“They shall not replace us.”
Chant from the Charlottesville while supremacist marchers in August, 2017
There are many ways to interpret the conviction of Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd. A rogue cop. A unique confluence of ubiquitous video evidence and a rare police force willing to testify against their own. A step forward in the ugly statistic that a Black individual confronting a cop has triple the probability of getting killed vs a White person. Just a speed bump in a society where the majority of America is about to shift to ethnic and racial minorities and away from Anglo-Saxon/White European heritage. Or a tipping point.
As the era of Jim Crow laws prove, Dixiecrats fought solidly against African-American equality for a century, with a wink and a nod or more from Democrats in general. Woodrow Wilson purged the US Civil Service of Black Americans. The Ku Klux Klan rose fiercely in that Wilsonian and post-Wilsonian era. Segregated military units fought in WWII. Civil rights rulings – like the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education pioneer school integration case – and legislation (most in the 1960s) – came later.
After a three-steps-forward-two-steps-back century of slow recognition of racial justice, here we are. The new banner for official racism was legitimized by Donald Trump, and the idolization of Mr. Trump by the vast majority of elected Republicans has resulted in an almost official “I’m not a racist but…” racist platform that defines the elected GOP in 2021. Indeed, the staunch support of the “big lie” (that Trump was the real winner of the presidential race) immediately followed by a litany of voter suppression legislation actually passed or proposed and likely to pass in Trump-sworn red states is dramatically targeted at voting patterns and election behavior that truly defines Black and Brown voters.
There is no way to embrace these legislative changes without also embracing the racism that underlies the effort. Trump lost, and Georgia has two Democratic US Senators, Arizona voted blue, because minority-becoming-a-majority voters made it so. To win elections Republicans have determined that Black and Brown voters need to be disenfranchised through voter suppression and gerrymandering so that the results of 2020 will not happen again.
The pro “law and order” (read: white rule) segment of the GOP is watching popular sentiment turn against what has been routine blue-on-Black-and-Brown brutality for what seems to be an eternity. If that sentiment holds, well, progress will be made. But backing “law and order” – sanctifying even unsavory police actions as long as crimes rates fall – has been and is likely to continue in red state America without substantial pushback from the feds (now possible without Trump) and the “people.” Will disgust – visible on video – finally triumph?
But what was once closet racism has been now legitimized. When you hear that the Black Lives Matter movement (statistically the largest and most peaceful such movement in American history) is “antifa” (a philosophy often mischaracterized as if it were an organization) at work, when you hear politicians’ rail at the removal of monuments to slave owners and those who tortured and murdered their slaves as “cancel culture,” that is racism trying to find justification.
There are even less subtle forms of racist expression, almost always conducted by individuals who self-proclaim that they are “not racist.” For example, in mid-April, “two of the Trumpiest Republicans in the House of Representatives, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona, said they were forming a new ‘America First Caucus’ to champion former President Trump’s policies during his exile at Mar-a-Lago.
“Among the principles in its draft manifesto was this passage, under the heading of ‘Immigration’: ‘America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.’… It said legal immigration should be curtailed because too many recent immigrants have ‘refused to abandon their old loyalties.’
“House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield quickly disavowed the move. ‘The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln,’ he tweeted, ‘not nativist dog whistles.’ Greene and Gosar abruptly announced that they didn’t plan to form a caucus after all…
“Their views date to an ugly strain in American history, the 19th century nativism that held that the ‘Anglo-Saxon race,’ meaning white Protestants from northern Europe, was superior to all other civilizations.
“As a modern electoral strategy, Anglo-Saxonism falls somewhat short. Taken literally, it excludes not only Black, Latino and Asian Americans, but Irish Americans, Italian Americans and Jewish Americans as well — at least 63% of the population… No wonder McCarthy felt compelled to denounce it; the GOP is small enough without expelling Irish Americans like him.
“Greene and Gosar were right, however, to think they were carrying on the tradition of Trump, who stoked white fear, defended Confederate monuments and called Black Lives Matter ‘a symbol of hate.’... And it’s not a long way from there to Tucker Carlson, the ratings king of Fox News, who has been telling viewers that Democrats want to increase legal immigration to ‘replace’ white voters with ‘new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.’
“That appeal to racism was so blatant that the Anti-Defamation League denounced it as ‘white supremacist’ and demanded that Carlson resign. Fox News, which is owned by an immigrant from Australia, said its executives didn’t see anything racist in the evidence-free conspiracy their star was peddling.” Doyle McManus writing for the Los Angeles Times, April 21st.
Indeed, that “party of Lincoln” used federal troops to integrate southern schools that refused to accept Black students under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Republicans in Congress frequently voted to support reforms to create or enhance racial equality. Ronald Reagan found ways to bring undocumented workers from south of our border into this country legally and eventually to become citizens. George W Bush unsuccessfully sponsored immigration reform that would have created a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented people.
Today, the GOP is counting on the traditional mid-term election in 2022 scenario when normally (but not always), the party controlling the presidency and/or one or both houses of Congress lose seats, often sliding into a minority position. But the GOP is painting itself into a corner. If not directly racists, the GOP has the Trump-generated cast of not rejecting racism. Given the shifting American demographics, that just might be political suicide. Trumpist racism and populism may resonate with the Base and white supremacists, but it cost him the election.
“[Minority leader] McCarthy doesn’t want his party to look racist — but he feels a need to make it welcoming for voters and members of Congress who hold racist views. Whether or not that makes the GOP a racist institution, it has chosen to be racist-friendly. Republican politics, including the noisy version that appears on Fox News, looks like a series of attempts to normalize white nationalism.
“So far, it’s not working very well. One reason Trump lost his campaign for reelection was that his nativist rhetoric drove college-educated white voters away. It may also be one of the reasons the percentage of voters who consider themselves Republicans has sunk to 25% in the Gallup Poll, a nine-year low… As the non-Anglo-Saxon part of the electorate grows, staying cozy with white nationalism will be a losing strategy for the GOP.” Simply put, this rhetoric is on the wrong side of history.
I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps the recent surfacing of what used to be hidden racism just might be what the doctor ordered to squeeze it out of our nation as much as possible.
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