Christian Stillings

Final Research Paper

History 225
December 13, 2015

The Bullies and the Bull:

Policing, Race, Activism, and Reaction in the Age of Twitter
In an August 2014 piece for the website The Federalist, Hans Fiene described how police
look from the vantage of many conservatives, especially those of us living in nice, comfy
suburbs: Weve never seen corrupted enforcers of the law. Weve never been wrongly arrested.
Weve never witnessed our children put in jail based on false reports of police officers. Weve
never neighbors beaten or tazed without cause. Fiene then turned toward the particular contents
of recent controversies: In the extremely unlikely scenario that a police officer drove into our
neighborhood and murdered our unarmed friend in cold blood, we cannot possibly fathom a
scenario where the justice system wouldnt be on our side and where that police officer wouldnt
spend the rest of his life in jail. In sum: in our minds, theres no conceivable way that a police
officer would gun down an innocent man.1
Compare that description with this August 2015 account by the African-American writer Ezekiel
Kweku: after describing various ways of preparing for a police encounter if pulled over, Kweku
acknowledges their relative futility: What all these plans had in common were that none of them
were meant to secure my safety, but rather to ensure that my death looked suspicious enough to
question. I was figuring out how to enter evidence into the inquiry of my own death. In other
words, Kweku is accustomed to anticipating that police will use excessive, and perhaps deadly,
force against him. He writes of tactics [he uses] to avoid being arrested or killed by police.
These tactics have been instilled too deeply in [him] for [him] to forget; they form a carefully
1 Hans Fiene, Michael Brown and the Conservative Inconsistency, The Federalist, August 15, 2014,
http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/15/michael-brown-and-the-conservative-inconsistency/
1

calibrated etiquette that feels like a delicate dance, based on the centuries of received wisdom
passed down by the parents of black children in America.2
The contrast between Fienes and Kwekus accounts indicates an immense disparity between
blacks and whites usual experiences of policing in present-day America. This disparity is not
new: the Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates writes that as of the late 19th century, police brutality
was one of many typical forms of severe discrimination against African-Americans.3
Additionally, there is evidence that some police officers still very consciously hold to
longstanding racist stereotypes: Daniel Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City police officer, was
recently convicted on several counts of sexual assault; Holtzclaw, who is white, evidently
believed that his chosen set of victims African-American women with criminal histories would consistently be intimidated by his police badge and distinctly un-credible if they decided
to report his abuse.4 Although racist dynamics in policing have long retained their basic shape,
Americans relationship to these dynamics has been more malleable. In this paper, it will be
argued that recent developments in media, particularly social media, have reshaped how
Americans relate both to police forces and to activism that protests racism in police conduct. It
will further be argued that the most significant white resistance to contemporary anti-racism
activism does not particularly resemble conventional American forms of anti-black racism.
In an August 2014 piece for The Atlantic, the journalist Conor Friedersdorf described why an
increasing proportion of white Americans are amenable to second-guessing the police regarding
2 Ezekiel Kweku, Slow Poison, Pacific Standard Magazine, August 15, 2015,
http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/even-if-the-police-dont-kill-me-a-lifetime-of-preparing-forthem-to-just-might
3 Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations, The Atlantic, June 2014,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
4 Michael Martinez and Jethro Mullen, Victims describe assaults by convicted ex-Oklahoma City cop Daniel
Holtzclaw, CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/11/us/oklahoma-daniel-holtzclaw-verdict/

excessive use of force, particularly against African-Americans. Friedersdorf cites Ross Douthat,
a New York Times writer, as arguing that falling crime has made the American public less
inclined to reflexively side with police and that this is a generational shift wherein younger
Americans especially tend toward skepticism about police conduct. Friedersdorf provides
another reason for that trend: when it comes to how reflexively or instinctively cops are
presumed to be truthful and honorable, the importance of video shouldnt be discounted Of
course young people growing up with YouTube will trust police officers less. The many videos
of brutality dont lie and they confirm that, sometimes, cops do lie. Friedersdorf
acknowledges that this isnt precisely a new phenomenon he notes that in 1991 an amateur
video of police beating Rodney King sparked immense controversy but developments both in
technology (nearly all phones now have cameras) and communication (mass-sharing sites such
as YouTube) make the reality of police misconduct especially obvious to younger Americans,
who are generally more media-savvy than their elders.5
Along with plenty easily-accessible video evidence of police using excessive force, reporting
about horrifying instances of police misconduct such as in Daniel Holtzclaws case has, with
recent developments in media and particularly social media, become much easier for people to
notice and share. The global span of the internet enables even voices from outside the U.S. to
contribute to investigating and publicizing American police misconduct: in a December 2015
piece for The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf discussed an investigation by The Guardian, a British
news organ, regarding the astoundingly high per capita rate of killings by police in Kern County,
CA.6 The more online voices participate in discussions of such phenomena, the more aware

5 Conor Friedersdorf, Video killed trust in police officers, The Atlantic, August 18, 2014,
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/08/police-officers-havent-earned-our-instinctivetrust/378657/
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Americans become of structural police-oversight failures, along with other forms of police
misconduct.
Given Americans growing awareness of such problems, it is not surprising that a broad political
span of Americans has supported measures to increase police accountability. As Conor
Friedersdorf wrote in a November 2011 piece for The Atlantic, the instance in Ferguson of
Michael Browns death and the ensuing controversy obviously indicates the great value of
increased on-scene camera-surveillance of police officers; Friedersdorf further wrote that the
way officials in Ferguson reacted to the protests over [Browns] death did illustrate the alarming
militarization of U.S. police agencies. Near the end of the piece, Friedersdorf lists several
proposals for improving police accountability and functions, including: decisions about when to
charge officers should be made by independent prosecutors, not [structurally-biased] regular
district attorneys, police unions should be able to negotiate salary, benefits and nothing else[;]
firing an abusive police officer should be easy, and all police departments should have strong
civilian oversight. Though the surge to increase police accountability has largely been propelled
by the activism of groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM), proposals such as Friedersdorfs dont
seem to have encountered any organized and insistent political resistance, likely in part because
the phenomena being criticized controversy over when police should use lethal force;
excessive militarization of police units are of concern to both whites and people of color.7
Yet white Americans do have reason to fear some of the effects of activist upswells like Black
Lives Matter. BLM protesting has corresponded to at least one instance of lethal retaliation: in

6 Conor Friedersdorf, The deadliest county for police killings in America, The Atlantic, December 2,
2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/the-deadliest-county-for-police-killings-inamerica/418359/
7 Conor Friedersdorf, The case for police reform is much bigger than Michael Brown, The Atlantic,
November 26, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/the-case-for-police-reforms-ismuch-bigger-than-michael-brown/383210/
4

December 2014, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, a black man who was angry about police conduct in the cases
of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, shot two New York Police Department officers point-blank
in the head.8 Thankfully, such extreme retribution seems quite rare. One other facet of the
Ferguson incidents impact illustrates well a more common type of problem.
There is no dispute that Darren Wilson, a white police officer with the Ferguson Police
Department, used lethal force against Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. Wilsons
purported conduct quickly became the topic of intense controversy, and some commentators
worried that denunciations of Wilson had become too presumptuous too quickly. The black
scholar John McWhorter wrote that We are told that [the best-evidenced reconstruction of
Browns and Wilsons interaction] shows that America devalues black bodies, as a common
phrasing has it. But I fear the facts on this specific incident are too knotted to coax a critical mass
of America into seeing a civil rights icon in Brown and an institutionally racist devil in Wilson.9
McWhorters use of religious language icon, devil, suits the dynamics that enveloped
Darren Wilson. By the time the legal process resolved that forensic evidence corroborated
Wilsons story and that his actions were justifiable, he had departed the police force10 with no
severance package,11 was unemployable in his field, and was hiding out for his life12: media
propagation of the story told by Michael Browns friend Dorian Johnson that Brown had raised
8 Larry Celona, Shawn Cohen, Jamie Schram, Amber Jamieson, and Laura Italiano, Gunman executes 2
NYPD cops in Garner revenge, New York Post, December 20, 2014, http://nypost.com/2014/12/20/2nypd-cops-shot-execution-style-in-brooklyn/
9 John McWhorter, Ferguson is the wrong tragedy to wake America up, TIME Magazine, November
24, 2014, http://time.com/3594636/ferguson-is-the-wrong-tragedy-to-wake-america-up/
10 Ralph Ellis, Brian Todd, and Faith Karimi, Citing security concerns, Darren Wilson resigns from
Ferguson police force, CNN, November 29, 2014, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/29/us/fergusonprotests
11 Daniel Wallis and Edward McAllister, Missouri officer in fatal shooting resigned without severance:
mayor, Reuters, November 29, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-missouri-shootingidUSKCN0JE0VJ20141201#6wp3JtmVmir2380R.97
5

his arms and was saying dont shoot when Wilson killed him had led to a life-wrecking
demonization of Wilson.
Even though (according to the legal process) Officer Wilson did his job reasonably well, his life
was run into the ground because an activist upswell rashly decided that his case should be the
one by which to teach America a lesson about police racism. (However many designated leaders
with Black Lives Matter may have refrained from condemning Wilson or even provisionally
defended him, the crucial point is that the dynamics of the anti-racism protesting turned enough
people against Wilson severely enough to ruin his life.)
Wilsons is far from the only case where social justice-oriented activism has fostered
premature and presumptuous judgments that spur violence against the accused. In November
2014, the magazine Rolling Stone published an essay, A Rape on Campus, which purported
both gratuitous sexual assault by members of the University of Virginias (UVA) Phi Kappa Psi
fraternity and grievous inaction by certain University administrators. After careful critiques
evidenced outstanding flaws in the essays story the essayist, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, had
neglected to undertake basic investigative steps, which when undertaken by other journalists
revealed facts that contradicted several major aspects of the purported victims story Julia
Horowitz, the assistant managing editor of the Universitys campus newspaper, authored a piece
for Politico entitled Why we believed Jackies [the purported victims] rape story. Horowitz
motioned that it matters [it matters] whether or not Jackies story is accurate, then
acknowledged that brothers of Phi Kappa Psi were moved out of their house after students
threw bricks through windows, that Dean Nicole Eramo has received death threats, and that
it is becoming increasingly clear that the story that blew the lid off campus sexual assault has

12 Jake Halpern, The Cop, The New Yorker, August 10, 2015,
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/the-cop
6

some major, major holes. Despite these facts, Horowitz resolved that, ultimately to let fact
checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.13
In response to Horowitzs piece, The American Conservatives widely-read blogger Rod Dreher
described why one might find Horowitzs conclusion quite alarming:
[Julia Horowitz] doesnt think facts are of primary importance in the
narrative. Only what is useful to the cause, it would appear. Consider that the lies
Jackie told and that Rolling Stone publicized have resulted in fraternity men
having to move out of their house because it was being physically attacked, and a
college dean having to deal with death threats And yet, this journalist-intraining [Julia Horowitz] still has the utter lack of professional self-awareness to
write that to let fact-checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.
Heaven help anyone who gets in Julia Horowitzs professional crosshairs.14
Martin Luther King, Jr., made famous, in adapted form, a sentiment from the 19th-century
abolitionist Theodore Parker: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
A further adaptation implicit in the dynamics of Darren Wilsons case, and more clearly
expressed by Julia Horowitz in the UVA case might proclaim that our society must race along
the arc of history toward justice, and we cant be bothered to keep from steam-rolling over some
innocent people along the way. This notion may sound more compelling if rendered as a
utilitarian argument: so long as the advancement of social justice outweighs the negative
repercussions in a given case, it doesnt so much matter what projectiles go through whose
windows, or whose lives are threatened.

13 Julia Horowitz, Why we believed Jackies rape story, Politico, December 6, 2014,
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/why-we-believed-jackies-story113365#ixzz3LBwmaTpX
14 Rod Dreher, Untrue? So what, its useful, The American Conservative, December 7, 2014,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/untrue-so-what-its-useful-journalism-erdely-rape/
7

Police officers and their families at least are accustomed to distinctly anticipating violence, but
people of many occupations have been impaled by sharp activism-fueled reactions. In some
cases, like in Ferguson and at UVA, people are targeted because they have purportedly
committed terrible deeds; in likely more cases, though, the victims are targeted because of more
definite, albeit much smaller, misdeeds. Its true that often the latter groups members actions
really have hurt others, which may bring to mind the expression hoisted on their own petards;
yet petards were expressly intended to cause destruction, and this groups actions usually are not
so aimed.
What, exactly, is this groups typical offense? Tweets - short (up-to-140-characters)
public messages shared via the social media platform Twitter whose content a critical mass of
other users considers substantially offensive. As Twitter-shaming has become a significant
phenomenon in recent years, a growing number of observers has tried to analyze its dynamics
and determine its major causes. The Atlantic journalist Robinson Meyer cites an explanation
from the University of Prince Edward Island researcher Dr. Bonnie Stewart: According to
Stewart, Twitter both fosters the interpretation of ephemeral and chatty exchanges as
unequivocal political statements and enables other (potentially unacquainted) users to swiftly
demonize offenders.15 In other words, what one user intends as a relatively casually-articulated
remark the stuff of most ordinary conversation - any number of other users can misinterpret at
a kind of carefully crafted and highly deliberate position statement about any issue to which it
seems to pertain.
Yet to designate these mis-construals merely as misinterpretations might omit some key
aspects of the dynamics that spur them. In February 2015, Jon Ronson wrote for the New York

15 Robinson Meyer, The Decay of Twitter, The Atlantic, November 2, 2015,

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/conversation-smoosh-twitter-decay/412867/
8

Times Magazine an essay about the dynamics of Twitter-shaming; the essay is worth quoting
here at (brief) length:
In the early days of Twitter, I was a keen shamer. When newspaper
columnists made racist or homophobic statement, I joined the pile-on. Sometimes
I led it... In those early days, the collective fury felt righteous, powerful and
effective. It felt as if justice were finally being democratized. As time passed,
though, I watched these shame campaigns multiply, to the point that they targeted
not just powerful institutions and public figures but really anyone perceived to
have done something offensive. I also began to marvel at the disconnect between
the severity of the crime and the gleeful savagery of the punishment. It almost felt
as if shamings were now happening for their own sake, as if they were following a
script.16
In Ronsons characterization, many people feel as he at one time felt a certain kind of
fulfillment by joining a (supposedly) justice-advancing collective [online] fury that
indiscriminately and often disproportionately deals out gleeful punishment as though for the
sake of a script. This description bears a striking resemblance to Julia Horowitzs recognition
in the UVA case of an accusation-fueled narrative that, she insisted, should not be defined by
fact-checking.
In light of these dynamics, a white person might piece things together as follows: if every
white person is inherently complicit in racial inequities that are propagated by societallyubiquitous racist dynamics (as the theory of white privilege would seem to hold), if
contemporary anti-racism activism cant keep particular white people from being unjustly run
down, and if (as Jon Ronson details elsewhere in his Times Magazine essay) one can be
16 Jon Ronson, How One Stupid Tweet Ruined Justine Saccos Life, New York Times Magazine,
February 12, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justinesaccos-life.html?smid=tw-share&_r=2
9

demonized simply for incidentally and even innocuously using an offensive expression online,
nearly any given white person could be targeted and condemned as the next demon that America
must exorcise to learn its lesson about racism.
A white person need not be particularly racist in order to fear such treatment (though
white racists might very well share such fear); because such fear need not be based in racism,
whatever (white) backlash it spurs need not be particularly racist. Further, given how small the
Overton window (the range of views broadly accepted in public discourse) has become around
issues of race as indicated by the intense contention that the Supreme Court justice Antonin
Scalia recently stirred by questioning the wisdom of certain functions of affirmative action17 it
is unlikely that the fear described above could correspond to any significant white political
movement that is based in white racism against African-Americans. In other words, whatever
white backlash Black Lives Matter spurs, it need not and almost certainly will not grandly revive
the Ku Klux Klan or give rise to a new George Wallace.
The obvious rejoinder to this line of argument is that America does have a major racist
backlash against contemporary anti-racism efforts, namely the presidential campaign of Donald
Trump. Not only has Trump been hammering at a variety of Overton windows (the Atlantic
journalist Russell Berman writes that Trump has built his campaign juggernaut on the premise
that he is willing to flout all standards of political correctness18), his campaign is deeply and
obviously racist the most explicitly racist [presidential] campaign since 1968, according to a
November 2015 The Week piece by Paul Waldman. In the pieces second-to-last paragraph,
Waldman asserts that [Donald Trump] has adopted a retro racism, telling primary voters in no
17 Rod Dreher, Freaking out over Scalia, The American Conservative, December 10, 2015,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/freaking-out-over-scalia/
18 Russell Berman, Donald Trumps call to ban Muslim Immigrants, The Atlantic, December 7, 2015,
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/donald-trumps-call-to-ban-muslimimmigrants/419298/
10

uncertain terms that if youre looking for the candidate who will indulge and validate your
ugliest impulses, Trump is your man.19
Alright, but are those ugly impulses best characterized as racist? Waldman draws on a
history of twentieth-century (Democrat-turned-Republican) animosity toward and denigration of
African-Americans, from Strom Thurmonds 1948 presidential campaign through to Ronald
Reagans rhetoric of strapping young bucks and welfare queens and then George H.W.
Bushs Willie Horton tactic. In light of that history, Trumps denigrations of AfricanAmericans look slightly, well slight. Waldman writes that after a Black Lives Matter protestor
was punched and kicked at a Trump rally, Trump said Maybe he should have been roughed up.
And he retweeted a graphic with fake statistics about black people supposedly murdering whites,
which turns out to have been created by a neo-Nazi.20
Waldmans characterization overstates the racial significance of the first instance, or at
least omits some clarifying details. In August 2015, Donald Trump said that Black Lives Matter
activists would face fighting if they protested at and disrupted one of his events. According to
CNN journalist Jeremy Diamond, at the moment of the November 21, 2015 altercation that
Waldman mentions, Trump probably couldnt see the confrontation unfolding, and his response
at that moment was Get em the hell out of here. When the next morning Trump said maybe
[the protestor, Mercutio Southall] should have been roughed up because it was absolutely
disgusting what he was doing, it isnt clear that he knew Southalls race (black), his affiliation
with BLM, or the details of the altercation; none of Trumps pertinent remarks specifically

19 Paul Waldman, Donald Trump is running the most explicitly racist campaign since 1968, The Week,
November 25, 2015, http://theweek.com/articles/590711/donald-trump-running-most-explicitly-racistcampaign-since-1968
20 Ibid.
11

denigrated Southall based on his race or his relation to BLM.21 While some (though not all) of
Trumps white supporters are racist against African-Americans22 he is the preferred candidate
of many white nationalist figures, though they concede that he doesnt seem to share their
views about race and that he would [surely] repudiate any association with people like [us]23
and while his August remarks about BLM could well have played some role in inciting audience
members animosity against Southall, it isnt clear in this instance that Trump was denigrating
Southalls race or BLM rather than simply Southalls disruptiveness.
The second instance that Waldman cites is a Tweet with tendentious statistics tying
African-Americans to very high killing rates both in comparison to and against white people; this
instance denigrates African-Americans much more clearly than does the first. Nonetheless, even
if both of these instances really are racist against African-Americans, such racism forms a tiny
slice of the six-month-old phenomenon that is the Donald Trump 2016 campaign. These
instances dont even add up to any kind of racist rhetorical staple (a la Reagans welfare
queens), let alone a governing vision (a la George Wallace) or even a campaign strategy (a la
Nixons Southern Strategy.)
Waldman offers stronger pieces of evidence that Donald Trump is, in fact, bigoted:
Trumps sweeping negative characterizations of Mexicans that have been immigrating into the
U.S. and his intense suspicion of Muslims as a religious community.24
21 Jeremy Diamond, Trump on protestor: Maybe he should have been roughed up, CNN, November
22, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/22/politics/donald-trump-black-lives-matter-protesterconfrontation/
22 Michael Mishak, Are Donald Trumps Supporters Racist?, National Journal, December 7, 2015,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/125618/are-donald-trumps-supporters-racist?mref=skybox_1
23 Evan Osnos, The fearful and the frustrated, The New Yorker, August 31, 2015,
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-fearful-and-the-frustrated
24 Waldman, Donald Trump
12

Are Trumps statements in these areas best classified as racist? According to a TIME
Magazine transcription, in Trumps speech announcing his campaign he made the following
remarks:
When Mexico sends its people theyre not sending their best theyre
sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems
with us. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And
some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us
what were getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common
sense. Theyre not sending us the right people.25
Regarding Muslims, on November 19, 2015, [Donald Trump] told NBC News [that he]
would certainly implement a database system tracking Muslims in the United States.26 Further,
on December 7, 2015, his campaign issued a statement calling for a total and complete
shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our countrys representatives can figure
out what is going on; the statement cited an (apparently tendentious) poll of Muslims in the
United States showing [that] 25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here
in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad and 51% of those polled, agreed that
Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah [law].27 In
a subsequent interview with CNNs Jake Tapper, Trump [cited] Muslim friends [as] so happy
[that] he is discussing the issue of Islamic fundamentalism; after saying that these friends do
25 TIME Staff, Heres Donald Trumps Presidential Announcement Speech, TIME Magazine, June 16,
2015, http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/
26 Vaughn Hillyard, Trumps plan for a Muslim database draws comparison to Nazi Germany,
MSNBC, November 20, 2015, http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/trump-would-certainly-implement-muslimdatabase
27 Donald Trump 2016 Campaign, Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration,
December 7, 2015, http://ichef1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/E11D/production/_87092675_000001atrump.jpg
13

not support his proposal to ban Muslim immigration to the U.S. Trump continued to
emphasize his Muslim friends concern about terrorism.28 Its important to note that even
Trumps preferred data claims that only approximately half of Muslims in America hold
theocratic-type views, and that he soon cited some other Muslims as disagreeing with such
views.
Unlike conventional (white) American racism against African-Americans, Trumps
claims compliment the intelligence of each purported problem-group: Mexican leaders are
ingeniously offloading their criminals into America; theocratically-dangerous Muslims (which
some Muslims definitely arent) are clever enough to evade the United States existing
surveillance and security measures. Although listeners may build sweeping racial stereotypes
upon Trumps claims and some surely do, or add those claims as fuel for their existing
prejudices Trumps claims dont specifically denigrate Hispanics or Muslims as a total
racial/ethnic-type group, per se. He claims that each group will likely harm America not by
infecting American society with any racially inferior qualities but by hurting Americans due to
flawed character and dangerous convictions. Thus, the term nativist (or perhaps nationalist)
fits Trumps claims much better than does the term racist.
VDARE, a white nationalist-type website, has hailed Trump as the first figure with
the financial, cultural, and economic resources to defy elite consensus.29 Donald Trump has
vigorously, and with evident glee, slammed such consensus throughout six months of
campaigning: in a trite phrase, he is a bull in a china shop. But not every bigoted bull is a Bull
Connor, and Trump seems unlikely to turn his horns toward the particular type of racist purposes
that Connor preferred. For white Americans who fear the relative recklessness of contemporary
28 Eugene Scott, Trump: My Muslim friends dont support my immigration ban, CNN, December 13,
2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/13/politics/donald-trump-muslim-ban-state-of-the-union/
29 Osnos, The fearful
14

activist impulses but have little means to rebuff it within their personal circumstances, Donald
Trump can serve as a symbol of resistance. Insofar as Donald Trump is the primary symbolic
figure of white backlash against black initiatives (such as Black Lives Matter), he may be the
least overtly racist such figure that America has yet seen.

Sources Cited
15

Berman, Russell. Donald Trumps call to ban Muslim immigrants. The Atlantic. December 7, 2015.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/donald-trumps-call-to-ban-muslimimmigrants/419298/
Celona, Larry, Shawn Cohen, Jamie Schram, Amber Jamieson, and Laura Italiano. Gunman executes 2
NYPD cops in Garner revenge. New York Post. December 20, 2014.
http://nypost.com/2014/12/20/2-nypd-cops-shot-execution-style-in-brooklyn/
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The Case for Reparations. The Atlantic. June 2014.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
Diamond, Jeremy. Trump on protestor: Maybe he should have been roughed up. CNN. November 22,
2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/22/politics/donald-trump-black-lives-matter-protesterconfrontation/
Donald Trump 2016 Campaign. Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration.
December 7, 2015. http://ichef1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/E11D/production/_87092675_000001atrump.jpg
Dreher, Rod. Freaking out over Scalia. The American Conservative. December 10, 2015.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/freaking-out-over-scalia/
Dreher, Rod. Untrue? So what, its useful. The American Conservative. December 7, 2014.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/untrue-so-what-its-useful-journalism-erdely-rape/
Ellis, Ralph, Brian Todd, and Faith Karimi. Citing security concerns, Darren Wilson resigns from Ferguson
police force. CNN. November 29, 2014. http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/29/us/ferguson-protests
Fiene, Hans. Michael Brown and the Conservative Inconsistency. The Federalist. August 15, 2014.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/15/michael-brown-and-the-conservative-inconsistency/
Friedersdorf, Conor. The case for police reform is much bigger than Michael Brown. The Atlantic.
November 26, 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/the-case-for-policereforms-is-much-bigger-than-michael-brown/383210/
Friedersdorf, Conor. The deadliest county for police killings in America. The Atlantic. December 2, 2015.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/the-deadliest-county-for-police-killings-inamerica/418359/
Friedersdorf, Conor. Video killed trust in police officers. The Atlantic. August 18, 2014.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/08/police-officers-havent-earned-our-instinctivetrust/378657/
Halpern, Jake. The Cop. The New Yorker. August 10, 2015.
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