Race relations impacting minorities votes in the fall election

Alyssa Mitchell
November 8, 2016

Forty-five percent of African American and Hispanic college students believe race relations is the biggest problem facing the nation.

Kelechi Ejekam, education technology senior, said, “The system is broken. It’s not just the upcoming election it’s the whole country. Hillary Clinton tried to win the minority vote but we saw through her facade.”

In the student poll, Donald Trump leads 39 percent to Clinton’s 29 percent. Out of the 174 interviewees in the poll, 60 people were minorities and 30 people were African American. Even though Ejekam said the country has seen through Clinton, the campus poll showed that Clinton was leading with 42 percent of non-white votes.

One black student on campus said she feels she has been discriminated against.

Julia Lucas, early education sophomore, said, “I have been discriminated against by many people who think that I am uneducated because of my skin color.”

The two leading presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have shown all they can when it comes to their campaigning. Donald Trump has been seen to most of the American people including the African American community as a racist. He has on more than one occasion shown discrimination towards African Americans, Mexicans and various other races; he has called Mexicans murderers and rapists and he has also used the term “thugs” to refer to African Americans. On one occasion Trump refereed to African Americans as “uneducated.”

Trump called out to African Americans to gain votes in August and said, “You’re living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”

A few examples of the discrimination facing African Americans are being thought of as uneducated people because of skin color or having an opinion forced on them by someone else. Some black students said they have faced discrimination in various ways.

Addrian Gaut, theater junior, said, “When I was in fifth grade my teacher made me read a book because it was about a black boy.”

Kierian Hunter, math sophomore, said she has not experienced discrimination before. She also does not care about the election or the candidates.

Hunter said, “I am oblivious to the whole election. I didn’t even know who the candidates were until about a month ago.”

Out of the likely and registered to vote 174 people who took part in the poll, 109 are dissatisfied with the presidential candidates.

Charles Callier, radiation technology freshman, said, “I feel like my vote doesn’t matter, the police are going to do what they want regardless of who is in office, our leaders don’t really know about the people they are responsible for because they have never walked in our shoes, how is anyone effectively going to lead a population of people they don’t know about? It is impossible.”

The only thing Hunter said she hopes to get out of this election is someone who won’t destroy foreign relations.

Hunter said, “A fear that I have would be for someone to take office and completely mess up everything. For example, foreign relations or someone who is not serious about doing what they can for the good of the nation or even the world.”

Students said being the president is maintaining those relationships and with other nations across the world.

DJ Wilkerson, biology sophomore, said, “If you kick out the foreigners then the only people left won’t want to do the labor they see as beneath them. You also lose part of the identity of the what this country is, we are all a part of it. The strategy of deporting Hispanics is in part them trying to isolate the African Americans. They believe that if they don’t isolate us that we will ban together under the cause of the civil rights movement.”

Others felt that a president can’t be racist to his own people.

Hunter said, “If a president is racist towards the people of his country, how is he going to be able to maintain a proper relationship with another nation where he is racist towards their people? They wouldn’t want anything to do with him and the relationship between the countries would suffer.”

Some people believe that nothing can be done to overcome the fear of discrimination.

Hunter said, “Nothing, right? All that bullshit about my opinion matters, yet I haven’t seen very many people that walk in shoes similar to mine be heard.”

Most people interviewed plan on voting to get their opinion across.

Lucas said, “I plan to get more people to vote for Hillary by voting for her myself.”

Gaut agreed and said, “To me both of them are bad for America, and have more cons than pros, but I feel like Hillary will do a better job than Trump. Getting as many people to vote as possible will help keep him out of office.”

Hunter disagreed and said, “Honestly I’m not going to vote since it seems that no one wants to vote for either one of these candidates.”

Additional reporting by Orlando Fierro

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