2019 Arkansas Times Academic All-Stars Nominees
Listed by their hometowns. Here are the students nominated to be Academic All-Stars. They are listed by their hometowns as indicated by mailing addresses.
ALMA
EMILY FOWLER
Mulberry High School
BAY
JACOB HARLEY OSTER
Bay High School
BEARDEN
CASSIDY CLEMENS
Bearden High School
GARRETT MCWHORTER
Bearden High School
BEEBE
TAYLOR DWAYNE BOYCE
Beebe High School
JOLEY MARIE MITCHELL
Rose Bud High School
MARIANNA KERSEY RICHEY
Beebe High School
BEE BRANCH
ANDREA DE TOUR
Arkansas Virtual Academy High School
BENTON
JULIANNA DEMI SORVILLO
Bauxite High School
KAYLA M. TREASITTI
Glen Rose High School
BENTONVILLE
KENDRA RISENER
Haas Hall Academy
ANGEL SOTERO Bentonville West High School
JESSICA YIN
Bentonville West High School
BERRYVILLE
ALEX RUBEN MALDONADO-LOPEZ
Berryville High School
AMBER NICOLE VEACH
Berryville High School
BISMARCK
LAUREN ELIZABETH CORLEY
Bismarck High School
BLACK ROCK
PAIGE LEANN PENN
Hillcrest High School
BLYTHEVILLE
CHANDLER SPROUSE
Gosnell High School
SHAKIAH WILLIAMS
Blytheville High School
BONNERDALE
HANNAH DIGGS
Centerpoint High School
BOONEVILLE
JUSTIN RONGEY
Magazine High School
BRINKLEY
KEVON MALOID DILLWORTH
Brinkley High School
EMILY ANN TAYLOR
Brinkley High School
BRUNO
LANE BOGLE
Valley Springs High School
BRYANT
SYDNEY ELAINE BOWMAN
Bryant High School
HARRISON BENNETT DOWNS
Bryant High School
CABOT
ZHENG HUI ZHANG
Cabot High School
CAVE CITY
KENDALL TOWNSLEY
Cave City High School
CENTER RIDGE
SOPHIA FRANCESCA ISELY
Nemo Vista High School
CLARKSVILLE
BRADLEY SCOTT BUCK
Johnson County Westside High School
CLINTON
JACOB ALLEN BURROUGHS
South Side High School
CONWAY
MARY KATHERINE FREYALDENHOVEN
Conway High School
KENDON CRAIG MOLINE
Conway High School
CORNING
CAROLINE GOODMAN
Corning High School
CROSSETT
DAILEY MARIE CHAVIS
Crossett High School
BRYCE RICHARD MOON
Crossett High School
DAMASCUS
CLAIRE ELIZABETH DREWRY
South Side High School
DES ARC
LINDSEY NICOLE REIDHAR
Des Arc High School
DEWITT
RACHEL DANIELS
DeWitt High School
ZONTRAY KENDALL
DeWitt High School
DONALDSON
DYLAN JASHUN CLAYTON
Bismarck High School
DOVER
Ethan Seth Owen Jacobs Dover High School
EUREKA SPRINGS
KAYDEN ECKMAN
Eureka Springs High School
EVANSVILLE
JESSICA ANN GOLDMAN
Lincoln High School
FARMINGTON
NICHOLAS JAMES ERICKSON
Farmington High School
REAGAN SIERRA WHITE
Farmington High School
FAYETTEVILLE
CHLOE AUGUST BOWEN
Springdale High School
SOPHIE FERNANDO
Haas Hall Academy
JEREMIA LO
Fayetteville High School
HAMAAD MEHAL
Haas Hall Academy
SPENCER LEE WALKER
Fayetteville High School
FISHER
ANNA CHAPLAIN
Harrisburg College and Career Prep
FORT SMITH
JOHN TYLER FREENY
Southside High School
MADISON ISABELLA RENEE MARSH
Southside High School
GOSNELL
KAYLEE JO MILLER
Gosnell High School
GREENBRIER
MADELYN RENEE JAMESON
Greenbrier High School
CALEB WADE TAPLEY
Greenbrier High School
GREENWOOD
JULIA KATHLEEN BRIXEY
Greenwood High School
TYLER LAWRENCE MERREIGHN
Greenwood High School
GREERS FERRY
FAITH MARIE BIRMINGHAM
West Side High School
HAMBURG
NIGEL LEWIS
Hamburg High School
BRENDA FAITH O'FALLON
Hamburg High School
HARRISON
GRACE ESTELLE BRANDT
Harrison High School
BLAKE JOHN WILLIAM WHITMER
Harrison High School
HAZEN
ROSS TIMOTHY HARPER
Hazen High School
HICKORY PLAINS
JEREMIAH DESHONE WILLIAMS
Des Arc High School
HIGDEN
NATHANIEL WYATT SMITH
West Side High School
HORATIO
GRACE ELIZABETH HARRIS
Horatio High School
HOT SPRINGS
RHETT BARRETT
Cutter Morning Star High School
FAITH ELIZABETH CARNIE
Lake Hamilton High School
JORDAN C. ERICKSON
Lake Hamilton High School
EMMA KIRSTEN FERGUSON
Lakeside High School
THOMAS IAN HOLLIS
Lakeside High School
ANTHONY ALEXANDER REITER Hot Springs High School
MICAH TRAVIS
Mountain Pine High School
HUTTIG
NASTAJAE ALIYAH ALDERSON
Strong High School
JACKSONVILLE
BASIA YVONNE BROWN
Jacksonville High School
GERALD ANTONIO DONOHUE
Jacksonville High School
JONESBORO
OPHIE COPELIN
Nettleton High School
JETT JACKSON
Harrisburg College and Career Prep
ISABELLE FLORENCE JONES
The Academies at Jonesboro High School
JOSHUA MILNES
Nettleton High School
ANNA ELISE OPPENHEIM Bay High School
NIKKOLETTE AMANDA PERKINS
Brookland High School
SEAN A. ROADES
Valley View High School
KALLEN SMITH
Brookland High School
TRACY N. TANNER
Valley View High School
LEACHVILLE
HALLIE ELIZABETH BROWN
Buffalo Island Central High School
KYLE BRADLEY THRASHER
Buffalo Island Central High School
LITTLE ROCK
MOHAMMED ABUELEM
Pulaski Academy
MILLER CLARK BACON
eStem High School
NATHAN THOMAS BARBER
The Academies at Jonesboro High School
CAROLINE BLANSCET
Little Rock Christian Academy
ANA ABARCA CHAVEZ
Hall High School
REBECCA SUSAN DIXON Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School
SARAH J. DOUGLASS
Joe T. Robinson High School
SULLIVAN WALTER FITZ
Catholic High School for Boys
CELIA KRETH
Episcopal Collegiate School
FELIPE MORALES OSORIO
Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School
CLAUDIA CATHERINE SMITH
eStem High School
ETHAN STRAUSS
Episcopal Collegiate School
LUKE WEINER
Little Rock Christian Academy
MICHELLE XU
Little Rock Central High School
RAMY YOUSEF Little Rock Central High School
MCCRORY
CHRISTIAN LITTLE
McCrory High School
MABELVALE
HALEY AMBER STANTON
LISA Academy West High School
MAGAZINE
EMILY STATON
Magazine High School
MAMMOTH SPRING
DEVON CRAY
Mammoth Spring High School
MARION
WESLEY JAMES BARRETT Marion High School
MORGAN BRADFORD WHITED
Marion High School
MAUMELLE
GARRETT MICHAEL BAKANOVIC
Maumelle High School
CHAD BOYD
Maumelle Charter High School
GENRIETTA CHURBANOVA
Pulaski Academy
LINCOLN MOSES
Maumelle Charter High School
VICTORIA ORTEGA
Maumelle High School
MAYFLOWER
HAYDYN HUDNALL Mayflower High School
MULBERRY
JARRET CHAMBERS
Mulberry High School
NEWPORT
NOAH BLAKE RABY
Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts
NORTH LITTLE ROCK
SOPHIA LYNN CHIER
Mount St. Mary Academy
CHASE CHRISTIAN MOHR-MCELROY
North Little Rock Center of Excellence Charter
KATHERINE RAMIREZ
North Little Rock High School
CARRE'LLA SADLER
North Little Rock High School
IOAN BROWN SANDERS North Little Rock High School
OZARK
AUTUMN PAIGE FLAHERTY
Johnson County Westside High School
PARAGOULD
EMMA FARMER
Marmaduke High School
MICHALA ANN MCPHINK Paragould High School
JACKSON CHANDLER PARKER
Paragould High School
MADISON SHEA ROBINSON
Greene County Tech High School
PARON
JOHN MATTHEW HOWARD Joe T. Robinson High School
PEA RIDGE
HALLEY LASTER
Pea Ridge High School
ALEC ANDREW MEREDITH
Pea Ridge High School
PINE BLUFF
MORGAN EDWARDS Watson Chapel High School
A'DARIUS LEE
Watson Chapel High School
PINEVILLE
KENLEE KAY KILLIAN
Calico Rock High School
PLUMERVILLE
GARRETT R. HENDRIX
Morrilton High School
POWHATAN
CREEDEN JAMES RICHEY
Hillcrest High School
RAVENDEN SPRINGS
EMILY CHEYENNE LUFFMAN
Sloan-Hendrix High School
REYNO
CHANDLER CONYERS
Corning High School
RISON
JUSTIN JACOBS
Rison High School
MACY RATLIFF
Rison High School
ROGERS
ALISHA AJAY CHATLANI
Rogers High School
MORGAN DIBASILIO
Rogers Heritage High School
SIDRA NADEEM
Rogers New Technology High School
NATHAN POWELL SKINNER
Rogers High School
ADAM RYSZARD SIWIEC
Rogers Heritage High School
ROSE BUD
CARSON DAVID LUCENA
Rose Bud High School
ROYAL
ANASTACIA GLASCO
Mountain Pine High School
RUSSELLVILLE
KAYLEE FREEMAN
Hector High School
SEARCY
JACKSON TANNER BENIGHT
Searcy High School
LAUREN ELIZABETH BROWN
Searcy High School
SHERIDAN
LAINEY FAITH HILL
Sheridan High School
LOGAN JAMES INGRAM
Sheridan High School
SHERWOOD
TIMOTHY NATHANIEL ESPEJO
Sylvan Hills High School
CHASE MARIE SWINTON
Sylvan Hills High School
SILOAM SPRINGS
CHRISTINE NICOLE HONN
Siloam Springs High School
OLIVER MONROE REID
Siloam Springs High School
SMACKOVER
ROBERT THOMAS DIXON
Smackover High School
KAYLEIGH AMANDA YEAGER
Smackover High School
SPRINGDALE
EDUARDO AGUILAR
Springdale High School
SPRINGFIELD
CAROLYN HOPE HOPKINS
Morrilton High School
STUTTGART
MARY SALLAH JIA
Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts
TRUMANN
ZACHARY DAVID BURCHFIELD
Trumann High School
WALNUT RIDGE
DEVIN FOSTER SMITH
Greene County Tech High School
WARD
JESSICA DAWN VAUGHN
Cabot High School
WHITE HALL
JUSTIN ROBERT DADY
White Hall High School
WINSLOW
JOSEPH ANDREW TAYLOR Lincoln High School
WYNNE
KYRA LIANE DOBSON
Wynne High School
JACKSON CHARLES GEORGE
Wynne High School
2019 Arkansas Times Academic All-Stars Nominees
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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight
NASCAR is niche. A recent Morning Consult survey of the sport’s fans found that they’re much more male, white and Southern than other sports fans are. It’s a subculture status that some fans have relished but which NASCAR itself seems eager to shake — in the last two years, its TV ratings bottomed out after peaking in the mid-2000s, according to SportsBusiness Journal. They’ve declined for six years running, in fact. Since the mid-aughts, the sport has actively sought to expand its fan base — seeking race venues outside the South, for example — and in doing so, sometimes drawing the ire of its core fans. “We believe strongly that the old Southeastern redneck heritage that we had is no longer in existence. But we also realize that there’s going to have to be an effort on our part to convince others to understand that,” then-NASCAR President Mike Helton said in 2006.
Like so many institutions in American life, the sport was grappling with what its place would be in a more diverse county and culture.
So when the NASCAR Cup Series’ only Black driver, Bubba Wallace, called for a ban of the Confederate flag earlier this summer, saying “No one should feel uncomfortable when they come to a NASCAR race,” NASCAR readily complied. It had already formally asked fans to stop bringing the flags to events in 2015 following the murders of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist. President Trump weighed in on NASCAR’s decision, tweeting that its flag ban was to blame for its “lowest ratings EVER!” (ratings are actually up following the flag ban).
But according to the Morning Consult survey from June, 44 percent of NASCAR fans agree with the president and said that fans should be allowed to bring the flag to races. Only 30 percent were fine with the ban. And at NASCAR races in June and July, Confederate flags reappeared. Not in the stands, but high above them; a group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans rented planes to fly the flag over the racetracks. The group’s leader, Paul Gramling Jr., told the Columbia Daily Herald that “The Sons of Confederate Veterans is proud of the diversity of the Confederate military and our modern Southland. We believe NASCAR’s slandering of our Southern heritage only further divides our nation.”
Gramling’s statement about the “diversity” of the Confederate army and his use of the term “modern Southland” speak volumes. Enslaved men were conscripted as soldiers and servants in the Confederate Army — they were hardly volunteers for the Southern cause — and Gramling’s “Southland” conjures the image of a cohesive nation, as if the Confederacy, which existed for less than five years, had not been decimated long ago.
The SCV and NASCAR’s oblique tussling might seem like a fringe issue in an election year when a pandemic and an economic crisis imperil millions of lives, but their divergent visions of what the culture of the American South is — who it’s for and of — embodies much about the political and cultural climate in which we find ourselves. Trump and NASCAR are in similar positions: overly reliant on a slowly shrinking, mostly white base. NASCAR is trying to expand its audience in order to stay relevant; Trump is not. The sport has realized something that the president can’t seem to grasp, which is that overt shows of racism turn most Americans off.
Electoral politics has played a role in normalizing on a national level the kind of neo-Confederate views that the SCV — and Trump — have condoned and promoted in recent weeks. You don’t have to have grown up in the American South to have thought that the Confederate flag was inextricably tied to what the SCV calls “Southern heritage,” but which really means a particular slice of Southern white culture. Going back decades, blocks of white votes in the South have been courted aggressively by non-Southerners who have played to the culture that has grown around these symbols and a particular nostalgic language about the Confederate past. During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan, a California governor of Illinois birth, appeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi — where Freedom Rider activists were famously murdered in 1964 — and gave a speech about “states’ rights,” which was read by many as euphemistic in the most loaded way possible, given the context of the place. The country had gotten comfortable with delicate work-arounds like that — the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about states’ rights. For decades, parts of the country have tolerated a semantic category that blandly normalized a strain of white resentment at the Confederate defeat. Sometimes the language is more blunt, of course: the War of Northern Aggression, “the South will rise again” or “It’s only halftime.”
According to the 2010 census, 55 percent of the country’s Black population live in the South. While the region is still nearly 60 percent white, its Black and Hispanic populations are significant, and while traditionally rural, diverse, growing cities like Atlanta and Charlotte have become important business hubs. North Carolina’s Research Triangle region boasts the sort of academic power and national draw often associated with the Northeast Corridor’s Ivy League. NASCAR’s bid to diversify, geographically and otherwise, is in keeping with the modern South’s changes.
But strong vestiges of the racist Confederacy have held on in the region. Mississippi removed the Confederate stars and bars from its state flag only last month, becoming the last state in the Union to do so. While the majority of Americans — 52 percent — favored the removal of Confederate statues from public spaces, according to a Quinnipiac University survey from June, 52 percent of those from the South opposed removal, the only region of the country where a majority supported keeping the statues.
In the midst of a floundering campaign, Trump grasped onto Southern white culture — that particular strain of it — as a way to pull his head above water. A large base of his support does indeed lie in the South, as has been the case for all recent Republican presidential candidates; Bill Clinton won Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia in 1996, but no Democrat has since. Trump ran a race-baiting campaign in 2016, and his 2020 campaign has continued to play on long-standing tropes of racial fear, like violent “liberal Democrat” cities. Ironically, his use of federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Ore., is about as far from states’ rights as you can get.
But Trump seems to be speaking to the SCV types and not the more “mainstream” white voters he actually needs to win. The SCV, for what it’s worth, is more than the “historical, patriotic, and non-political organization” that its website says it is. Its branches have donated to Republican politicians and it controversially purchased the Silent Sam Confederate statue that was torn down at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In other words, the group is representative of the types of (white) voters who are Trump’s ride-or-dies.
But Trump has misjudged — or refuses to see — that much of white America is changing how it thinks about racial issues. A Monmouth University survey from June found that 49 percent of white Americans thought police were more likely to use excessive force against a Black person, up from only 25 percent in 2016. A Morning Consult poll from May and June of this year found that 49 percent of white Americans supported the protests unfolding across the country, and 54 percent of suburbanites supported them (white people are the majority in 90 percent of America’s suburban counties, according to Pew Research Center).
Someone seems to have leaned into Trump’s ear and told him he needs these white suburbanites in order to have a fighting chance of winning in November. Last week, he called on “The Suburban Housewives of America” — as if harkening to a membership organization from 1955 — and said that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden would “destroy” their American dream by promoting affordable housing for all in the suburbs. In Trump’s framing, by hoping to diversify the suburbs, Biden would destroy the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream.” A majority of Americans in a Pew survey conducted in 2019 said Trump had made race relations in the country worse, and while white, Black and Hispanic people still differ in their views on racial issues, it’s clear that recent events have brought greater racial awareness to the forefront of white Americans’ minds.
Republicans are increasingly worried about Trump losing a state like Ohio — once thought solidly in Trump’s camp — in large part because of the president’s diminishing support in suburban areas. (I wrote at length about this Ohio suburban phenomenon back in 2019.) His embrace of the racist totems of the white South — which large swaths of the white South itself eschews — could now potentially cost Trump with the Midwestern or Northeastern (whatever you want to call Pennsylvania) voters he needs to hold onto in order to win.
Trump, a New York City-born pol who doesn’t quite seem to “get” the ‘burbs — and has never been a particularly subtle political thinker or communicator — crucially misunderstood that the muscular Southern racism the Confederate flag has long represented doesn’t work in the white suburban realms of respectability anymore. That cohort — Republican and Democratic — absorbs and displays its biases more mutedly in 2020. Trump, who came to political power riding a wave of racist conspiracy theory — it was only fair to ask questions about whether the first Black president was actually American, wasn’t it? — now suddenly seems ill-equipped for the political times.
He forgot that most of the country requires a modicum of plausible deniability in its dog whistles.
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What Trump Could Learn From NASCAR
NASCAR is niche. A recent Morning Consult survey of the sport’s fans found that they’re much more male, white and Southern than other sports fans are. It’s a subculture status that some fans have relished but which NASCAR itself seems eager to shake — in the last two years, its TV ratings bottomed out after peaking in the mid-2000s, according to SportsBusiness Journal. They’ve declined for six years running, in fact. Since the mid-aughts, the sport has actively sought to expand its fan base — seeking race venues outside the South, for example — and in doing so, sometimes drawing the ire of its core fans. “We believe strongly that the old Southeastern redneck heritage that we had is no longer in existence. But we also realize that there’s going to have to be an effort on our part to convince others to understand that,” then-NASCAR President Mike Helton said in 2006.
Like so many institutions in American life, the sport was grappling with what its place would be in a more diverse county and culture.
So when the NASCAR Cup Series’ only Black driver, Bubba Wallace, called for a ban of the Confederate flag earlier this summer, saying “No one should feel uncomfortable when they come to a NASCAR race,” NASCAR readily complied. It had already formally asked fans to stop bringing the flags to events in 2015 following the murders of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist. President Trump weighed in on NASCAR’s decision, tweeting that its flag ban was to blame for its “lowest ratings EVER!” (ratings are actually up following the flag ban).
But according to the Morning Consult survey from June, 44 percent of NASCAR fans agree with the president and said that fans should be allowed to bring the flag to races. Only 30 percent were fine with the ban. And at NASCAR races in June and July, Confederate flags reappeared. Not in the stands, but high above them; a group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans rented planes to fly the flag over the racetracks. The group’s leader, Paul Gramling Jr., told the Columbia Daily Herald that “The Sons of Confederate Veterans is proud of the diversity of the Confederate military and our modern Southland. We believe NASCAR’s slandering of our Southern heritage only further divides our nation.”
Gramling’s statement about the “diversity” of the Confederate army and his use of the term “modern Southland” speak volumes. Enslaved men were conscripted as soldiers and servants in the Confederate Army — they were hardly volunteers for the Southern cause — and Gramling’s “Southland” conjures the image of a cohesive nation, as if the Confederacy, which existed for less than five years, had not been decimated long ago.
The SCV and NASCAR’s oblique tussling might seem like a fringe issue in an election year when a pandemic and an economic crisis imperil millions of lives, but their divergent visions of what the culture of the American South is — who it’s for and of — embodies much about the political and cultural climate in which we find ourselves. Trump and NASCAR are in similar positions: overly reliant on a slowly shrinking, mostly white base. NASCAR is trying to expand its audience in order to stay relevant; Trump is not. The sport has realized something that the president can’t seem to grasp, which is that overt shows of racism turn most Americans off.
Electoral politics has played a role in normalizing on a national level the kind of neo-Confederate views that the SCV — and Trump — have condoned and promoted in recent weeks. You don’t have to have grown up in the American South to have thought that the Confederate flag was inextricably tied to what the SCV calls “Southern heritage,” but which really means a particular slice of Southern white culture. Going back decades, blocks of white votes in the South have been courted aggressively by non-Southerners who have played to the culture that has grown around these symbols and a particular nostalgic language about the Confederate past. During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan, a California governor of Illinois birth, appeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi — where Freedom Rider activists were famously murdered in 1964 — and gave a speech about “states’ rights,” which was read by many as euphemistic in the most loaded way possible, given the context of the place. The country had gotten comfortable with delicate work-arounds like that — the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about states’ rights. For decades, parts of the country have tolerated a semantic category that blandly normalized a strain of white resentment at the Confederate defeat. Sometimes the language is more blunt, of course: the War of Northern Aggression, “the South will rise again” or “It’s only halftime.”
According to the 2010 census, 55 percent of the country’s Black population live in the South. While the region is still nearly 60 percent white, its Black and Hispanic populations are significant, and while traditionally rural, diverse, growing cities like Atlanta and Charlotte have become important business hubs. North Carolina’s Research Triangle region boasts the sort of academic power and national draw often associated with the Northeast Corridor’s Ivy League. NASCAR’s bid to diversify, geographically and otherwise, is in keeping with the modern South’s changes.
But strong vestiges of the racist Confederacy have held on in the region. Mississippi removed the Confederate stars and bars from its state flag only last month, becoming the last state in the Union to do so. While the majority of Americans — 52 percent — favored the removal of Confederate statues from public spaces, according to a Quinnipiac University survey from June, 52 percent of those from the South opposed removal, the only region of the country where a majority supported keeping the statues.
In the midst of a floundering campaign, Trump grasped onto Southern white culture — that particular strain of it — as a way to pull his head above water. A large base of his support does indeed lie in the South, as has been the case for all recent Republican presidential candidates; Bill Clinton won Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia in 1996, but no Democrat has since. Trump ran a race-baiting campaign in 2016, and his 2020 campaign has continued to play on long-standing tropes of racial fear, like violent “liberal Democrat” cities. Ironically, his use of federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Ore., is about as far from states’ rights as you can get.
But Trump seems to be speaking to the SCV types and not the more “mainstream” white voters he actually needs to win. The SCV, for what it’s worth, is more than the “historical, patriotic, and non-political organization” that its website says it is. Its branches have donated to Republican politicians and it controversially purchased the Silent Sam Confederate statue that was torn down at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In other words, the group is representative of the types of (white) voters who are Trump’s ride-or-dies.
But Trump has misjudged — or refuses to see — that much of white America is changing how it thinks about racial issues. A Monmouth University survey from June found that 49 percent of white Americans thought police were more likely to use excessive force against a Black person, up from only 25 percent in 2016. A Morning Consult poll from May and June of this year found that 49 percent of white Americans supported the protests unfolding across the country, and 54 percent of suburbanites supported them (white people are the majority in 90 percent of America’s suburban counties, according to Pew Research Center).
Someone seems to have leaned into Trump’s ear and told him he needs these white suburbanites in order to have a fighting chance of winning in November. Last week, he called on “The Suburban Housewives of America” — as if harkening to a membership organization from 1955 — and said that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden would “destroy” their American dream by promoting affordable housing for all in the suburbs. In Trump’s framing, by hoping to diversify the suburbs, Biden would destroy the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream.” A majority of Americans in a Pew survey conducted in 2019 said Trump had made race relations in the country worse, and while white, Black and Hispanic people still differ in their views on racial issues, it’s clear that recent events have brought greater racial awareness to the forefront of white Americans’ minds.
Republicans are increasingly worried about Trump losing a state like Ohio — once thought solidly in Trump’s camp — in large part because of the president’s diminishing support in suburban areas. (I wrote at length about this Ohio suburban phenomenon back in 2019.) His embrace of the racist totems of the white South — which large swaths of the white South itself eschews — could now potentially cost Trump with the Midwestern or Northeastern (whatever you want to call Pennsylvania) voters he needs to hold onto in order to win.
Trump, a New York City-born pol who doesn’t quite seem to “get” the ‘burbs — and has never been a particularly subtle political thinker or communicator — crucially misunderstood that the muscular Southern racism the Confederate flag has long represented doesn’t work in the white suburban realms of respectability anymore. That cohort — Republican and Democratic — absorbs and displays its biases more mutedly in 2020. Trump, who came to political power riding a wave of racist conspiracy theory — it was only fair to ask questions about whether the first Black president was actually American, wasn’t it? — now suddenly seems ill-equipped for the political times.
He forgot that most of the country requires a modicum of plausible deniability in its dog whistles.
from Clare Malone – FiveThirtyEight https://ift.tt/2X5fSWr
via https://ift.tt/1B8lJZR
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