UPenn study on racism in Trump era SMASHES the Left's narrative

A recent study from the University of Pennsylvania finds that racism in America has significantly decreased since President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, directly contradicting the narrative pushed among many academics and mainstream media personalities. 

The Rise of Trump, the Fall of Prejudice? Tracking White Americans’ Racial Attitudes 2008-2018 via a Panel Survey was authored by UPenn political science professor Daniel J. Hopkins and research assistant Samantha Washington. 

Hopkins, in an article for FiveThirtyEight, detailed on Tuesday the study, which used 13 waves of panel surveys to gather data and determined that white racial prejudice against African Americans and Hispanic Americans has declined since 2016, when Trump was elected president. 

[RELATED: VIDEO: Students SHOCKED to learn Biden, not Trump, said these ‘racist’ quotes]

Hopkins noted that the fall in prejudice was present for both Democrats and Republicans.

Hopkins and Washington, according to the study, voice their opinions on Trump and his statements. 

”As a political leader, Donald Trump has used racist rhetoric to build political support,” the study states.

”In his campaign and first few years in office, Donald Trump consistently defied contemporary norms by using explicit, negative rhetoric targeting ethnic/racial minorities. Did this rhetoric lead white Americans to express more prejudiced views of African Americans or Hispanics, whether through the normalization of prejudice or other mechanisms?” the study’s co-authors asked at another point in the study. 

Ultimately, though, the study found that the “racist” rhetoric from the president has not resulted in more racist attitudes among Americans.

“We find that via most measures, white Americans’ expressed anti-Black and anti-Hispanic prejudice declined after the 2016 campaign and election, and we can rule out even small increases in the expression of prejudice,” the study’s abstract states. 

This new finding contradicts ongoing public perception.

A Quinnipiac University poll found in 2018 that 55 percent of survey respondents believed that “President Trump has emboldened people who hold racist beliefs,” according to the study. 

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“Latino approval of President Trump has skyrocketed to 50 percent. We’ve had the lowest Latino unemployment in history under President Trump,” Joel Valdez, a Mexican-American and recent student at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. “Latinos and African-American[s] are prospering under the Trump Administration.”

“Yet, according to the left and the mainstream media, you’d expect worse,” Valdez, who is also an intern at the Leadership Institute, Campus Reform’s parent organization, continued. “As a Latino, I’m told to expect rampant racism, but that’s not America today or one I’ve experienced, especially under President Trump.”

Hopkins, however, explains that he believes that Trump has been “elevating racially charged issues.”

“For a president who has routinely made appeals to white voters’ racial anxieties, it might sound counterintuitive that white Americans have become less prejudiced since his election,” Hopkins said in his article. “Even if Americans aren’t becoming more racist on average, racist rhetoric, like Trump’s attacks on the Democratic congresswomen, still can reshape the political environment.”

[RELATED: VIDEO: Students say Obama immigration quote racist…when they think it’s from Trump]

The UPenn results also come amid a time during which many politicians have labeled Trump “racist.” Prominent Democrats, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker, have both accused the president of racism.

“You have a racist mind in your head, and a racist heart in your chest,” Ocasio-Cortez told Trump on Twitter.

Booker alleged that Trump is “worse than a racist,” according to CNN.

Perceptions that Trump is “racist” extend far beyond members of Congress, though. 

In the last week alone, Campus Reform has reported on a professor who doubled down after comparing young Trump supporters to Hitler Youth, as well as another professor who asserted that Trump is the “most racist person.” 

As Campus Reform previously reported, students indicated that Obama’s immigration policy quote was racist, but only when they thought it was actually a Trump quote.

“I think that policy comes from a place of white American nationalism,” one student said about the quote, before being told that Obama had said it. 

Another student remarked that “Donald Trump has embraced this rhetoric of racism and xenophobia that’s not beneficial to our country at all.”

In another recent Campus Reform video, students characterized statements made by former Vice President Joe Biden as “racist” when they thought those quotes were from Trump. 

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @ethanycai