ABSTRACT
The causes and consequences of the 2016 US election have left many troubled. Especially in relation to questions of race, citizenship, and national belonging, the Trump administration is understood as a severe break from political norms. But what exactly is different? In this chapter, I employ an analysis in the tradition of the pioneering sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois and his work the “Souls of White Folk” (1920). Du Bois’s text affords us a prophetic and historical lens by which we view the Trump presidency not as an unprecedented rupture in politics solito, but as a manifestation of a long-standing possession of the American body politic by white nationalism. First, I address the political entrée of Trump through the “Birther” movement. I then turn toward the use and understanding of the campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.” Third, I take on the Trump administration’s policy and rhetoric toward US immigration. By bringing a Du Boisian analysis to bear on these three areas, we see recent years not as a profound departure from an otherwise healthy political body, but rather as the routinized, mundane, and rather ubiquitous white nationalist soul that animates the American civil corpus.
