On November 8, 2016, in a political shock that turned the system upside down, Donald J. Trump pulled ahead of Hillary Clinton in electoral votes and won the United States presidency. Since Trump claimed the Oval Office, the United States has been in a complete uproar, with new racially-charged incidents occurring daily and riots ravaging major cities. With accusations of white supremacy echoing throughout the country, the question on everyone’s minds is this: how did we get here? It’s unsurprising to many that the Ku Klux Klan was found to endorse President-elect Trump, even though the organization is founded on racism.
Today, the new Ku Klux Klan movement in America aims to further the goals of white supremacism in small, isolated groups nationwide. It is no longer one organization, but many – they have even begun recruiting internationally. The issues that the KKK are involved with in modern politics are illegal immigration, and crime in cities. In the first Klan movement, Klan members were actively attempting to restore a recently-lost white supremacist society. The original Ku Klux Klan was formed right after the Civil War. Now, however, the Klan is focused on limiting immigration,and civil unions, and distantly, returning the United States to its pre-Civil War white supremacist roots.
However, the KKK has seemed to change its style for the modern day. Rather than lynching and burning crosses, they simply preach “white pride” instead of outright hate against any race, and claim to be interested only in furthering their own race. The language has become much subtler, but it seems that the result is still the same. The current Ku Klux Klan is also heavily laced with and masked by religion, something that has ultimately enabled them to distort the racist principles at their foundation.
With the announcement that members of the KKK were going to celebrate Trump’s win with a parade, many point to Donald J. Trump as being at fault, but the fact is that the racial divide is still going strong in America and has been for many years. The end of segregation was not the end of racism in America -there is overwhelming evidence, both anecdotally and statistically, that show that minorities are discriminated against overwhelmingly across the nation. The fact that people are willing to join an obvious hate organization like the Ku Klux Klan just because they “sound nicer” shows us that racism, like American politics, has evolved to look quite different, but it is no less prevalent.