There’s no debating it: Today’s Republican Party is an extension of the same political tradition (American social conservatism) that once opposed the abolition of slavery and the expansion of civil rights. Today’s Democratic Party is an extension of the same political tradition (American social liberalism) that abolished slavery and expanded civil rights. I don’t point this out to suggest that liberalism and the Democratic Party are without fault–moral or otherwise. The simple fact is that since the Civil War, the two parties have more or less consistently taken the two opposing moral positions on matters of racial equality.
There will always be exceptions—there are racist liberals and non-racist conservatives. But outliers fail to efface the point, and the point begs an enticing question: How can a non-racist support a historically racist political movement? Many possible answers instantly come to mind:
The past is dead to them. For the non-racist Republican, historical hatred is irrelevant; the present is all that matters. Victims of this fallacious belief are easily identifiable. To them, the concept of present redress for past iniquity is not only ludicrous but logically indefensible, for what is past is past. There is no “legacy” of racism in America, there is only what happened and how (allegedly) far we’ve come from it. To champion the cause for redress, then, is to ask for an unjustified handout while adopting an unjustified “victim mentality.” It goes without saying that to believe that the past of racism is dead is to believe the present of racism doesn’t exist. Slavery and segregation are over, and with them, racism. Only conservatives understand this while others spend time and money addressing a fiction.
They believe antiracist efforts are oppressive (often more so than racism). Regardless of whether historical or present wrongs exist, the prevailing methods of redress, to them, constitute an oppressive, undemocratic, un-American assault on the rights of the individual. One mustn’t be told to ensure equality for all; this must be done of one’s own volition. Should one remain committed to inequality and bigotry, they must be left alone, for that is their choice.
There are greater, potentially world-ending matters at hand. “I read online that a prominent liberal politician is actually an immortal reptile seeking to terraform our planet to satisfy the demands of an intergalactic criminal syndicate. (One of my state’s senators confirms this.) I couldn’t care less about ‘racism.’”
Racism isn’t as pressing as my party’s core concerns. “The illegals are the real issue.”
Of course, all of these beliefs are constantly entertained and reinforced by top-ranking Republicans. Gone are the days when overt racism served as an effective electoral strategy—the Grand Old Party has been forced to resort to dog whistles, codewords, and schools and schools of red herring. Distracting, denying, and demonizing constitute the bulk of strategies in their political playbook. There are in fact non-racists in their camp, if only because contemporary racism, unlike its predecessor, doesn’t dare speak its name.
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