This isn’t a George Floyd type of reckoning, based on injustice. This reckoning is about power and place, fueled by ideologues who could care less about the lasting damage their action will have on society.
It’s not hard to miss the signs.
An Ipsos poll from 2017 shows 39% of respondents believe whites are under attack in America. More than eight in 10 Trump voters worry about discrimination against white people, according to a poll by Project Home Fire and the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. And nearly half of the white respondents in a Pew poll worried the country will become weaker when they’re no longer in the majority, in roughly 20 years.
Look at the actions. Republicans plan to run on race this election cycle and next because they see it as a winning issue. They say so. We know about the fabricated critical race theory outcry, which they admit is simply meant to scare white suburban moms. They’re at it again with vaccines, another manufactured uproar claiming the CDC guidance over a COVID drug is anti-white. A senior aide to a GOP Congressman told Politico the strategy is all about squeezing Democrats on race.
It’s a vile and disgusting effort that unfortunately works.
White people are worried about their place in society and the social and economic advantages that come with it. They’re worried about being downgraded in a culture that increasingly does not look like them.
That angst is a big reason Donald Trump got elected and why he remains the most dominant former president ever. He’s the best there is at identifying and playing to the fears of his supporters, which is why his race-baiting has such an attentive audience.
As a society, we need to forcefully fight back against the narrative that whites are under attack. Unfortunately, Democrats are historically inept at messaging and strategy, so we can’t look to them to counter an effective push to allay white fear.
We have to do that ourselves. All people, regardless of skin tone, need to speak out and loudly object when we see injustice, especially the injustice of making white people feel like they have something to fear when they do not.
We need to have nonjudgmental conversations about race — and that includes all of the GOP nonsense — that address their fears.
“It’s important that when we have these questions about race, we don’t immediately construct an argument where people put themselves in a defensive posture. And that’s so hard to do,” Art Jipson, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Dayton, said.
“If you start the conversation from the point of view of, ‘You have to defend this,’ or, ‘You have to explain this’ … you’ve lost people before you’ve even started,” he added.
We also need to stop using the term “culture wars” when describing this twisted focus on race for the purpose of dividing. This is a planned, destructive effort to plant the seeds in fear in white people.
Some people of color will balk at this notion of learning how to talk to white people about race and assuaging their fears. They’ll correctly note that whites still have tremendous societal advantages in position, status and wealth. They control the keys to power and prosperity. That’s not going to change anytime soon, not when you have a 250-year head start on building a financial foundation and attaining wealth.
But our democracy, already under attack from so many quarters, will weaken further and faster if we don’t have a society that embraces our differences and loudly declares no one should feel under attack.
That means everybody.
Ray Marcano is a longtime journalist whose column appears on these pages each Sunday. He can be reached at raymarcanoddn@gmail.com.
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