Issac J. Bailey's recent piece over at Politico is both stunning and gut wrenching. He most astutely identifies why Donald Trump is so popular in the South.
The Republican South so far has rallied behind Donald Trump, a northerner without any of the grassroots evangelical credibility that is supposed to bind conservatives here—a candidate whose main appeal, in fact, has been coded appeals to the same hatred that drove Roof to pick up a gun.
The exact same hatred.
Make no mistake, Trump’s embrace by millions of people in my region isn’t solely about economic angst. It is also about the kind of pent-up fear—made up of barely submerged racism and profound ignorance—that a reader in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, expressed to me shortly after Barack Obama’s election: “I think he’s gonna enslave us,” he said. “Look what we done to ya’ll.”
Fear, indeed.
Read the whole piece. It's most illuminating.
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