Since my last blog post, Donald Trump was elected President of the U.S., something I would have not predicted prior to the election. Since the election, there have been protests against the new elected president as well as a rise of hate crimes against minorities. Donald Trump’s campaign was one like no other in the history of America. He spoke of groups of people, such as Latinos, Muslims and women, in very degrading ways, threatening the safety of these minority groups. His campaign was on the basis not America is not “great” anymore and that the Obama presidency has failed the country, which reflected the uproar of many white, middle-class Americans living in non-urban environments. Even if Trump didn’t carry out his plans, he has caused half of the nation to uprise in extreme support of his outrageous proposal and with him in office, they expect these plans to be taken out. Trump has created a group of radicals that the Republican Party has not expected to carry out. Yet, while Trump has benefited himself by running in the Republican Party, he has put the Republican Party in a powerful position, that inevitability the party has to serve him to a certain extend to keep order of the half of the country that supports him deeply.  

Yet, this split of America, does not represent democracy. The two-party system, with extreme polarization, does emit democracy as it was meant to. Many Democrats and anti-Trump supporters, have expressed their strong opinion on the electoral college in this election. The electoral college is supposed to support democracy and in fact be the safety net to prevent such outrageous candidates in running and even becoming the elected President. Yet in this election, this was not the case as the electoral college, the system in which Donald Trump himself had publicly criticized it, had helped the candidate win the election. Trump is no longer stating that this system is diminishing democracy, yet millions of Americans still are. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, meaning that more people in the country voted for her, yet without winning 270 electoral votes, this means nothing to Clinton and the Democrats. Now, there are many petitions to eliminate the electoral college system as it is an outdated system that doesn’t ensure that everyone’s vote counts. Now to move on forward from this election, we need to become more involved with politics and push for change where it is needed.

One huge aspects with campaigns, is appealing to a certain group of voters, whether it is towards a specific gender, race or income bracket. It is known that each political party attracts certain groups of people. With the Democratic party getting the votes of the lower-income groups, racial minorities and liberals, and the Republican party attracting the higher-income groups, religious and conservative people. Because of this, if there is a certain group of people who will most likely go in the favor of a certain candidate, there is likely to not be a lot of advertisement targeting that group as the campaigns already know the outcome of their votes. With the racist comments in the past by Trump, it seems that Clinton has already secured many of the votes of many racial minorities, a reason why there is less advertisement on racial issues.

When Bernie Sanders was still in the race, it was a battle between him and Hillary to get the votes of racial minorities, resulting in more advertisements regarding the issues of these minorities. The title of a Bernie Sanders campaign intrigued me: “He’s With Us.” When I first saw the title, I thought immediately of the slight similarity of the simple yet popular slogan of the Clinton campaign, “I’m With Her.” With the Clinton campaign, “I’m With Her”, it attributes to the fact that Hillary could potentially be the first female president who would be able to project feminism and leadership. With this Bernie Sanders advertisement, he is appealing to racial minorities and specifically the “black vote.” In this advertisement, Danny Glover, a well-known African-American actor and political activist, is the campaign surrogate for Sanders. Glover mentions his experience with segregation and that once he saw the video of a young Sanders protesting against segregation, he thought it was powerful. He also mentions the goals of Martin Luther King Jr., where racial minorities would come together around economic and political injustice, connecting this to the goals of Bernie Sanders.

There is a use of pathos and ethos in this advertisement as it brings a sense of empathy from the Sanders campaign to racial minorities, while giving credibility to Sanders to uphold his promises of these minorities. Using a surrogate who is a person of color who understands the struggle of African Americans and other racial minorities in the history of this country, emits ethos, as it shows the support of a person of color who endorses Bernie, which can convince other people of color to also look into Sanders as Glover does. The way the advertisement was edited, with the powerful voice over of Glover and the music, allowed for pathos, as it gave a more dramatic effect, making it a more emotional advertisement as it talks about race.

This presidential election of 2016, has so far been a roller coaster of a ride with a still anticipated hard drop that may drastically change the course of history.  The presidential debate last week has reiterated some of the different ways that democracy has taken a different turn in this country. One particular candidate, Donald Trump, has taken an unusual approach to American democracy. Many of his usual outrageous statements were made in the debate. Yet in the setting of a professional presidential debate, I think it is highly unprofessional for a presidential candidate to emphasize and question such unrelated factors such as the state of stamina of the opposing presidential candidate. Trump also put even more light on how he doesn’t care about the issues of minorities, including the problem of race and crime in many communities, as he showed support for stop-and-frisk, in outrageous claims to help African American and Latino communities. Our democracy is meant to support the American people and all of them, regardless of sex, race and sexuality. Yet there is a clear threat to that democracy through the actions of a potential Presidential figure.

On top of that, after reading a NYtimes opinion article titled, “Who Gets to Vote,” written by Alexander Keyssar, I realized an even stronger threat to American democracy that is already in place. Voting in elections is pretty much the basic principle and right given by American democracy.  Yet in recent years, many states have enforced stricter voting laws in result of the changes of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. Many ID laws have been put in place in different states, making it harder for those who don’t have photo identification to vote.  These laws put a disadvantage to African Americans and Latino voters as based on statistics, these groups are more likely to lack accepted photo identification. Many registered voters of these states with these voting laws, will be affected, with Texas having an approximated 600,000 registered voters being affected with their anticipated strict ID law. This can greatly affect the turnout of the election as truly, not all registered voters can even participate in voting for this election due to these laws. It also benefits the Republican party as it is in their benefit by “reducing turnout among poor people, African-Americans, Hispanics and students.” We as a country, need a democracy that delivers to the people, where our different political beliefs don’t get in the way of equal rights.

After going through these My America videos, I found one to be particularly interesting and captivating to me. In FLATLAND by Lauren Yee, performed by Johnny Wu, an Asian-American male named Pao is discussing in front of a class about his Hmong heritage in honor of Asian Pacific Islander Heritage month. He explains it in a way where he believes that not many people know of the Hmong people or that they already have a conceived notion about them. Many Hmong people and other Asian immigrants, live in city environments in hopes to establish close knit ethnic communities. I felt that the character, Pao, represented this young urban Asian-American, who was surrounded by people who were oblivious to the Hmong culture. Even though he is clearly American and most likely grew up in this country, it seems that he wanted to prove his culture to be extremely exotic which was shown when he mentioned it’s popular eating tigers and snakes in his culture, when really it wasn’t. I felt that Pao exaggerated his culture to make it seem like it was really foreign like many people would had expected but really it’s similar to those of other cultures in America. As an Asian-American, I understand the idea of people expecting you to be different and exotic, even though you grew up in America and have been surrounded around many American traditions and ideas. Yet at the same time, I do feel the want to stand out as being different and to teach people about my culture and how it is different from others. There are so many different types of Asian-Americans that have families that come from all over Asia. Even in China, where my family is from, there are different regions that develop different cultures and ultimately are classified as different Chinese people. Even though I live in a city that is so diverse, I still witness encounters where people do group together many Asian cultures as if they were all very similar or if not the same, even though each one is distinct.