Political correctness vs. the Bradley effect.

While looking at the results of the 2016 election on TV, I was horrified that Donald Trump won.  I was quite puzzled for several months about Trump's victory.  How can such a rude man who constantly uses fallacies, hatred, and political incorrectness (he did say that all Mexican immigrants were "rapists") get elected as president?  Even the polls were saying Hillary Clinton, who is more rational in my opinion, should've won.   It wasn't until I listened to a political scientist on NPR that I understood why.  According to this scientist, Trump won not because of ignorant Americans being concerned of the "bad" economy, but because of racism and nativism.  To prove his claim, the political scientist provided an anecdote about a person he knew.  This person was an environmentalist, and he supposedly advocated for people to save the environment.  It is reasonable to assume that the environmentalist is a Clinton or Green Party supporter, but ironically, he voted for Trump.  Apparently, this "environmentalist" revealed himself to be more concerned with immigrants than the environment.  In fact, he wanted both legal and illegal immigrants to be deported from America.  So he could have been lying when he expressed his support for the environment.  He wasn't alone of course, there were plenty of Clinton "supporters" who had proudly denounced racism, sexism, and irrationality in the polls, yet they voted for Trump.  Since Trump won, there were news stories of these very same fake Clinton supporters were engaging in racist activities, such as vandalizing Jewish synagogues.  According to the political scientist, this paradoxical phenomenon (known as the Bradley effect) resulted from how racists (and other bigots) engaged in political correctness out of fear of being bullied by liberals.  Yet while that claim to be not racist, they are lying; they still think like racists even if their language and actions imply the opposite.  This not only explains why the polls were wrong about the election, but it shows how strong hatred, racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice can be.  These forces can be so strong that not even political correctness can completely eliminate them.

However, P.C. did provide the benefit of keeping these prejudices from insulting people in language; but since the politically incorrect Trump became president, the his supporters seem to be moving away from the P.C. movement.  In fact, they are moving so far away, that I am becoming more concerned about the language anarchists than the "word police" (Kakutani 764).