It has freed us from any illusions we may have had about a certain segment of White America.
Although Joe Biden won this election, Black America has lost some hope. It was heartening to see so many white people dancing in the streets on Saturday after Biden’s victory was announced. But the fact that a president who is widely viewed as racist can still get so many white votes, after also downplaying a pandemic that has killed at least 234,000 Americans, is chilling.
I’m still trying to digest that side of White America. Trump’s 2016 victory could be dismissed as fluke, the political equivalent of a three-point shot against a flawed opponent. But Trump’s ability to bring this presidential race so close after what the United States has seen and heard in the past four years is proof that our country has a large and enduring white electorate that is willing to ignore or support explicit racism. .
That segment of white America has taught me some lessons about America that I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
The Bitter Truths of Trumpism
Now I know that a president can refuse to denounce a far-right group that has been labeled misogynist, Islamophobic, and anti-immigration during a presidential debate while urging him to “back off and stay out of it,” and millions of white voters will not care. .
Now I know that a president can tell four non-white congressmen that they should “go back” to the “crime-infested places” from which they came, and say that there were “very good people” marching alongside neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia. .
Now I know that a president can call the first woman of color on a presidential list of a major political party “very disgusting” and claim that African, Haitian, and Salvadoran immigrants come from “shitty” countries.
Now I know that a president can call NFL players protesting police brutality “sons of bitches,” declare that there was “something very beautiful” about the use of tear gas by troops against anti-racist protesters and call to statues dedicated to Confederate soldiers who fought to preserve slavery “beautiful” examples of “our heritage.”
Now I know that a president can call a deadly coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and the “Kung flu,” and that he can use a racial slur while honoring Native American veterans in a ceremony at the White House.
And now I know that a president can be accused by his niece of using the N word and can hardly cause any protests.
I once thought that crude displays of racism by elected leaders were as old-fashioned as black and white televisions. I still remember, not too long ago, when a white American senator heading for re-election abruptly ended his chances, and his political career, when he used an obscure racial slur to describe an American Indian man at a campaign stop. .
Yet Trump built a white wall of racial resentment among his supporters that refused to collapse, no matter what he said or did.
Of course, not all Trump voters are white. In fact, Trump received a higher proportion of black votes than in 2016.
But the majority of African Americans had already made up their minds about Trump: At least 80% of African Americans in a Washington Post-Ipsos poll released in January think he is racist.
His dominance over a certain segment of white America strikes us so disconcerting that a black scholar used the language of addiction to describe him.
Carol Anderson, author of “White Rage,” wrote that under Trump many Americans are tied to the “most devastating and reality-distorting drug to ever hit America”: white supremacy.
“It has caused millions of Americans to abandon their God and throw off their patriotism just to prove it,” he wrote. “With its elevated effects, its users felt powerful, intoxicating, even as they and everything around them disintegrated.”
Two sides of white America
But my education doesn’t end there. To be fair, the Trump era also taught me about another side of white America.
Now I know that probably millions of white Americans were willing to risk their lives in the midst of a pandemic to take to the streets to protest racial injustice.
Now I know that there are countless white Americans who swallowed tear gas and received rubber bullets in the face while standing shoulder to shoulder with black and brown anti-racism protesters.
Now I know how intoxicating as Trump’s unholy trifecta of racism, sexism, and anti-immigrant hostility was for millions of white Americans, the majority rejected it. It never reached a 50% approval rating. More than half of all Americans think he is racist, according to a recent poll.
Now I know that many white Americans were so disgusted by what they saw and heard these past four years that they flocked in record numbers to vote against Trump.
Now I also know that I am not the only black person who feels this.
Harry Belafonte, the activist and singer who was a central figure in the civil rights movement, also spoke this week about the other White America. He said that “despite all the bitter lessons we have learned” from the Trump presidency, he has also learned something else:
“That we have never had so many white allies, willing to unite for freedom, for honor, for a justice that will liberate us all in the end, even those who are now most fearful and seething with denial.”
Still, it’s what I don’t know that is most disturbing.
What if there was no pandemic? What if the economy continued to perform well and most people’s 401 (k) were nice and fat? Would it have been enough for the majority of white Americans to return Trump to power?
Would they have found a way to rationalize Trump’s racism, or downplay it by calling it otherwise “ethno-nationalism” or “racial burden”?
The Trump presidency was a widespread event for racism. But I wonder if much of White America has developed such tolerance for racism that they see no need for change.
Biden’s potential victory won’t offer herd immunity from what Trump unleashed these past four years. People who cheered or ignored his racism are going nowhere, and neither is he. According to an article in the Daily Beast, “Senior officials from both parties are preparing for a world in which he and the kind of politics he unleashed remain a predominant force for the foreseeable future.”
The hardest lesson of all
I once thought America was on its way to planning the kind of country Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. evoked in his “I Have a Dream” speech. Sure, there would be bumps and bruises, but we would get there. We were on our way to becoming the compassionate, multi-religious, multi-racial democracy that the late historian Vincent Harding loved to conjure up.
But I have experienced emotions these past four years that I never expected. I’ve seen former white friends, people I thought I knew, gloating on social media about Trump’s racism. I have heard many of my friends and family say that they were hesitant to go out in public on Election Day because they were afraid of being attacked by angry targets.
Those are the same kinds of stories I heard from older relatives who traveled Jim Crow South.
The morning after Election Day was even worse. My phone lit up with text messages and voice messages from incredulous friends and family. One friend said he couldn’t believe that so many Americans would vote for a man whose administration snatched children from the arms of migrant mothers. A relative told me that he thinks white voters “don’t give a shit about” us, “and he’s ashamed to be an American.
Now I begin to lose faith in democracy itself. Perhaps the people are too tribal to build a true multi-racial and multi-religious democracy. Perhaps Greek philosophers like Socrates were right when they said that democracies were inherently unstable because people could not be trusted to choose wise leaders.
Perhaps millions of white Americans will never accept me as an equal, no matter what I or others like me do.
I am thankful for the many white Americans who risked their lives to support black protesters and other people of color this year.
But now I know that millions of white Americans remain MAGA to the end, even though Trump lost. Some of them even took to the streets this week to claim that the elections were stolen.
Trump may be defeated, but Trumpism and its kind of white racial grievance are here to stay.
That has been the hardest lesson of all.
