from minority communities, including immigrant communities, grew between 2016 and 2020, giving him the highest share of the nonwhite vote in November than any Republican presidential candidate since 1960.
