Echoing through it all is the dread of an “end of white America,” a fear that politicians on the right readily stoked and fervently fed to the masses. Much of this opposing front is fully wed to racism and xenophobia, and it backed a businessman who peddled a promise to “Make American Great Again”—a promise that was not just a campaign slogan, but was also a racial plea evoked at a time when whiteness was the formal touchstone of American citizenship and white supremacy was endorsed and enabled by law.

XREF: Connects to scholarship on racialized political appeals and the history of whiteness as a legal category in American citizenship law.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 63