Journalist Jemele Hill on Sunday declared anyone who votes for Trump is racist — before being reminded that she once said her own mother voted for the president.
Now: Hill, a contributing writer for the Atlantic, made the blanket statement about Trump voters in a tweet, adding there is "no wiggle room."
If you vote for Donald Trump, you are a racist. You have no wiggle room.
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) July 19, 2020
Then: In a 2017 Twitter thread that resurfaced on Monday, Hill revealed that her mother was a reliable Republican voter who had pulled the lever for Trump in 2016.
yes, my mother voted for trump. she's been voting republican since post bill clinton
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) March 19, 2017
Conservative writer Stephen Miller first pointed out in a viral tweet that Hill seemed to be implying her mother was a racist.
- He commented simply, "No wiggle room."
Amid backlash to her comments, Hill on Monday endorsed a broad definition of racism and retweeted a fellow journalist's defense of her, which said "some minorities can (and do) reinforce systemic white supremacy."
- Attempts to reach Hill for comment through The Atlantic and her representatives were not immediately successful.
Hill has been an outspoken critic of Trump and what she sees as his promotion of racism in America.
In September 2017, Hill's then-employer, ESPN, suspended her for tweets calling Trump a "white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists."
- She left the network in January 2018 and joined The Atlantic magazine as a staff writer the following month.
While Trump's supporters are frequently derided as racists by some on the left, polling has consistently shown racist attitudes and implicit bias among white Republicans, and among white voters in general, to be marginal marginal and in decline.
- University of Pennsylvania political scientist Dan Hopkins last year found average levels of anti-black and anti-Hispanic prejudice expressed by white Americans dropped significantly after Trump's election.
