I'm Not Racist (Am I?)

Scarcely an hour goes by without another opinion piece or news article asking how this damn election can be a toss-up. Regardless of relatively minor policy squabbles, Kamala Harris is competent and experienced and Donald Trump is increasingly bonkers.

Don’t be confused by long and detailed analyses. The reason the election is close is quite simple: The stubborn reality of a nation born of and steeped in white male supremacy. 

This ugly truth takes many forms, some explosively overt and others so subtle as to be subconscious, but it is a truth we are loath to acknowledge and fully confront.

While advances in women’s and civil rights are undeniable, despite some recent backslides, these advances have had a largely unexamined collateral side effect. In light of the supposedly universal agreement that these advances were necessary and good, it is very bad form to utter anything in explicit disagreement. At the outskirts of civilization, where MAGA zealots congregate, sexist or racist utterances are probably not verboten, but when such denizens emerge into the light of more polite company, even they are more cautious. 

But despite the disproportionate attention MAGA antics draw, the number of cap-wearing, pistol-packin’, pick-up thunderin’ zealots is near-negligible and will have no material impact on the election. The Trump support we don’t so easily observe resides in our familiar neighborhoods and local coffee shops. Here we find kind and generous citizens who would never let a racist epithet cross their lips. 

They would never say they wouldn’t vote for a woman or a Black person (or a Black woman person), but they will not vote for Kamala Harris. They can and will find any number of reasons to justify their non-votes. They will also not tell you they are voting for Trump and Vance. (Here in Erie, CO, the number of Harris/Walz signs outnumber Trump/Vance signs by 10-1 or more.) 

At least in this public facing way, I think they feel a smidgeon of shame; not for any self-awareness of sexism or racism, but because they know Trump is an unfit, disgraceful candidate. In the private confines of a voting booth, however, they will pull the MAGA lever, finding that their minor reluctance is no match for the powerful rationale they’ve conjured up to reject the Black woman.

We have always been a nation controlled by white male supremacy. From the genocidal occupation of our geography to the current Republican desire to cleanse our national blood, this has been who we are. It was somewhat amusing to watch the annual reprisal of the Indigenous Peoples/Columbus Day dispute. Despite the fact that Columbus didn’t “discover” America and that the brutal march across the plains was not a John Wayne movie, those traditional celebrants in the church of American exceptionalism get mighty feisty when their narrative is challenged.

Between the bloody beginning and the rise of the current, vicious anti-immigrant storm, there was a brief period of social progress. That essentially died with the election of Ronald Reagan, although justice and kindness still beat in lots of progressive hearts. Remember, I’m explaining why the election will be close, not declaring that we’ve all lost our minds.

The resurgence of white male supremacy is, in part, backlash to that very period of hopeful social progress. At the MAGA extreme, JD and his soulless mates want women back in the bedroom and brown folks back wherever they came from. But even in the softer middle, nearly all Republicans and too many Democrats think things have gone too far. 

A comprehensive New York Times piece this week savaged the DEI efforts at the University of Michigan. While legitimate criticisms were included, the tediously exhaustive long-form piece could be summarized thusly: “Will you just shut up already!” 2,000 comments, many phrased with elegant obfuscation, echoed the same sentiment. “Stop with the identity politics.”

Those who embrace such sentiments claim to be liberals, but descend to such semantic depths as to praise “colorblindness” as both good policy and salutary ethics. Only the ethically blind can be colorblind in a society where racism is in every community and every metric one might examine; wealth, housing, education, policing, incarceration, employment. I ask any sentient person to explain to me what might cause these universal inequities if not racism? 

But no, these supposed liberals say, we don’t need affirmative action or DEI programs to explore why we need DEI programs. “The DEI meetings irritated me or hurt my feelings! Why should I have to feel guilty? I didn’t do anything and some of my best friends . . .”

So, that’s why the election is so damn close. Even beyond the shores of MAGAland, too many people are just a wee bit uncomfortable that their sense of the world is being threatened. They may not even fully recognize that it is white male supremacy they are bolstering.

Such voters will twist themselves into ideological knots to justify their choices, but the truth is clear. 

They would rather vote for a felonious, immoral, incompetent buffoon than support “the other.”