For many American liberals, progressives, and leftists, there is no daylight between the Republican Party and racism. The Grand Old Party is commonly seen as a breeding ground for white supremacy, intolerance, and virulently racist ideology and policy. While I believe this to be somewhat of an oversimplification, it’s difficult not to see where these critics are coming from. The party’s most prominent member, President Donald Trump, has an extensive and still-growing record of antiblack and xenophobic activity. Today’s conservatives oppose the Black Lives Matter movement and professional inclusivity efforts, and the conservatives of yesteryear supported chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation.
Contemporary Republican voters also tend to be of the opinion that antiblack racism isn’t all that pressing an issue. The Pew Research Center found in 2024 that a mere twenty-seven percent of Trump supporters believe that slavery’s legacy continues to impact African Americans’ position in society. Additionally, only twenty-two percent of them believe that white people possess any kind of societal advantage at all over Black people. These beliefs are regularly promoted and reinforced by heavily partisan conservative media channels like those of Fox News, Breitbart, and Newsmax. They and their audiences also spread the belief that it’s primarily white people constituting America’s social underclass.
Is it any wonder, then, why American race relations continue to be so strained? On one hand, you have millions of people of color begging to have their concerns taken seriously. They fear the continued proliferation of hate speech, displacement, bodily harm, and countless other misfortunes that have always befallen nonwhite Americans. On the other hand, you have millions of white Americans insisting that the people suffering from these misfortunes only have themselves to blame. In fact, in their minds, it is actually people of color who receive preferential treatment in American society.
This ideological impasse is not without historical precedent. The abovementioned historical conservatives—those who fought for slavery and segregation—also believed that they were the ones taking a moral stand. They too believed that any American fighting for social and racial justice and equality was a dangerous radical plotting to destroy the country from within. They too were spurred by the media and politics of their day. For example, the continuation of slavery was an extremely popular talking point among conservative politicians, and one of the most influential pro-segregation forums was the staunchly conservative magazine National Review.
As frustrating and disheartening as the contemporary American racial situation can be, there is value and hope in examining its history. The thoughts and actions of the opposing ideological positions are in many ways perfectly one-to-one. In observing this we may also observe that in the time between then and now, the racial needle has moved overwhelmingly in the progressive direction. It can’t be objectively doubted that though much has changed, little has changed—racial prejudice, exclusion, and violence still abound. But because of abolition, the Civil Rights Movement, and Black Power, we have seen that the moral arc of America can be bent in the right direction. More importantly, we have seen how to bend it.
Featured image/photo by Oyemike Princewill on Unsplash.