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Rainbow coalition cost Clinton the US election

The writer of “US election a warning that race is a divisive card” (Nov 18) is right about the importance of being race-blind in ensuring national unity. He is wrong, however, about the reason that Mr Donald Trump won.

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Clement Wee Hong En

The writer of “US election a warning that race is a divisive card” (Nov 18) is right about the importance of being race-blind in ensuring national unity. He is wrong, however, about the reason that Mr Donald Trump won.

While media outfits such as The Associated Press, CNN and The New York Times have portrayed Mr Trump as racist, in his book “Crippled America”, his description of his policies on preventing illegal immigration, albeit with a wall, are sensible.

As some of his supporters had reminded their fellow citizens, Canada has such policies in place. Singapore does too. Is identifying illegal immigration as an issue considered racism?

Mr Trump played and is still playing the nationalist card, with unnerving implications for the rest of the world, but the nationalist card is not necessarily a monoracial card.

In contrast, the Democratic Party, with its support for groups such as Black Lives Matter, which in Singapore would be known as a gangster group, was playing the race card actively.

Mrs Hillary Clinton’s rainbow coalition was an attempt to play African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans off against whites, uniting them against white privilege. That is an illustration of promoting racialism.

If there is a lesson here, it is that national leaders should not aim to create rainbow coalitions that play up deep-seated differences between one another, as Mrs Clinton and the Democrats did at this election.

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