In an exclusive sit-down with “The Boston Globe,” Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said Tuesday, Dec. 21, that President-elect Donald Trump’s victory was a direct result of white backlash.
The Democratic mayor not only agreed with Henry Louis Gates Jr., who attributed Trump’s rise to white rage, he also echoed sentiments previously expressed by CNN political commentator Van Jones. Walsh said the recent growth of Black rights movements like Black Lives Matter has sparked fear and resentment among whites and the election results are a direct reflection of that.
“That election clearly represented a backlash against the progress Black people have made since 1965, epitomized — symbolically — by the election and term of a Black man in the White House,” Walsh says. “I have absolutely no doubt that this election reflected both anxiety and resentment. And the two things are tied together. There’s an enormous amount of economic anxiety, that’s understandable, that working people feel.
“But it got transformed, figuratively, into xenophobia, anxiety about immigrants, people of color and the ultimate symbol — a Black man in the White House.”
Walsh said that the animus toward President Obama was there from the start and hindered the president from accomplishing as much as he could have while in office.
“President Obama, from the day he got into office, was not allowed to really push his agenda along,” Walsh says. “And a lot of the Republicans had an agenda to not let him be successful. And despite their efforts to make him not successful, he’s gonna go down in history, in a lot of cases, as a great president.”
