On election night a couple months ago, many voters were calling it a night after the suspense slowly dissipated, state after crucial state going to Donald Trump.
Twitter seemed to quiet down and spectators at Hillary Clinton’s victory party started to leave. The mood darkened.
Meanwhile, on CNN, commentator Van Jones put aside his facts and figures for a personal moment.
“This was a whitelash against a changing country,” he said. “It was whitelash against a black president in part. And that’s the part where the pain comes.”
Since that night, details have emerged about how the 2016 election was tied to race.
But Cornell Belcher, a pollster and political strategist, has been interested in race’s impact on elections for years.
“I started doing research around race, and how race would impact the elections starting actually in 2007,” he said during an appearance on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio. “And I kept it going.”
Belcher explained how the election of Barack Obama led to an unexpected reaction from white voters.
“[It] was sort of the wolf at the door for Americans who were afraid of a changing, more diverse America,” he said.
That fear, according to Belcher, was a catalyst for the support for Donald Trump.
He said Obama’s victory, won without majority support from whites (he received only 38% of the white vote), led to an increase in “racial aversion.”
Belcher described this concept as “negative attitudes and views about other groups”-- not the same as racism, he said.
“Racism is such a hot word... I don’t want to call people racist and have that negative back and forth because in the end, demographics are destiny,” he said. “We’re not going to become a whiter nation, so we have to understand our differences, and move forward with our differences.”
Belcher explained that he, like many others, had been optimistic for a post-racial America after the election of Obama, but that hope never became reality.
“What my research over the last eight years shows is that it wasn’t a lessening of racial aversion, it was actually an increase of racial aversion, and particularly really spiking at the right moment creating the perfect storm for Donald Trump,” he said.
Belcher said that when white voters feel “uncertain or threatened,” they turn inward and become more conservative.
58 percent of white voters cast their ballots for Trump in 2016, while the majorities of every other racial voter category went for Clinton.
“When people say they want to take back their country, they really do think they’re losing their country,” Belcher said.
Cornell Belcher is a pollster, political strategist and president of Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies. His new book is A Black Man in the White House: Barack Obama and the Triggering of America’s Racial-Aversion Crisis. To listen to his interview in its entirety, click on the audio link above.
