Two types of people respond well to the “law and order” BS:
1. White rural conservatives who don’t live in urban and suburban places. It’s culture war dog whistle for them: “You don’t want your small town (white) to become like Detroit or Baltimore (Black), do you?”
2. White conservatives in segregated suburbs like Long Island and much of the South. It’s a dog whistle for fear of the lower income, mostly Black and Hispanic areas nearby.
The one constant between these two: None of them live with or understand the communities they are afraid of. If they did, they would realize that the rhetoric about violence and unrest is exaggerated and made up, and they would have empathy for the concerns of folks who are suffering under racial inequality and injustice. Cultural conservatism and racist resentment is all about paranoia, which Trump amplifies in order to win their loyalty and votes.
I hate to be that guy, but inner city African American and Latino neighborhoods almost always suffer from high rates of crime, poverty, gang violence, etc. Have you ever personally been in Detroit, or Chicago, or any other majority minority city in America? The homicide rate in Detroit is over 50 per 100K people, similar to drug cartel run countries in Central America. I'm not racist or fearful of people of color, at all. All I am saying is we need to see the reality that these segregated inner city ghettos are really terrible places to live. I don't have all the answers for how to improve these places. Detroit has been gentrifying in recent years by vastly increasing the size and funding of their police force, removing urban blight, improving community services, and building up the downtown area to attract business and tourism. Hopefully the spike in violence this year (plus covid) doesn't set everything back for them.
