The Cities Are Full Of, uh, “Crime”

This cartoon is by me and Becky Hawkins.

From an article by Sara Libby in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Trump and other members of his administration, while often using false or misleading statistics, have cited rampant crime as the justification for deploying federalized troops within U.S. cities.

But these cities share another commonality: They’re led by Black mayors.

Critics don’t think that’s a coincidence. Trump’s focus on Washington D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, New York and Oakland is part of a larger pattern in which the president has suggested cities with majority-Black populations, or those led by Black leaders, are hotbeds of crime and corruption and symbols of American decline.

Right-wing fear and hatred of American cities is a theme Becky and I have explored before – see here and here.

It’s no surprise that Trump’s authoritarian attack on cities is rooted in racism. Trump has always relied on racism in his political demagoguery, going back to at least 1989, when he bought full-page ads in several New York newspapers calling for the Central Park 5 to be executed. (Trump’s ad didn’t explicitly name the Central Park 5 – five Black teenage boys falsely convicted of raping a woman in Central Park – but in context that’s clearly what the ad was about.) Then he rose to political prominence as the face of the “birther” conspiracy theory, suggesting Barack Obama isn’t actually an American. More recently, Trump campaigned successfully for re-election by slandering immigrants with hateful lies about Haitians stealing and eating housepets.

(That was, of course, far from a comprehensive list.)

In a better world, Trump would have been permanently shunned from public life for his over the top racism. Instead, he’s found a welcoming audience for his racism on the right, and their support for racism has been crucial to Trump’s rise to power. In a 2022 study in the journal American Politics Research, James Piazza and Natalia Van Doren summed up some of the research:

Several studies demonstrate that these racist and xenophobic utterances and policies were key to garnering the support of Trump’s electoral base. For example, Schaffner et al., 2016 found that racist and sexist attitudes were the most important predictors of voter support for Trump in 2016, eclipsing economic grievances and mistrust of politics and politicians. Trump’s explicitly bigoted appeals were a particularly crucial aspect of his popularity with less educated White voters in the 2016 race (Glick et al., 2002). Sides et al. (2019) demonstrate that Trump supporters in 2016 were animated by racism against African Americans, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant xenophobia and a fear of “demographic displacement” by non-White individuals. In a longitudinal study comparing the attitudes and voting behaviors of a cohort of respondents in 2011 and 2016, Mason et al. (2021) found that respondents who expressed racist and xenophobic attitudes in 2011 were significantly more likely to have voted for Trump in 2016, but not other Republicans running for office.

These findings are consistent with research in other democracies showing that xenophobia – particularly anti-immigrant attitudes – drive electoral support for extreme right populist political parties.

In their own study, they found that

…individuals who approve of former President Trump are more likely to endorse political violence, and to positively assess the events and participants of the January 6 event. We also find that Trump approvers are motivated by racial animus and mistrust and hatred towards immigrants and foreigners, and that these attitudes, in part, may make them more accepting of political violence.

This is the sort of comic that makes me both grateful to have a collaborator like Becky, and green with envy for her ability to draw city architecture so well. Just look at those windows and awnings in panel two! Or all the storefront details in panel one! Aaargh!

While working on drawing panel four, Becky texted me “Fuck you for putting that muscular Trump poster in the script. :-p And you’re welcome.”

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

PANEL 1

A white man wearing a baseball cap looks around nervously as he walks on a city sidewalk. Behind him, we can see storefronts and pedestrians. All the people are brown-skinned, enjoying their day, including an adorable family with a toddler riding on her mom’s shoulders.

PANEL 2

A residential city neighborhood. The same white man presses against a wall, trying not to be seen, as he watches a little girl playing hopscotch, while another girl sits on a stoop reading a book. Nearby, a middle-aged woman waters some potted plants on a low wall. Again, the white guy is the only white person in the panel.

PANEL 3

The white guy peers out from behind a tree at a piragua cart, where the piragua vender is smiling as he talks to a customer. In the background, we see a man walking a three-legged pitbull, and a couple of people playing basketball. Again, everyone but the white guy is a person of color.

PANEL 4

We see the white guy in a professional-looking podcast studio, clenching a fist and talking intently into the microphone.

WHITE GUY: I’ve been to the city, and it was full of, uh, crime.

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

“Chicken fat” is bygone cartoonists’ lingo for unimportant details snuck into the art.

PANEL 2 – The woman’s bathrobe and turban in p2 are modeled after one of Barbara Howard’s outfits in the season two finale of the TV show Abbott Elementary.

PANEL 3 -A tree by the piragua cart has #avanine carved into the trunk. Avanine is a portmanteau of Ava and Janine, used by the small but enthusiastic number of Abbott Elementary fans who think that the plucky teacher and chaotic principal should date. The piragua guy looks like Lin Manuel Miranda as “Piragua Guy” in the movie version of In The Heights.

PANEL 4 – A poster on the wall shows an extremely muscular shirtless Donald Trump in a royal crown and wrestling belt, carrying a scepter with a carved American eagle head on top. Another poster shows a cartoon narwhal saying “If EDUCATION Makes People SMART, Why Are Most Educated People LIBERAL?” And a paper taped to the wall says “SCHEDULE. 10am: Anger. 11am: Pissed. Noon: Fury. 1pm: Lunch. 2pm: Wrath.”