Your Students Can’t Afford to Miss The Great White Hoax

 

[watch the trailer for The Great White Hoax]

Much has been made of Donald Trump’s tendency to turn to racial scapegoating to shore up political support.

From his relentless attacks on African-American NFL players for taking a knee to his equivocations about white supremacist hate in Charlottesville to his incessant invocation of the violent crimes of MS-13 gangs and undocumented immigrants, Trump has repeatedly conjured up frightening images of a nation under siege from pathological racial and ethnic minorities.

But while Trump has been widely condemned, even from within his own party, for his opportunistic and blatantly racist appeals to white anxiety and fear, there’s been a lot less attention paid to how racial scapegoating has been a key part of the conservative political playbook for decades.

If you’re looking to dig deeper into this larger history of race-baiting in American politics in your courses this fall, don’t miss our video The Great White Hoax, featuring acclaimed anti-racist educator and activist Tim Wise.

From Nixon’s Southern Strategy in the 1960s to Charlottesville in 2017, The Great White Hoax offers a stunning look at how conservative politicians in both parties have stoked white anxiety and resentment and scapegoated people of color to divide and conquer working class voters. While the film’s primary focus is Trump’s 2016 run for the presidency, it widens its scope to show how his divisive campaign rhetoric about African-Americans, Latinos, and Muslims fits within a longstanding historical pattern of racial scapegoating that cuts across partisan lines and goes back decades in American politics.

The Great White Hoax is an indispensable classroom resource for making sense of white (especially white male) voting patterns and the increasingly angry white backlash against multiculturalism and progressive social change.

For more related films, check out our Race & Representation Collection here.