Politics

Backer of Republican Donald Trump described Indians as 'filthy'






Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Fountain Hills, Arizona, on March 19, 2016. Photo from Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the US Racial Imagination in Brown & White / Facebook

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump draws rabid, outspoken and occasionally violent crowds to his rallies and a recent one in Arizona offers some insight on his supporters.

Writing for The New York Times Magazine, Jeff Sharlet attended a rally in Fountain Hills last month and conversed with two people who had some interesting views about their Indian neighbors.

According to Sharlet, one woman credited controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio with keeping the area "clean." That was a thinly veiled reference to the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, whose reservations were long in place when the town was incorporated in 1989.

“It’s landlocked,” a man explained, Sharlet wrote. The man mouthed the word "Indian" but did not say it out loud.

The woman was more expressive with her views.

“They don’t like white people,” the woman said, according to Sharlet. “They keep to themselves.”

“The Indians are," she said, adding as she leaned in and dropped her voice, Sharlet wrote, "are filthy."

Trump easily won the Arizona Republican primary on March 22 with 47.1 percent of the vote.

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Donald Trump, American Preacher (The New York Times Magazine 4/17)

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