One Trump supporter fully expects to be berated by his family members on Thanksgiving — but he still feels fully justified in his decision to back the president because his college English professors decided to put less emphasis on texts written by white men.

Writing in Politico, Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein explains that he is the only member of his immediate family to support President Donald Trump. What’s more, he says that he understands why so many of them dislike the president, especially his mother, who has had to put up with men like Trump throughout her life.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Any career woman, especially a single one, who entered the workforce in 1970 is never, ever going to look at Donald Trump as anything but a sexist bully,” he writes. “She remembers too many ill-mannered bosses and co-workers, condescending males who, when they didn’t hit on her, dismissed or exploited her. My mother made a go of it and put up with a lot. Those humiliations don’t fade.”

However, he says that his own painful experiences deserve recognition as well, such as when left-wing college professors dismissed the works of dead white male writers in college.

“When I first saw identity politics at work, I was a graduate student in English at UCLA in the 1980s,” he writes. “These were the years when the heritage of genius and beauty was recast as a bunch of Dead White Males. Western civilization slipped from a lineage of reason and talent, free inquiry and unsuppressed creativity, into ‘Eurocentrism,’ one group’s advance at the expense of others, women and people of color.”

In conclusion, Bauerlein writes that Trump’s candidacy heartened him and made him believe that there was finally someone standing up for the greatness of dead white men.

“When Donald Trump stood in that square in Warsaw and unapologetically hailed Western civilization, I felt a 30-year discouragement lift ever so slightly,” he writes. “That’s my experience, and I’m happy to share it this season.”