Here, Ibram X Kendi’s way of thinking about racism comes in helpful. He says that not being a racist is about being anti-racist. That is, not just objecting to racism, in some abstract way, but being decisively against it. If we adopt that framework, then it should be easy to see that, for example, letting a President demonise minorities — and rationalising it away by saying, “Oh, he’s just talking crap” — badly fails the test of anti-racism.
If we look at reality, about half of America fell for the Big Lie. The one that fascism is based on — and always has been. Fascism, remember, in my telling of the story, isn’t just what the Nazis did to Weimar Germany. It is the America they studied, to model their race laws and hatred on. Fascism was born in America, in its centuries long genocide of Black people, in its annihilation of Natives, in its long, sordid history of hate.
The Big Lie that fascism — and racism is a kind of fascism — tells is this. Hated minorities are responsible for the woes of the majority. They bring impurity, corruption, filth, moral corrosion and social degeneration. The way back to “greatness” — which is what the majority, since they are pure and noble and true in blood, genetically superior — therefore is to annihilate or enslave minorities. The justification is that they are subhuman — less than persons. To cleanse them away is to purify a society in blood and virtue.
That was the story of America until 1971 — when segregation ended. White Americans don’t want to admit that — even liberal ones. But that is how illiberal white America is licensed to hate. Even the “good” white Americans don’t want to face the ugly truth of their country’s history. Until 1971 or so, it was the world’s biggest apartheid state. When I say that, they run away, trying to hide this fact under the rug. But hiding it that way only lets racism in America grow and fester. And not just racism — but all the other kinds of hate, too. Bigotry, prejudice, and so on.
Liberal white Americans need to understand a few things, therefore.
One, they are very much in the minority in their own social group, and yet they badly overestimate themselves. The majority of white Americans don’t just support hate — they support institutionalised hate, becoming the law of the land, the way society is run, its norms and values and codes and creeds. White liberals badly overestimate their numbers and cause.
That is why, two, when we minorities point out painful truths to them, they ignore it. But that too is a form of mild supremacism — the idea that the White always knows best, more, the most. White Americans need to understand that their social group is failing society, and failing it badly. How and why?
That brings me to point three. Even white liberal Americans are in denial about how bad the situation of race and colour and creed in America really is, how bad its history has been, and until how recently America has been a state run by and for hate. 1971 was the year America even attempted to become some kind of vaguely modern democracy.
Biden won. But America has not really had its reckoning with hate just yet. At least white America hasn’t. Let me try to sum up.
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