It’s Not Good Enough to Call Trump a Racist
By: Sam Mckenzie Jr.
Tags: Elections, White Supremacy, Politics, Racism, Race

It’s Not Good Enough to Call Trump a Racist

There are better questions and bigger problems

When I was a kid, I had an annoying habit of asking my dad questions even when I already knew the answers to my questions. Eventually, my dad told me not to ask him questions if I already knew the answers. I never forgot that lesson. And as an adult, it’s clear my dad’s instructions aren’t a journalistic standard.

Recently in a live interview, Robert Costa from the Washington Post asked the presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg if Trump is a racist. Buttigieg lightly affirmed, once again, what most Americans know is true — Trump is a racist. Buttigieg gave examples; he said, “we have to respond to the racism that is emanating from this White House,” and he also said the question, “is almost academic.”

Actually, the question was an insult. The question itself is insulting to the hearts and minds trying to survive this racist regime. And yet that question continues.

Even the affirmative answers to the question can be weak because it’s not good enough to call Trump a racist. It’s not good enough to call Trump a white supremacist or a white nationalist. Donald Trump isn’t white America’s everyday racist. The bone-spur president is no foot soldier. Racists have ranks.

Trump is a racist demagogue from the racist family tree of George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and the Bushes. In the book Dog Whistle Politics, the professor and writer Ian Haney Lopez outlines the history of racist demagogues who used racist dog whistles to win white voters.

Racist demagogues, most often in the Republican Party, use existing white racism to invoke and strengthen white solidarity to enrich white agendas. White racism is the glue of white solidarity; it needs an immediate dissolution.

The facts are clear: As a majority, white voters haven’t supported a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson. It’s not a coincidence. White America has racialized the two major political parties. It’s by design.

We know that design as the “Southern Strategy” to win white voters. But the Southern part of the term is a misnomer. Rather, the United States is as George Wallace said — “the whole United States is Southern.” Rather, the United States is as Malcolm X said — “The Mason-Dixon line begins at the Canadian border.”

Racist countries elect racist presidents. That’s what they do. All the progress in America still produced a Trump presidency. Without a racist nation, it wouldn’t be so easy for racist demagogues like Trump to gain power. To me, that means the white mob is worse than the man.

More than the racist demagogues, the bigger crisis is a racist white America. Racist demagogues die. But they are easily and repeatedly replaced because whiteness is a stain that remains. I’m not interested to see Trump fall just so another like him can rise.

To call Trump a racist alone can elide the fact that America itself is racist. What’s the point of talking about the monster and not his maker? Any Democratic politician who doesn’t start with the basis that America is racist has it wrong.

Racist dog whistles and whiteness require a direct address and counterarguments. It’s not as simple as having the best plans, having moderate plans, and having an agenda besides beating Trump. Many Republican voters willingly vote for whiteness even to their own injury.

In Jonathan Metzl’s book, Dying of Whiteness, he compares the supporters of Republican policies to kamikazes. They’re down with the mission, and they’ll go down for the mission. For there to be any sustained change, white America has to abort its mission of whiteness.

Based on the research by Ian Haney Lopez, in Dog Whistle Politics, white voters pull up and away from their downward spiral of a mission when politicians pair race and class. Other research shows empathetic conversations are effective to change voters.

My point is not that Democrats should fight to win whiteness. Instead, Democrats must fight to end whiteness. They need to figure out whatever works. And whatever works should top the plan of attack.

To win elections, and to stop the stacking of the courts, which is an effort to break the will of voters, Democrats need to make antiracist work a department of the federal government. It’s that serious.

As it stands now, Democrats approach indicting white racism the way Nancy Pelosi approaches impeachment. If you can’t talk about white racism during the Trump administration, when can you?

White racism is a kitchen table issue. It’s a sickbed issue. It’s a school desk issue. It’s a retirement issue. It’s an infrastructure issue. It’s a national security issue. Whatever issue anyone has with the Trump administration — white racism is the access road, the on ramp, and the causeway. White racism is the highway to hell.

If Democrats don’t have a specific plan to address their biggest problem which is white racism, then they don’t have a plan that will work for long. In that case, white voters will continue to elect racist demagogues. And that means the insulting questions with known answers — that people have asked and answered time and time again — will continue to circle.

Grown people should know better than to ask questions that keep America at step one. To call the questions and the responses predictable isn’t good enough either. More accurately, they’re despicable.