This is one of several public excerpts from my book Defusing American Anger, which covered contentious political topics from a depolarizing angle. This excerpt is from the 'Race and racism' chapter; it's aimed at helping pro-Trump Americans understand liberal-side concerns about racism and views that Trumpism is associated with racism.
The goal of this (and my work more broadly) is to help people see that people on the "other side" of various hot button issues are not the monsters we often imagine them to be. In order to help people see that, I must explain the more defensible and rational reasons for people's stances on both sides. This is not to argue for any particular view, but to help people have more empathy for their fellow citizens' views and goals.
Conservative-side racism and views about racism
If you’re conservative, you’ve likely appreciated my attempts to show liberals how their stances can be seen by some people as wrong and divisive. If you’re serious about reducing American divides, I hope you’re also willing to see what it is that bothers people so much about conservatives.
You should try to see the perspective that Trump, in what he has said and how he acts, has amplified an ugliness in America, and an ugliness that is often racially charged. If you’re a Trump voter, I think you likely recognize that to some extent, but I hope this book makes you take that perspective more seriously. I myself personally know Trump voters who’ve said various hateful and bigoted things that I don’t think they would’ve said before Trump’s 2016 election. Some of these things seemed intended to simply “trigger” me or other liberals, and some of these things seemed to represent an extreme degree of anger and disgust that was hard for me to understand.
I personally know someone who became a white nationalist: he’s someone who’d send out essays to his friends and family about how black people and Muslims were destroying America, and about how Vladimir Putin was a great man, and about how racial minorities should be sent back to where their ancestors came from. This man also happened to be the most early and enthusiastic Trump supporter who I personally knew, and this was a year before Trump won the GOP primary and long before the mainstream took Trump seriously as a candidate. The link between this man’s views and his enthusiasm for Trump seems very clear to me, just as we can see the reasons for why various bigots and racists and neo-Nazis praise Trump.
I also personally know a young person from a liberal family who joined a well known white nationalist group, a group that spends their time harassing and disrupting liberal people and groups.
You should see it as important to understand why white supremacists have praised Trump, and perceive in him a kindred spirit. You should try to understand why, for example, Andrew Anglin, owner of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, once said, “Man, President Trump’s Twitter account has been pure fire lately,” and “This is the kind of white nationalism we elected him for.”
You should try to understand why the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia march, which was organized by white nationalists and which included Nazi signs and chants of “the Jews will not replace us,” was called the “Unite the Right” rally, and not the “Unite the Left” rally. You should try to understand why one of the organizers of that march, white nationalist Richard Spencer, who’s said that the “United States belongs to white people,” has praised Trump many times.
You don’t have to believe that Trump or Trump support equates to racism or white nationalism, but you should try to understand why those people felt so encouraged by him. And you can try to see how that connection strikes many people—not just liberals, but the many conservatives who see Trump as racially divisive.
In October of 2022, at a Trump rally in Nevada right before Trump was to speak, Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville said the following:
[The Democrats] want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. Bullshit! They are not owed that.
Tuberville is saying that black people, the ones owed reparations, are the people who “do the crime.” To many people, this seems clearly racist. He didn’t say “some black people commit crime” or make a nuanced argument related to black people being more likely to commit crime: he said that black people “do the crime.” (If it’s hard for you to understand why Tuberville’s statement can be seen as offensive, maybe think about what your reaction would be if a Democrat leader said, “White people are the ones who do the hate crimes.”) The president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, called Tuberville's comments, “flat out racist, ignorant, and utterly sickening.” And Tuberville didn’t apologize, which we might have expected him to if he had simply misspoke. And I saw no influential Republican leader who criticized Tuberville’s speech.
Trump’s divisive and often racially charged ways of speaking, which we’ll talk more about shortly, seem to have trickled down to many conservatives. It has emboldened many conservatives to say hateful and divisive and insulting things. It seems to have normalized behavior from political leaders that was previously unacceptable.
A common conservative response I’ve heard to these things is something like, “Yes, we know that there are some horrible racists on our side, but they don’t have any real power and the concerns are exaggerated, and besides, there are plenty of racist liberals.”
Basically, excuses are made, which is what polarized people do. But if you’re serious about healing America, you should see it as important to understand what scares people about Trump, and what scares people about a Republican party that rarely pushes back against these things.
If you think liberals’ views on race are divisive, are you willing to look in the mirror and see how conservatives can be seen as a major contributor to those divides?
If conservatives want to reduce our divides, they’ll need to make more of an attempt to see what it is that bothers many liberals about racism in our society. The fact that racism has been such a huge problem in the United States, and the fact that it still exists today, helps explain why people focus so much on it. Even if you feel that there’s too much focus on race, and that the framings are often distorted, you can also try to see what it is that liberals see.
In Peter Coleman’s depolarization book The Way Out, he describes one prominent example of racism:
Torii Hunter, a former professional outfielder who had played for other teams, released a statement about his experiences playing at the Red Sox’s Fenway Park. He describes frequently being harassed with racial slurs by Boston fans, such as being called the N-word “100 times.” The Red Sox front office soon released a statement in response: “Torii Hunter’s experience is real. If you doubt him because you’ve never heard it yourself, take it from us, it happens.”
During the racial protests of 2020, in Georgia, a police chief and a sergeant were caught on tape calling black protesters the n-word, and saying other racist, insensitive things.
In the case of the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, one of the white men who chased him down and killed him, used a racial slur to refer to him after he was shot.
After Elon Musk took over Twitter and enacted a much less strict content moderation policy, the Twitter algorithm has recommended me accounts posting blatantly racist content (and I’m not someone who uses the word “racist” lightly). I’ve even been recommended Nazi content: to Twitter’s credit, that specific account was eventually removed for posting a pro-Hitler message, but only after posting racist content for months. I’ve also regularly seen racist comments on Facebook without looking for them.
I could, of course, keep going.
Some conservatives reading this might respond, “Yes, obviously racism has existed and still exists, but we just don’t think it’s as big a factor as liberals do.” But hopefully you’ll consider how it’s possible to be someone who looks around and sees evidence for a lot of racism in society and is very bothered by it.
Conservatives should see it as important to have empathy for racial minorities who feel alienated and frightened in America. Many conservatives feel alienated from and insulted by mainstream culture themselves: they feel demeaned and looked down upon. And it’s possible to see how racial minorities can perceive an unwelcoming, aggressive landscape also. They see America’s racist past and the various atrocities committed.
They see now, around them, assorted racists and white supremacists actively and proudly voicing their views and working hard on their racist endeavors. They see racists chanting “Jews will not replace us,” marching in American cities.
They see far right racists and neo-Nazis regularly killing people for reasons that echo far right talking points, including the killing of nine black people in a Charleston, South Carolina church, to the Buffalo, New York shooting that left 10 black people dead.
They see multiple people carrying confederate flags at Trump’s January 6th protest.
They see a Republican party that often seems aligned with those racists.
Someone being passionately committed to fighting racism doesn’t require any liberal media conspiracy, it doesn’t require any plot by Democrat leaders trying to divide us for political gain. All it requires is looking around and being shocked and horrified at the racism and hate around us, and perceiving that racism as linked to Trump and the Republican party. All it requires is a spiritual connection with those noble and righteous people who fought for civil rights in the 1960s, and believing that that noble fight continues.
It should be easy to see what upsets some liberal-side people and see why they can also feel, as some conservatives do, like there’s an important war going on—a war for the soul of America.
Previously in this chapter I explained why I personally wouldn’t display the Black Lives Matter slogan due to my belief that it promotes a simplistic narrative about police violence and is divisive. And I can do that while recognizing why it is that people believe it’s a worthwhile and noble slogan, and I can recognize the goodness of people who embrace that slogan while not being on the same page.
If conservatives want to reduce our anger, more will need to see the value of being respectful to people on the other side, even as you may hugely disagree with them.
If you’re a conservative who downplays the importance of the things I’ve said here, is it possible you’re responding similarly to liberals who avoid thinking about how they contribute to our divides? Liberals are capable of saying things like “Trumpism is all about racism” or “police are monsters” and yet often seem oblivious to how these things contribute to our divides. To reduce our anger, we’ll need more people on both sides to acknowledge their group’s contributions.
Conservative excuses for conservative-side racism
For many liberals, racist statements from prominent GOP people are hard to get past: they can be an understandable obstacle to depolarization efforts. When having conversations about depolarization, some liberals have told me: “But did you see that Tommy Tuberville speech? Can’t you see how racist these people really are?”
And to this, I’d say again: my argument isn’t that we have to like or forgive the most polarized and unreasonable people amongst us. I think those statements from Tuberville are racist and shameful, and my argument is not that his behavior is okay or that he shouldn’t be criticized. Depolarization work is focused on our fellow citizens and seeing how we might understand their perspectives. By having hearts that are less “at war” with our fellow citizens, we’ll take the wind out of the sails of those who attempt to harness and amplify polarization.
And I think it’s possible to see why conservatives can overlook this kind of behavior, because we know that in a polarized society people tend to excuse the bad behavior of people on their side.
When I asked one white Trump voter for this thoughts on the Tuberville speech, and how it was that Trump voters could excuse stuff like that, he said (and I’m paraphrasing):
I agree it’s bad, but politicians of all sorts say things they don’t really mean to rile up their base, and I’ve seen similar racially divisive things said on the left that hardly anyone pays attention to. And I think Tuberville was trying to make a point about how Democrats were too soft on crime because they want to appease their racial justice base. And technically, black people do commit significantly more crime, and that’s not racist to say but just a statistical fact.
To be clear: I don’t think these justifications excuse Tuberville’s language. I got the sense that he wasn’t really understanding what people found so offensive about Tuberville’s language. But I’ve talked to this person quite a bit and I also don’t believe he’s racist. I don’t think racism is why he makes excuses for Tuberville’s language.
His response does, I think, capture an understandable reason for why conservatives can be relatively unbothered by this language: Conservatives see liberals as so often using race as a cynical means to wield political power, and this perception makes them less sensitive to racially charged speech, and even racist speech. This thinking goes something like, “If liberals are going to so often use the race card for political gain, including smearing conservatives as racist, then it’s fair for other groups to use race in similar ways.” In short: “They do it so it’s okay for us to do it.”
Another factor present can be people’s immense distrust and dislike for political leaders in general. The Trump voter I talked to can be okay with Tuberville’s language because he perceives much of the political landscape as bad, and sees his political choices as mostly deciding between various bad options.
And this kind of thinking informs many people’s political thinking, on the right and left. It helps explain why, for example, even black Trump voters are capable of ignoring racist or racially insensitive things said by conservatives. And this helps explain why righteously criticizing the latest outrageous, divisive thing said by someone on “the other side” is likely to be ineffective.
This is especially the case if the person criticizing your group is your political enemy. Their motives won’t be trusted, and even if you think they have a point, there are so many more important things happening. It’s like a soldier on the battlefield going up to an enemy soldier and saying, “Hey, did you know one of your generals said something really offensive?”
It gets back to one of my core beliefs about polarization dynamics: We can’t really influence the other side; we can only influence our side.
This doesn't mean we should stop criticizing people when we think they deserve it. It just helps explain why that criticism won’t often be effective, even when the behavior in question can seem so clearly horrible to us. And it helps show why it’s so important to make your criticism as persuasive as possible to the group you’re speaking to.
America, race, and history
A lot of polarization, not just in America but throughout the world, revolves around grand narratives of what a country is and what it represents. And in our case, it’s possible to see people on both sides as having some very different and very polarized narratives about America. Is America forever tainted by its past sins of slavery and racism? Or is that only part of America’s story? Should we view America with pessimism? Or with pride and hope about all we’ve accomplished and all we might yet accomplish?
For people who want to work on depolarization, it will help to try to speak in more nuanced ways about America and race, and to encourage others to consider how their narratives might be simplistic and polarized.
In 2021, historian Matthew Karp wrote a piece for Harpers Magazine called History as End: 1619, 1776, and the politics of the past. He wrote about how simplistic framings of American history can miss a more nuanced view:
Whatever birthday it chooses to commemorate, origins-obsessed history faces a debilitating intellectual problem: it cannot explain historical change. A triumphant celebration of 1776 [the year the Declaration of Independence was signed] as the basis of American freedom stumbles right out of the gate—it cannot describe how this splendid new republic quickly became the largest slave society in the Western Hemisphere. A history that draws a straight line forward from 1619, meanwhile, cannot explain how that same American slave society was shattered at the peak of its wealth and power—a process of emancipation whose rapidity, violence, and radicalism have been rivaled only by the Haitian Revolution.
This approach to the past, as the scholar Steven Hahn has written, risks becoming a “history without history,” deaf to shifts in power both loud and quiet. Thus it offers no way to understand either the fall of Richmond in 1865 or its symbolic echo in 2020, when an antiracist coalition emerged whose cultural and institutional strength reflects undeniable changes in American society.
The 1619 Project [a New York Times project aimed at explaining America’s racist roots] may help explain the “forces that led to the election of Donald Trump,” as the Times executive editor Dean Baquet described its mission, but it cannot fathom the forces that led to Trump’s defeat—let alone its own Pulitzer Prize.
Some people reading this may be thinking, “Sure, but America still owes it to black Americans to right the wrongs of the past.”
And that’s a defensible stance, but one that isn’t directly related to our polarization problem. Our polarization problem is about the anger and rage we feel now, today: the anger we direct at our fellow citizens. If we believe that much of our current race-related problems, like negative outcomes for black people as a group, are caused by past racism, that can, in itself, be anger-reducing. If we can see that, we can see that our fellow citizens are not to blame for past events. If we can see that, we can examine how much sense it makes to be angry about that. Because there are many horrible things in the past, race-related and non-race-related. The truth is that humans have been horrible to other humans since the dawn of time. And so we could spend our entire lives focusing on the horrors and injustices of the past, but all of us, us people alive right now, are not the ones responsible for those things.
Imagine if Jewish people, in the decades after World War II, focused an immense amount of their anger and hatred on Germany. We could see the reasons why they would. There were enough atrocities to fuel many generations worth of hatred and resentment.
Similarly, we can imagine the citizens of Rwanda never forgetting or forgiving the various insults and grievances they and their families have experienced.
I think most people would agree it’s healthier to focus on the present than on the past. It’s healthier to ask: What can we do now, right now, to make things better and more just? It’s healthier to see our neighbors and fellow citizens as being like us. They were born into this present world. They inherited it, as we did; they did not make it.
And even when our focus is directly on our current problems, it’s usually not easy to see what the solutions are. It’s not easy to see how to solve our police violence problems, for example, or any of the other complex problems we face. Our anger is often caused by simplistic, one-sided views about what our problems are and how we can solve them. Examining the nuance and complexity helps defuse our anger.
And to be clear: seeing things in these ways doesn’t mean one can’t work for whatever policies one is passionate about. For example, you could be someone who advocates for reparations for black Americans while also working on depolarization. You could be someone committed to having America do more to make up for its past while also trying to get people to see that we can separate our anger about the injustices of the past from our anger at our fellow citizens.
In Richard Rorty’s book Achieving our Country, he talks about the importance of having positive, inspiring narratives about America. Narratives are important. Pessimistic narratives not only don’t appeal to many people: they can create discord. To quote from Rorty’s book:
I think there is no point in asking whether Lincoln or [Walt] Whitman or [John] Dewey got America right. Stories about what a nation has been and should try to be are not attempts at accurate representation, but rather attempts to forge a moral identity. The argument between Left and Right about which episodes in our history we Americans should pride ourselves on will never be a contest between a true and false account of our country’s history and its identity. It is better described as an argument about which hopes to allow ourselves and which to forgo.
We tend to act as if a specific narrative about America can be proven true, or proven false. But perhaps that’s a mistake. In such a complex, huge country, where so many things have happened and continue to happen, it can be possible to weave multiple narratives, depending on the evidence we focus on. And the true motivations and drives of other people are hidden from us—just as our own drives are often hidden from ourselves—and therefore there will always be ambiguity and uncertainty about the true forces shaping history, and what is happening. Clearly we can reach drastically different ideas about what America is and what it means.
Maybe, in some sense, America doesn’t exist: not in the way we often talk about it, not in the sense of America having a clearly defined history or clearly defined values and objectives. Maybe America, like all countries, is just a bunch of people trying to figure out what to do.
Maybe we focus too much on the past, too much on dead people and past sins and past successes, and not enough on us: the people alive here now. Maybe seeing America more as a group of people here, in the present, trying to figure things out, will help us focus more on our fellow citizens’ humanity, and focus less on these grand narratives about America. These grand narratives we weave about America are often simplistic and prone to distortions and illusions, and therefore will often lend themselves to our righteous us-versus-them feelings.
This has been an excerpt from Defusing American Anger.
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