Donald Trump’s “Political Incorrectness”: Neoliberalism as Frontstage Racism on Social Media

Abstract

, CNN produced a three minute video about first-time US voters who were "all-in for Donald Trump." The featured voters-three young, white men-appeared delighted to have found a candidate who was not concerned with "political correctness" and was unafraid to say what they believed "ordinary citizens" in the United States think and say (CNN Politics, 2016). Two months later, in early March 2016, for twenty-four hours the public Snapchat mobile application showed live videos from Trump rallies in which similar young white men in Make America Great Again hats chanted "build that wall" outside a rally. Later, supporters inside the rally cheered in unison with Trump as he declared the wall should be "ten feet higher!" White supporters in these videos seem happy to dismiss the idea of being "politically correct," which according to Trump hinders progress and wastes valuable time (Trump, 2016). These supporters are encouraged to believe they are speaking objective truths about issues like immigration to the dismay of the "politically correct," who either intentionally obscure truth for political gain or have not yet faced up to reality. Donald Trump's popularized version of "political incorrectness," or supposed truth telling as per his supporters, embodies Feagin's (2014) white racial frame. The white racial frame is a neoliberal worldview that "interprets and defends white privileges and advantaged conditions as meritorious" and accents white virtue in opposition to the inferiority and deficiencies of racially oppressed people of color (Feagin, 2014, p. 26). I argue Trump's use of the term "political incorrectness," as situated in the neoliberal white racial frame, has become a signifier in current politics as a means through which backstage, or overt, racism and bigotry can be communicated with an illusion of subtlety by white citizens in the public frontstage of social media and political discourse. Goffman's (1959) theory of social interaction includes the frontstage, or public self, and the backstage, or the private self. Picca and Feagin (2007) extend this theory into the context of experiences with racism and racist speech in the public, multicultural frontstage and the private, ethnically homogenous backstage. In this article, I explore 733226S MSXXX10.

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