What does it mean to be antiracist, but to have racists in your family? A personal journey.
By: J Rutherford
Tags: Elections, Anti Racist, Racism, Bias, Trumpism

What does it mean to be antiracist, but to have racists in your family? A personal journey.

By Joshua Rutherford

What does it mean to be antiracist, but to have racists in your family?

This is a question that I know a lot of us have been asking this year. Living through the summer of 2020, full of protests of police brutality and funerals from the victims of coronavirus, how is it that these people don’t recognize Trump’s racism? When the person espousing bigoted ideology and embracing media from the far right turns out to be someone you love, do you ignore them, or try to talk about it? Why?

To start, let’s look back to 2016, and some of the examples of Trump using racism — by rallying his supporters around immigration, Trump found a means of exploiting a lingering sense of American Racism by turning his White Supporters into the Victim. Calling Mexicans “rapists” and Muslims “terrorists” is a direct employment of racist stereotyping, but because he represented these communities as a threat to white communities, his supporters wholeheartedly embraced his biased tropes. Many are shocked that so many are able to latch on to this blatant racism, but this is not something new, rather Trump has simply added the direct rhetoric that lower class white Americans failed to read in the GOP’s less obvious dog whistles addressed toward the “welfare state” rather than directly toward minority populations.

For years, GOP politicians have used “race baiting” to convince White America that they are at risk from minorities, gays, lesbians, and transsexuals — the sad thing is that it’s not even so much about the discrimination for these politicians — it is about stirring dissent among white inhabitants of the US. While Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes did not receive the same criticism as Trump has, their intention to leverage the lingering racist biases of white American for votes was no less present. Nixon and Reagan both attacked FDR’s New Deal policies and the “welfare state” — Reagan even went so far as to suggest that Affirmative Action was racist towards whites. But with past GOP presidents, rhetoric has been used to code the racial undertones into the message through Dog Whistle Politics.

The GOP agenda is one in opposition to Mutual Aid. Where FDR took initiative to develop programs to help All Americans find support from their Government, Reagan and Nixon flipped this argument to suggest that white taxpayers were effectively paying for minorities to be lazy under the New Deal policies, despite the evidence itself, which reveals that these programs predominately benefitted white, middle-class families. While supporters of these candidates believed that their elected officials were fighting to make sure their tax money was being used properly, the politicians shamelessly used the opportunity to slash taxes on the richest in America. Ultimately, the GOP strategy has been to leverage the racial biases of white voter in order to trick them into voting for policies that hurt them instead.

Whether it’s painting black women as “welfare queens”, “muslims as terrorists,” or “immigrants as rapists,” the GOP has repeatedly represented minority communities as a burgeoning threat to the livelihood of the white Middle Class through the use of racist tropes. Over time, the repetition of performative language, such as that of stereotypes, replaces the former understanding. Reagan knew that his supporters knew what he means by “welfare queens”, just like Bush did when he incorporated “terrorist” into his rhetoric as synonymous with Muslim, and Trump as well, with his insistence that “immigrants” are “mudrerers and rapists.” By discussing the policies, rather than the people, the GOP has established a convenient set of coded dog whistles which allow them to express that their policies will hurt minorities worse than whites by portraying white Americans as the victims, rather than the antagonists in our history. Supporters insist, they are “not racist,” they just want to protect their rights. Really, they want to protect their privilege while simultaneously ignoring their complicity to systemic racism.

For too long, racism has been equated with individual actions of malice — hate crimes and hate speech. So, by abstracting racism into policy rhetoric, these politicians avoid the label by avoiding explicit references to race. Because they can say “I am not racist, I am not even talking about blacks, I am talking about economics” they are enforcing this understanding of racism as a system of discrimination, rather than as a system of privilege. In this context, statistics are used to legitimate their dog whistles, and turn evidence of a discriminatory system into evidence of an irresponsible contingent within the population.

So, we can start to see here, how rhetoric has been coded in a way that encourages white voters to support policies based on protecting their own interests. The US has always been a capitalist economy, and citizens have always been taught self-sufficiency as a core value of our constitution, so the populations that struggle to take care of themselves due to inequalities resulting from past American policies, such as slavery and Jim Crow are represented as lazy or irresponsible, rather than recognizing that poverty can be inherited just like wealth. The GOP enforces this narrative in its attempts to cut social services and social security. The argument becomes “why should we provide these services to those in need, when the rest of us are taking care of our own families?” The blame is shifted from inherited inequities to individuals being too irresponsible to support one’s own family, which “is not racist, it’s common sense.” By avoiding explicitly mentioning race, and fearmongering to white voters about how “their tax money” is being used, these politicians are attempting to sell biased policies that disadvantage minorities and privilege white communities as though they’re based on “common sense” and not exploitation.

Common sense in this country is all to often equated with maintaining privilege and inequalities, but really it should be common sense to reject this mindset. While the codes were shrouded with past politicians, Trump is not trying to hide anything — and that is why this year is so different. Trump doesn’t use a code to express his racism in many situations. His repeated refusals to condemn white supremacy, and his insistence on enforcing policies that hurt Muslims and immigrants reveal his biases. His rallies make clear, the more racist he gets, the more his supporters like him. That he is endorsed most highly by the KKK and other White Supremacist groups is a testament to his racism, despite that many of his supporters continue to accept that he is “not racist,” because he has said so, and the media has bolstered it for them, allowing them to maintain their comfort. The cycle of history repeats itself. There is bias in this country, and it is strong. It has existed for years, and it is not new to Trump. The veil is just getting thinner. And yet, as thin as the veil is now, November’s election has shown us that this sentiment is still strong in our country.

I can remember being told many times, when commenting on a relative saying something overtly racist, “times were different then.” But are they so different now? So little has changed. While I do love my family, how can I “respect my elders” when they have reduced themselves to supporting bigotry and racism outright? So for me, the answer to how we should deal with “racist” family members starts with recognizing that statements like these are justifications, a sort of double consciousness that many of us have grown up surrounded by, and are confronting now.

Having recently become a father before the 2016 election, social media was the bottom of my priorities, but when I logged into Facebook after the first debate, I was astounded to see many members of my family outwardly supporting Donald Trump. It was disgusting to me, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to them — am I some kind of expert to be able to educate them on racism? Convincing myself I was not, I signed out of Facebook. But I started reading.

I recognized right away my own biases were reflected in my personal library, full of famous Western novels and theory from white men. So I started there — I chose not to read anything written by a white man, for at least a year. And I am glad I did. I found so much empathy, and struggled through biases I didn’t even know I had. I cried, constantly — tears of both joy and sorrow.

And yet, when I came back to social media this election cycle. The biases in my family persisted, in most cases even deepened. While I had undertaken a journey of my own, others were only becoming more accepting of outwardly racist rhetoric and policy. Nothing had changed for them, but I now understood racism… perhaps I could change their minds? It’s hard to give up on people you love.

I went full on aggressive anti-racist in my personal social media posts. I ran a sort of campaign against my family’s racist memes — the slogan was something like this: “Donald Trump is a racist, and supporting him reveals your willingness to be complicit to racism.” In addition to posting in this vein daily, I also fact checked their memes, shared articles reflecting the truth of the situation, and legitimately begged them to try and understand how they were supporting racism. I got blocked. Fast.

The thing is, as willing as I was to accept my biases, to try and confront them and learn from my mistakes, to try and be a better person. My family was more committed to maintaining their reality — they were not ready to accept their complicity, because it would involve being critical of their past. But seriously, why not learn from these failures?

I love my family, and I would never wish harm upon another body. But this is the moment I realized that decency had nothing to do with it, these people were not subscribing to truth anymore, they subscribed to rhetoric. So my approach changed — essentially, “F*CK DONALD TRUMP” became my motto. If I couldn’t change my family’s mind — I’d let everyone else know where I stand.

Despite the fact that my family had blocked me, others had tagged along on my posts and saw me trying to talk with my family. When I came out more aggressive, they shared with me their support. Many of my friends started posting similarly, and having conversations with family members on their own walls. While I failed at changing my family’s mind, within my network I was a catalyst for others to have these conversations with their own families. To be honest, it still sucks that these members of my family would rather block me than have a real conversation with me. But that my parents and sister have started to learn more and have embraced my controversial position is an affirmation, just as my friends’ actions are.

The norm for our generation has been to turn the blind eye. But we don’t have to do that — if we actually want to help end racism, then we need to address it daily. We need to call out people’s biases, and we need to make it acceptable to be an anti-racist. Respecting our elders because times were different then has only brought those times into the twenty-first century. My aunt knows, I won’t legitimate her biases any more, and I am okay with taking that comfort away from her. Accountability starts within our own circles — I am willing to put myself on the line to try to keep these people in my life, they should be willing to talk at the very least. And if we normalize these conversations, maybe some day they will.

I don’t forgive them for voting for Trump. “Respecting those who vote differently” is just like respecting your elders — it validates ignorance. When voting differently means taking away rights from others I love, I can’t respect it. Whatever happened to “doing unto others”, well — if I am ever erring on the side of evil, I hope they’d do the same for me.

*some ideas are based on my reading of Ian Haney-Lopez’s book, Dog Whistle Politics (2014) — I highly recommend reading it.