Social Minority Political Leaders: Increased Backlash or Increased Exposure?

It is undeniable that there has been a wave of radical right-wing movements detected worldwide. However, there also has been a certain degree of pushback with social minority political leaders achieving important political offices. Whether is it gender, ethnicity, social class or sexual orientation, the backgrounds of political leaders seem to be more diverse than old, upper class and/or of European descent, which were characteristics conventionally associated with authority figures. Even though the presence of these leaders does not automatically signify improved status of the social groups that they belong and identify with, it is still questionable whether they (un)intentionally transform how their ingroups are perceived by others: during the tenure of former President Barack Obama of the US and the birth of Black Lives Matter movements during his tenure following a series of police violence against African American community. Did we witness increased media attention and mass outrage over such violence because of the first African American president, or did the cases and intensity of violence targeting African Americans increase because the presence of Obama triggered a sense of threat to those who believe in White supremacy? Following the election of the first female president in Korea, there also were similar trends; the violence targeting women seems to have increased or at least gained more media and mass attention. Was the presence of a female president in the still patriarchal society of Korea triggered anti-feminist and misogynist violence, or did it encourage media and citizens to pay more attention? The research aims to analyse the changes in pro-minority legislations and executive orders before and after the election of the leaders and any changes in policies during their tenure in order to verify if the minority political leaders do, in fact, implement policies or measures that favour the minority and hence cause any shifts in power dynamics using their authority. Furthermore, the changes in hate crimes will be studied in order to verify any trends in open backlash against minority groups before and after the elections. The comparison between the cases reported either to the police or civil society and the reports on media will be made in order to observe if there were any discrepancies or different characteristics between the two discourses. Furthermore, interviews and discourse analyses from the political leaders themselves and major media coverage will be utilised in order to offer deeper analyses. The research intends to incorporate comparative case studies in order to illustrate its points. The cases of Barack Obama (US) and Rishi Sunak (UK) will be used to study the relationship between racial/ethnic implications on backlashes, the cases of Park Guen-Hye (South Korea) and Dilma Rousseff (Brazil) for the presence of women in high political offices, and those of Leo Varadkar (Ireland) and Xavier Better (Luxemburg) for the relation between LGBT+ presence and social backlash.