Can 71 million people be racists? Of course they can. That was the story of the entire Western world, more or less, until not so long ago. It’s not impossible for societies to be made of prejudice and hate and ignorance. Until very, very recently in human history, that was the norm. 20% of the world, the white Western part, went out and colonized, enslaved, and brutalised much of the rest — and much of that was driven by theories of how some races were superior to others.
It’s not nice to draw that conclusion. I understand why so many want to wriggle out of it, especially white American intellectuals. It’s a profoundly ugly and uncomfortable truth to hear, to bear, to carry.
Let’s ask the question a different way. To support the terrible things that happened during the Trump years — is that being a racist? If your kids were taken away, and put in cages, because of the colour of their skin — did you see any French people being put in the camps? Any Danish families being ripped apart? But if they were, and I said nothing, what would that make me?
If Trumpists aren’t racists, then surely the word holds no meaning whatsoever. Then a racist is only someone who actively, say, beats a person for the colour of their skin. Not someone who, say, cheers on a head of state calling for hated minorities to be beaten. And that is self-evidently ridiculous and illogical and absurd and morally repugnant.
To call the millions of Americans who support Trump racists is to understate the case. Many of them appear to also be prejudiced against any form of deviation from the mean, from being gay to women’s rights and so forth.
It’s more accurate to say that half of America is still hateful. 71 million people can be full of hate, and in this case, they are.
Again, let me stress this isn’t an insult. But rather a sad observation. Let me add some more context to it. To make the transition to being a society free of structural racism — or at least one that aspires to be — is one of the and fundamental aspects of modernization. When we say things like “America isn’t a modern society yet”, one of the things we mean is precisely that it’s not even a society whose white majority aspires to be rid of structural racism yet.
But that is not so odd. Around the world, racism is still very much a living evil, and so is bigotry. If you go to Asia, or Africa, for example, all kinds of racism prevail. Shades of skin become markers of social position and status, and differences in sexual orientation are verboten. Many of these societies are not yet modern in the sense that racism and bigotry are some of their key cultural values and social structures, too. They are illiberal, not yet mature and modern democracies. America is very much on this list.
But that’s not some kind of pronouncement of social doom or moral damnation, either. People can change. Their attitudes and values can grow and evolve. To say that someone is a racist isn’t to say that they will be one forever. The only way that societies mature and develop is when widespread social attitudes do.
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