The Quiet Racism of MAGA-land

 

     Scratch the surface and the racism isn't hard to find

Social media exchanges between liberals and Trump supporters often devolve into liberals calling them racist, and the Trump supporters denying it. In many cases, neither of them is lying, but the MAGA responses to the charges are often telling. Usually, their reaction will show deeply flawed logic and a misunderstanding of history. Occasionally, if they think they’re in a safe place and can speak openly, the racism will just come flowing out, even if they are unable to recognize it themselves.

I Love the Blacks

Most of the defenses against charges of racism coming out of MAGA-land have elements of truth to them, like the classic, I can’t be a racist because I have black friends. This seems to come out of the believe that being a racist means you hate all black people. Would a member of the Ku Klux Klan go out to lunch with their African American co-worker or have a black podiatrist? Of course not. In reality, being a racist only requires that you think some races, likely your own, is better in some ways than other races. So, it’s entirely possible to like your African American neighbor, and still be a racist.

 Flawed History

Often the MAGA crowd will go down rabbit holes of historical examples based on half-truths that only distract from the issue at hand. This is usually in response to being called out for supporting some right-wing policy that is grounded in racist ideology. I’m going to touch on a few of them, each could be an article in their own right, but I want to illustrate how this line of thinking works.

Trump supporters love to talk about white slavery and how no one ever talks about that. The treatment of Irish indentured servants is a common topic. White indentured servitude is a complicated subject. In some cases, people entered indentured servitude of their own free will, and after completing their indenture received a bonus before going on to become prosperous farmers or skilled laborers. However, in other cases, authorities forced them into it, and illegally extended their indenture or denied them their contracted bonus payments. Occasionally white indentured servants were treated even worse than slaves because if a white indentured servant dies, it actually saves the owners from paying out the bonus at the end of their indenture. An African slave, on the other hand, was an investment in the future, they didn’t want them to die.

This is all true, but also overlooks a lot. Irish indentured servants were treated as bad as slaves for a relatively short period of time, and even then, if they managed to survive, they would eventually get their freedom. Their children weren’t born into slavery and potentially sold off. Irish indentured servants, as British citizens, usually had more rights and access to the legal system which was typically denied to African slaves. Perhaps most importantly, the Irish as an ethnic group didn’t suffer the same long-term discrimination as African Americans and had much greater opportunities for advancement after gaining their freedom. The history of indentured servitude is both interesting and important, but it doesn’t in any way diminish the reality of centuries of systemic racism directed at African Americans.

They Did It Too

Similarly, Trump supporters often bring up other historical examples of slavery as well. They do this to show how white people have also been victims, to show how Africans were complicit in the slave trade, or to show how Europeans were only doing what other ethnic groups had done throughout history. Even when they get the facts right though, it’s still just a distraction. Yes, we should teach about other historical atrocities as well. No ethnic group has an untainted history. However, they don’t have the same impact on current American life as the African slave trade.

All this highlights the problematic way the right-wing views history. They see it as a means to assign blame. If the African slave trade was a great evil done by white people, that means they share a portion of that blame. Assigning blame is not the point of studying history. History is a means to understand the world and how it came to be the way it is. When you understand the reasons African Americans on average have less personal wealth and make less money than white people is due to centuries of systematic denial of opportunities, the world starts to make more sense. But it also means acknowledging that as a white person, you may have inherited some benefit based on the color of your skin that your African American neighbor didn’t. MAGA-land does not want to acknowledge that fact.

There It Is

There’s a natural progression from the denial of the lasting impact of centuries of slavery and Jim Crow laws. If the on average less accumulated wealth and higher levels of arrests and other social ills isn’t the result of systemic racism, then it must be something inherent in African Americans. That’s the quiet part they don’t want to say aloud, but they sometimes let it slip. I’ve included a couple social media comments as examples, but it’s a pretty simple line of reasoning. On the whole, they believe slavery was good for African Americans, because without it they would be starving in Africa today. Even though they know I’m a liberal, I guess they figure I’m white enough they can just say it without getting called out on the blatant racism. Because this is far from an outlier position in the MAGA-verse, I’m going to address why it’s as obviously racist as it sounds.

Screen capture of a public Facebook conversation. Text is unchanged, but has been reformatted for the purposes of clarity. 

First, not everyone in Africa is starving, in fact starvation in Africa is uncommon. In places where starvation does occur, it’s usually the result of political unrest that often traces its roots back to European colonialism. In fact, much of the turmoil in Africa is a direct result of the fallout from colonization. For most of history Africa wasn’t a particularly poor region of the world. The uncivilized barbarians were the hordes to the north, much of Africa was part of the prosperous and civilized world.

It also ignores that without the slave trade and centuries of racist policies there would likely have been plenty of free immigration from Africa. It’s a fantasy to imagine that without slavery America would be a white country. A "New World" that treated Africans the same as Europeans would certainly have attracted Africans looking for fresh start with new opportunities just like it attracted Europeans.

Fantasy ≠ Fact

This is an uncomfortable reality that Trump’s right-wing supporters really don’t want to acknowledge. Much better to live in the fantasy world in which European and African Americans have the same opportunities for success and any differences in outcomes are the result of African inferiority. That’s why they can’t have any mention of Critical Race Theory in schools, it raises uncomfortable questions. That’s why they want classroom discussions of slavery to include the ways slavery benefited the formerly enslaved.

I referred to this as “quiet racism” in the title because these people aren’t lynching anyone or putting up whites only signs in their businesses. Of course, that’s largely due to civil rights laws and social norms that don’t allow public displays of racism. Still, they’re not actively engaged in openly racist behavior. Not only that, but they often, genuinely don’t know why anyone would think they’re racist, even as they also believe that the white benevolence of slavery saved African Americans from starvation in a “shit hole” African country.

Conclusion

The cognitive dissonance needed to support this world view demands the creation of a non-fact base reality. One in which Donald Trump is a poor victim of the liberal elites rather than a trust fund baby who couldn’t make money running a casino. The truth is far too dangerous. The fantasy must be maintained or the facade of their reality could crack and crumble to the ground, letting in the cold light of reality.