The truth is there are white nationalists in the United States of America.
The truth is there is systemic racism in the United States of America such that whites generally have better outcomes than non whites. Simply put, you have probabilistic better or worse outcomes based on the color of your skin and that is fucked up.
Another truth is there is implicit bias in this world of ours – an (un)intended byproduct of systemic racism – such that a perhaps uncomfortable truth is everyone is at least a little bit racist.
Another truth is the last paragraph – and that’s skipping the great filter of the second paragraph – was disagreeable for some white (and non white!) people reading. Some of these people reject the notion that they have implicit bias and these people should probably go take this test and realize the truth. Some of these people disagree that implicit bias makes someone a racist. Instead, they believe someone in their own mind must be explicitly making decisions based on race to be a racist. Further, these people think being a racist has nothing to do with systemic racism – you could be considered racist by e.g. creating a scholarship fund that has race requirements for eligibility.
I think this second category of people exists, is fairly large, and these people are reasonable although staunch in their definition of racism. Thus, I think dialog that will yield action that battles systemic racism requires focus on the problem without assigning a label to whoever is responsible for the problem. This is especially true since people are going to reject the label on semantics, even though they may agree that there is an underlying problem. These people are thus left behind, putting themselves on team “not a racist” where they actively work against those trying to solve the problem. These people are often unknowing about the problem; they didn’t get far enough to understand before joining team “not a racist”.
I am writing this because on the morning of August 3, 2019 a domestic terrorist massacred 22 people and injured 24 more. This terrorist published a manifesto – which I have read but will not link to – that says in insane maniac form that this act of terror was his last desperate attempt to do something about the illegal immigration ruining the United States of America. I think President Donald Trump is incompetent and should have been impeached for many reasons like this one. Trump’s incompetence includes perpetrating myths about illegal immigrants in the United States of America while generally stoking racial tensions with reckless abandon.
Given all this, right now in response to this tragedy (and the other mass shooting this past weekend) there is a non-zero amount of discourse around whether Trump is a racist, and Trump in turn is transforming that into a discussion around Democrats calling everyone racist as they mostly continue to call just Trump a racist. This discourse is no longer focused on the problems – we’re arguing about a label – and thus we’re not making progress towards solutions. My argument is that to be most effective politicians must resist getting into this label game and instead hold Trump accountable for his actions, clearly identify problems, and push for solutions to thus harness a winning coalition of voters and enact those solutions.
Enter congresswoman Abigal Spanberger , who this morning offered her thoughts on whether President Trump is a racist, in this article in the Fredericksburg.
“I can’t make that judgment one way or the other,” Spanberger said. “I think he says things that hurt people. I think he says things that divide a community, I think he says things that I wish he would not say. But I don’t know the man and I want to believe that there is goodness in everyone. I want to believe the best intentions in everyone.”
Spanberger added: “I truly, truly hope that perhaps this shooting in El Paso has been a wake-up call for [Trump] to change some of the rhetoric, to be more purposeful in what he says, and to recognize that his words, more than anyone else in the world, his words have a significant power. And I don’t think that he’s been using the power of his words in a responsible way at times.”
She later tweeted to Fredericks to say that Trump “has frequently made racist statements and stoked division in our communities with hurtful, bigoted, and incendiary language.”
(The whole article is worth reading – though I quoted a large chunk of it – as it offers Spanberger’s thoughts on current political discourse at large. I disagree with her thoughts on the use of public data to invoke opprobrium against Trump supporters, but that will have to be another post.)
As you might expect, I actually found this article on Twitter because someone was calling out Spanberger for not simply calling Trump a racist. I 100% disagree of course – I think this is excellent discourse that does a great job holding Trump accountable for his actions that contribute to violence in the United States of America. Moreover, I think it is the type of discourse that is hard to reject outright, and instead forces people to consider thoughtfully what impact Trump’s actions have on our nation.