“To the Black and Hispanic communities, I want to thank you for the tremendous outpouring of love and trust that you have shown me with your vote,” President Donald Trump said during his inauguration address Monday. “We set records and I will not forget it. I’ve heard your voices in the campaign and I look forward to working with you in the years to come.”
While it’s important to note that these numbers may change when the validated voter data is released, according to NBC’s exit polls, Trump got 13% of the Black vote and 46% of the Hispanic vote. The president improved on his 2016 numbers by 5 points with Black voters, and 18 points with Hispanic voters.
Regardless of how anyone feels about it, Trump’s coalition is multicultural and multiclass.
The data reveals a truth that’s been largely ignored in discussions about November’s election: Regardless of how anyone feels about it, Trump’s coalition is multicultural and multiclass. So was Vice President Kamala Harris’. America’s two dominant political parties, then, are engaged in a high-stakes debate over what the character of multiculturalism should be: whether it looks like Americans celebrating their distinctiveness or downplaying it. This debate is as old as the country, and every generation of Americans has had it; this is our time.
“Today is Martin Luther King Day,” Trump said in his speech Monday. “But in his honor, we will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true.” It is fair to say that the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. looms over every aspect of American culture and government in the same way that Thomas Jefferson’s and George Washington’s legacies do. King has attained a kind of Founding Father status because he, as a matter of historical record, was one of the founders of the multicultural republic that we all currently live in. This is why his “dream” is so often invoked with the same reverence as, say, “We the people.”
It is fair to say that a multicultural republic was part of King’s dream. But where do things stand in the multicultural republic he helped create but didn’t live to see?
According to the NBC exit polls, Trump received 57% of the white vote and 33% of the nonwhite vote. Harris received 42% of the white vote and 64% of the nonwhite vote.
The Republican and Democratic coalitions have always been diverse to an extent. But Trump’s performance with nonwhite voters this time finally caught people’s attention, despite him getting 26% of the nonwhite vote in 2020. It was shocking to those observers who’d accepted the classic framing that the right is the homogeneously white part of the political spectrum, and the left is the diversity end. This was always a specious claim, but the 2024 election exposed just how wrong it is and, not just because, as Noah Smith pointed out, Trump got a significant slice of the nonwhite vote, but also because Harris did better with white voters than Obama did in his 2012 rout of Mitt Romney.
What does this tell us about the state of the multicultural republic in 2025? That it is complicated in ways many people did not anticipate, based on their assumptions about the historical patterns of certain communities. They forgot that identity politics is as fluid as other forms of politics.
Saying that America is a melting pot is as self-evident as saying that the ocean is salty.
One of the standard metaphors that children are taught about America is that we are the melting pot. Saying that America is a melting pot is as self-evident as saying that the ocean is salty. However, views on what the character of multiculturalism should be are as diverse as the country itself. None aligns neatly with a political party, as the 2024 election results confirm. The views range from complete separatism to assimilation to integration with the maintaining of cultural distinctiveness, to a complete Creole blending where, to quote Belize from “Angels in America,” “race, taste and history finally overcome.”
This most profound debate over the character of American multiculturalism is happening in a country where millions of people remember life under Jim Crow; where fights over diversity, equity and inclusion programs and policies are happening against a backdrop of endemic racial and class neighborhood and school segregation; where clashes over immigration and how to tell the American story are raging; and where, according to the Census Bureau, “multiracial” is one of the fastest growing demographics. The number of people identifying as being of “two or more races” increased by 276% (from 9 million to 33.8 million) between 2010 and 2020. Of that number, 32.5 % of people identifying as multiracial are under 18. The debates are complicated and multifaceted because multiculturalism, with its rough and smooth edges and clashes over meaning for American culture, is complicated and multifaceted. Will the Republicans and the Democrats be able to maintain their multicultural coalitions? Political coalitions are, after all, fickle and can either evaporate or last for generations. Only time will tell. However, the question of the character of American multiculturalism is the nebula in which all other debates are currently raging. American society must finally have it without hiding behind platitudes, euphemisms or proxies, and without reservation. The winner gets to decide the path King’s multicultural republic will take. But at the present moment, President Trump has achieved something that many champions of multiculturalism are loath to admit. He put together a multicultural coalition of voters that supports his agenda; it’s just not a liberal one.
Nicholas Mitchell
Nicholas Mitchell is an assistant professor of curriculum studies at the University of Kansas. He is a curriculum theorist whose scholarship focuses on the intersection of education theory, policy and practice. He is the author of "On Bigotry" by Bloomsbury Publishing. 
