The turbulent onset of Donald Trump’s administration, to
say nothing of the president’s oversize presence, has so focused our
attention in the moment, that we’re in danger of losing critically
important historical perspective. Trump’s rhetoric and behavior are so
extreme that the tendency is to see him and the divisions he embodies as
something wholly new in American politics. They are not, nor in broad
relief, is the president. Instead, Trump is only the most extreme
expression and product of a brand of racial politics practiced ever more
zealously by the Republican Party since its origins in the 1960s.
Drawing on the argument and evidence presented in Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America, Stanford
sociologist, Doug McAdam, will use his talk to put the rise of Donald
Trump in historical perspective and to briefly highlight the threats to
American democracy that preceded his rise and which, indeed, helped him
win the White House.