Overview

In the age of Twitter, former President Donald Trump became notorious for making controversial and polarizing remarks that gave voice to extremists, attacked those who oppose him, and "othered" those who he determined that did not classify as the typical or standard Americans. This paper is a comprehensive examination of Donald Trump's social media posts and speeches and how this language affected how Mexican Americans were perceived in society and led to the racial prejudices attributed to them.

Donald Trump began his presidential run in 2015 by villainizing Mexican Americans and immigrants. During his presidential announcement speech, he declared that "Our enemies are getting stronger and stronger by the way, and we as a country are getting weaker" (Heuman 335). He elaborated further by providing the example of how Mexico is directly contributing to the weakening of the United States and is therefore considered to be an enemy. Trump says, "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people" (Schubert 50). By making this generalized blanket statement about ‘Mexico’s people’ Trump is portraying all Mexican Americans and immigrants has being criminals and dangerous. By saying "they are not sending you" Trump is creating a division between Americans, and in this circumstance, Trump is indirectly referring to white Americans and Mexican immigrants. Trump is maintaining the narrative that the Americans, e.g., white people, are the superior or better group. Trump furthers this by saying he assumes some "are good people". This statement plays off the already present stereotype that Mexican people are criminals or deviant people in society and only a small portion of them are considered to be "good people". And with Trump’s reasoning, Mexicans therefore weaken the United States and thereby make them an enemy. Later in a presidential debate in 2016, Donald Trump declared that all the "bad hombres" need to be deported (Heuman 335). With the language used, Trump is insinuating that "all the criminality at the border is perpetrated by Spanish speaking people" (Heuman 335). By his consistent "othering" of Mexican Americans and immigrants, Trump is able to insinuate that all Latino people at the border are criminals or dangerous because of the societal perception he has helped maintain.

Trump's putting the perception of Mexican Americans and immigrants as a danger to the United States and its population into mainstream media allowed him to build upon the fear he had created further and justify the policies his administration was attempting to enact. After casting Mexican immigrants as "menacing, [and] delinquent", Trump proposed his plan to build a wall at the southern border to, in theory, further restrict Mexican immigrants access to the United States (Zompetti 50). Trump tweeted, "Mexico was just ranked the second deadliest country in the world, after only Syria. Drug trade is largely the cause. We will BUILD THE WALL!" (Zompetti 50). By putting this on social media, Trump was able to reach a vast audience and tell the narrative that Mexico was an incredibly dangerous and violent place, and therefore, so were the people. Trump generalized the entire population of Mexico to be dangerous and therefore justified building the border wall. Trump claimed that building the border wall would solve the drug problem in the United States; Trump tweeted, "The Wall is very important tool in stopping drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth (and many others)! If" (1/2) "….the wall is not built, which it will be, the drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be! #BuildTheWall" (2/2) (Zompetti 50). Trump’s portrayal of Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and criminals allows for him to framing Mexican immigrants as the sole contributors to the drug epidemic in the United States and justify building the border wall.

Trump’s stance on the types of anti-immigration policies makes it apparent that his main goal is to reinforce and maintain whiteness and white supremacy. Donald Trump very clearly was targeting immigrants who were people of color, for instance, with his desire to build the border wall between the United States and Mexico and the Muslim ban his administration implemented. By trying to heavily restrict immigrants of color from entering the United States, Donald Trump is maintaining the notion of whiteness. Whiteness refers to a societal structure where non-white people are perceived as inferior or abnormal has been formed as a result of the normalization of white racial identity throughout America's history (Hagan). The concept of whiteness is easily intertwined with the idea of racialized citizenship. Racialized citizenship refers to the assumption that "Americanness is White and, therefore, non-White groups are imagined as foreigners" (Canizales 157). These connotations of immigrants of color somehow being less "American" than white people directly plays into the reinforcement of white supremacy. The politics of immigration are crucial to racialization processes for Latino populations, immigration policies "shape how Latinos are viewed and treated, how Latinos see themselves, and what opportunities they have within the U.S. social structure" (Canizales 159).

Currently, Latinos make up 18 percent of the United States population, making them one of the largest marginalized groups in the country. The U.S. census predicts that Latinos makeup in the United States is only going to increase; "the U.S. census projects that they will represent nearly 30 percent of the population by 2060" (Canizales 150). With the high population Latinos currently hold and the predicted increase in population that is to occur, it is not surprising that Donald Trump targeted Mexican Americans and immigrants in order to win the support of white Americans. By having his campaign target Latinos with racist and antiimmigration policy promises and comments, the Trump presidential campaign was "effective in activating many Whites’ demographobia, or feelings that Whites are under siege by growing racial/ethnic diversity" (Canizales 151). Due to the age of Twitter, Donald Trump’s tweets containing blatantly racist rhetoric or contains coded language were able to reach millions of people in seconds. With Trump’s emphasis on nativist nationalism, America first mentality, those who feared a loss of political, social, and economic power and status among white Americans "found a champion in Donald Trump, who appealed directly to their distress about waning White dominance" (Canizales 150). Researchers have found evidence to support what they call the "Trump effect". The Trump effect reasons that "Trump’s racially inflammatory speech emboldened individuals to express their prejudice" (Canizales 156). The Trump effect also applies to Trump’s social media presence. Social media allowed Trump to "relay his unfettered opinion and racist rhetoric to his base, which allows ‘overt white racism and bigotry [to] be communicated in the public frontstage of social media as supposed cathartic, and importantly, non-racially motivated truth telling’" (Canizales 156). The Trump effect, with individuals being emboldened to outwardly express their racial prejudices, has led to an increase in "Latinos’ experiences of institutionalized legal violence via the expansion of the detention and deportation regime, state-sponsored abuse against children, and the stripping of civil rights, while fomenting racial violence directed at Latinos and other groups" (Canizales 155). For instance, counties where rallies for Donald Trump took place saw an increase in hate crimes of 226 percent (Canizales 155). More specifically, the FBI reports that Latino and Hispanic hate crimes "increased over 21 percent in 2018" (Canizales 155). Donald Trump’s tweets that villainized Mexican Americans and immigrants have directly impacted their safety and the social attitudes given to Mexicans.

The lack of formality offered by Twitter allows for the "social norms that uphold civility and predispose users to engage in both divisive and derisive communication" to be undermined (Zompetti 54). Through his social media presence, Donald Trump was successfully able to put harmful stereotypes of Mexican Americans and immigrants into the mainstream media and new cycles in order to gain justification for his policies. Trump was able to capitalize on the fears of white people with the shifting demographics and target people of color, primarily Mexicans, to maintain the support of his followers. Through his words and actions, Trump was directly responsible for the increase in racism and policing in Mexican communities.