The Vietnam War draft dodger and the emasculated Republican Party wholly embrace white identity politics through promoting and advancing what they "pass off" (no pun intended) as race neutral justifications. These race neutral justifications assume the form of merit based motivated explanations, emphasizing hard work, independence, self reliance, and down playing governmental intervention and support. Patently apparent in this strategically choregraphed fallacy is the simultaneous efforts of the very resistive efforts to undermine and basically sabotage those actions by Caucasian GOP leaders to defeat those objectives. The Republican Party and the far right loath racial interaction that even hints or suggests of racial parity, and that somehow racial minorities and ethnic minorities, who have experienced discrimination and prejudice, both covert and overt, should work hard and lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, eagerly pointing to European immigrants as an example. The far right of the GOP is wrong on all counts. The party of Lincoln refuses to just express point blank that racial and ethnic diversity is not wanted, welcomed, or tolerated but in the same breath gladly recruit minorities to showcase them politically and raise campaign funds. The living hypocrisy is readily and ostensible clear. The persistent influence from the fallout of the 1964 electoral drubbing of Barry Goldwater produced the infancy of white backlash politics, now refined. Race matters.
6
In my opinion an outstanding well-written column, containing excellent insights. I suggest both sides of the political spectrum should hope that conservatives can get back to true principles of conservatism, such as limited government, low deficits, free trade and rational levels of immigration.
2
Spoken like a true theocrat.
4
It’s a little late to realize your party isn’t conservative, just racist. Republicans have been fanning the flames of racism since Nixon’s southern strategy and Reagan’s launch in Mississippi. Who you kidding - the racists are the base, have always been been the base- the GOP is the racist party.
14
There is really nothing in the political philosophy of Adam Smith or Edmund Burke or William F. Buckley, Jr. or Barry Goldwater, or even Ronald Reagan, requiring white supremacy.
It is also not hard to imagine a Republican Party strike blows against white supremacy. It was, for instance, under the Republican Party that whites owning millions of blacks as slaves was ended.
The GOP has been the party of choice for white racists since the 1960s civil rights era, but one could imagine that newer role being revised yet again. Lately, for instance, the GOP has abandoned fiscal responsibility, limited government, opposition to one-party rule in Russia, acceptance and furtherance of science. In short, most of what it has stood for since World War II.
Then why not abandon racism now, too?
Because the one thing the GOP has clung to in recent years, above all else, despite sliding away from or jettisoning most of its previously longstanding principles, is winning elections. The Democratic Party wants to position itself as morally superior, win or lose, but the GOP wants to win, regardless of what it says or does to win, and fear and resentment are powerful vote-getting emotions. Fear and resentment, in turn, are powerfully stoked by use of racial bigotry.
Trump employs racial innuendo to both appeal to racist voters, and to provoke hostile attacks, which he then labels as "fake" or "unfair." This approach garners votes for other Republicans too. It is a tough habit to kick.
6
Just take your False Equivalence and go away. The right, as constituted today, is racist to its very core. And until you personally condemn it (which you always avoid doing), you are part of the problem.
16
"There is little evidence that Trump himself is making Americans or Republicans more racist..."
There's danger of some serious whiplash here; that one nearly gave me a fractured vertebrae.
In your defense, 'little' could cover a very large, really really large area of ambiguity.
Or not.
Nope, that's just nonsense.
Apparantly Mr. Douthast,'conservative' means having not just tasted or even drunk some, rather gulped down the whole bowl's worth of kool-aid.
4
GOP racism is so endemic and has been for so long that this piece almost reads like it must have come from The Onion. I continue to marvel at how people like Douthat can actually think that the GOP can somehow evade the obvious.
13
So-called conservatism in the body of the Republican party would not have enough oxygen to survive without appealing to a certain segment of the population. It started in the Reagan era. Republicans embraced the gun and anti-abortion crowd and pandered to them. It's now been sucked down a path of having to impress a baser base. A racist, violent, self pitying, misogynistic, homophobic base. The Republican no holds barred approach to elections and governing has destroyed the American middle class and concentrated wealth in the top 0.1% of the population. It has a Darwinian mindset of letting people fend for themselves, no matter how helpless they are. Democrats offer a kinder and fairer AND more inclusive vision. Why would the majority of the American people support the Republican party and its brand of "conservatism" any longer. Get your act together, conservatives, before your party is driven out of existence.
6
This is how Reagan's campaign adviser and long time Republican adviser, Lee Atwater, described the "Southern Strategy" in 1981:
"You start out in 1954 by saying, '[racial slur, racial slur, racial slur.” By 1968 you can’t say “[racial slur]”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “[racial slur].”
With that in mind, how is getting rid of the "overt" racism make the party all that much better? The '1619 Project' did a great job explaining how race and politics have always been so closely linked in American history, so lets not expect that there is any way we can just say nicer things and hope that these years of historic influence go away.
9
Can we please stop using the term conservative to describe anyone in the republican circle. They are not conservative they are radical.
The republican party would have remained a minority party to this day had not the southern strategy shown the old confederate racist voters that the door would be open for them. republicans basically told these people that they would protect them from the rising influence of black and brown voters who were seeking full citizenship in the Nation.
When Barack Obama was elected these voters could see that the republican party was not, or could not, protect them from losing their status.
These voters turned against the elites in both parties and elected a carnival barker/reality show entertainer; who has shown a remarkable ability to act without any guiding principle or cause other than his own aggrandizement.
Are all conservatives racists; of course not. But those who are not are either democrats or independents. As long as the republican party is wedded to the southern strategy it will be a racist party. And a fascist party. When those two things combine we are left with nazis.
9
There are 320 million Americans blacks Hispanics, Asians and other minorities get educated, enter the best colleges, become doctors, lawyers, presidents, senators etc. I say what racism. You have a few nuts that are white racist, black racists etc. Most folks just don't care about the so call white racist issue. I do not no anyone that was held back from a position, because to their race, most of my bosses were black or female. And they made a lot of money they had graduate degrees. So, if you work hard do a good job you will do very well.
4
Keep deluding yourself Ross. I'll believe this when we start seeing porcine aerial shows.
4
Racism persists from one generation to the next. I deal with it in children as young as 5 years old: Easily slipping off the tongue- "YOU'RE BLAAACCK" as the ultimate insult to fellow classmates and calling others the "N-word"-not really knowing what it is- but knowing who to call-it.
Try speaking to a cute curly-haired child with a broad smile about not saying things to hurt the child they were just holding hands with on the playground; it *ain't* easy. It's heartbreaking.
3
The right cannot escape racism. It would wither and die without it.
6
"liberalism, influenced by the revival of racial chauvinism in the Trump era, is increasingly tempted to smear mainstream conservatives as racist."
~Ross Douthat
Mr. Douthat, if you scratch a "mainstream conservative" you'll find a racist right under the skin.
6
As the old saying goes and has never been more true - 'Not all Republicans are racist, but all racists tend to be Republicans'
11
If identity politics is such a bad thing for whites, what about for others? An evil and divisive politics in any skin color is still evil and divisive.
5
Can the blotted escape constipation ?
Is that good english ?
1
The issue is much more basic. People that feel strong kinship to others balance their personal well being with that of their countrymen. They know a strong society must lift everyone, and do not see in their fellow citizens people who are “different”, unworthy or trying to game the system. Hence the willingness of citizens of most European countries to tax themselves to provide a more equitable opportunity in life to their fellows. Conservatives in the U.S. believe people, particularly ‘those people” as Paul Krugman would say, are essentially out to game the system and to take advantage. That’s why Conservatives believe cuts in marginal rates for the wealthy encourage people to work more (because they are rich white people), while increases in the minimum wage don’t (because the beneficiaries are disproportionately poor Black people). Racism has been at the core of the Republican Party since Reagan’s invocation of the mythical “Welfare Queen”.
4
I don't believe the term "racism" is broad enough. Words such as intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, antiSemitism, and other hatreds need to be included. I find the word "bigotry" more inclusive and useful. I would use the word "bigotry" to describe the feelings, speech, and actions that Trump has made semi-respectable and somewhat acceptable.
10
The “next generation of Republican leadership “? Who, where, when, how???? Trump has totally consumed and unalterably changed this political institution. When Trump eventually disappears, so does the columnist’s party. At least two generations of Democratic control is thereafter assured. Perhaps then, something approximating the Party of Lincoln will emerge.
3
Dear Ross,
In response to your headline query, allow me to cut to the chase.
No. A thousand times no.
But thanks for playing along anyway.
2
The author writes that "conservatism has a problem with white-nationalist infiltration."
Psst - it's a feature, not a bug.
6
Can't these white supremacists just enjoy their victory and stop whining about how people today are seeking to tell history differently/more accurately?
In case anyone forget, Caucasian-Christians WON - their centuries-long genocidal campaigns in North America and Australia (for example) exterminated nearly 100% of the native populations. The descendants of the white invaders now majority-populate and rule those continents. In the US and almost every non-Asian modern nation (including in Africa and South America), the whites are atop the economic and social pyramids.
Genocide and subjugation of indigenous populations works, and Caucasian-Christians have used those tactics more effectively than any other group in the history of human civilization. What is done cannot be undone, so Caucasian-Christians can take pride in the scope and permanence of their victory.
3
Before you go off on yet another tangent, Douthat--clearly define "racism". No one on the left ever defines it, because they can't really, and because defining it (as they see it) would make their whining about "racist" this and 'racist" that seem all the more idiotic. And one definition would paint these pathetic people in a corner--not able to scream RACIST to shut down debate, cut off commentary, and intimidate people. That is the only thing this word is used for now. And people are sick of it.
4
There is no reworking of Modern Conservatism (big M, big C) that abandons racism, because racism is the only selling point for the ideology outside of a cluster of tiny special interest groups that receive all the outsized financial benefit of the rest of Modern Conservatism's policies (including hack apologist op-ed columnists, like Douthat). No one actually wants tax cuts for the rich, environmental degradation, pro-monopolist regulators, decaying infrastructure or reckless, incompetent foreign policy, but the right has nothing else on offer. What the right has, and the only thing it has had that is in any way popular with a broad segment of American society, is racism.
If you're just now realizing that you're surrounded by virulent racists who would have been perfectly at home in Hitler's Germany--and that fact makes you uncomfortable, Ross--then you should start examining why you believe a bunch of policies that attract primarily people who would have been perfectly at home in Hitler's Germany.
2
Can it be that Douthat is feeling a little oh, I don't know, guilt that his party is racist?
Conservatives can't purge themselves of these dark isms because conservatism, by its very nature of wanting 'things' to stay the way tradition mandates, that is, white patriarchy, is racism.
MAGA is just frump's ticky-tacky slogan for a country that would be only good old white boys in charge. But they will never be quite satisfied with the way their axes are ground.
Because there will always be the "other" for them to deal with and keep down--off-white, "nasty" people, women who won't shut up with their lefty radical ideas of freedom, equality and justice.
4
Ross, you should hug a liberal every time you see one. They are the only things that keep your conservative friends from receding back to slavery.
"...Blacks as well as whites had a relatively optimistic view of race relations around the turn of the millennium, and that sentiment persisted until Barack Obama’s second term."
As tedious as it was I stopped reading your column. I had already read enough to know where you were coming from and where you were going.
"...Blacks as well as whites had a relatively optimistic view of race relations around the turn of the millennium... and that sentiment persisted... until Barack Obama’s second term."
"Republicans held the night of Obama's inauguration. For ... “The way it was characterized to me was: `For the next two years, we can't let you succeed in anything.
"Republicans held the night of Obama's inauguration. For ... “The way it was characterized to me was: `For the next two years, we can't let you succeed in anything."
Do a Google verify factual text
written by a newspaper man who has ink in his blood.
1
Perhaps the reason the GOP is mired in white nationalism is that conservative policy positions are unpopular. Given that, there are two ways to get them implemented. The first is to suppress democracy and enforce minority rule. That has been one of the big GOP strategies through Gerrymandering and voter suppression. The second is by changing the subject to culture wars and/or racism as a way to get people to focus on something other than the policies they don't like. This is also a big part of the GOP playbook. But at the core, I don't believe conservative ideals are inherently racist. It's just that if your ideals are unpopular, racism is one of the only ways to get power.
2
The header to this opinion piece asks "Can the Right Escape Racism?" The simple answer is No. Racism is fundamental to the American Right. Without it there is no Right.
1
Race is getting more, not less, deeply embedded in our politics in one highly destructive way: The Voting Rights Act. If this had been used to protect voting rights, as the name suggests, it would have been appropriate and needed. But that is not how it is being used.
The VRA is being used all over the country to mandate gerrymandering of voting districts to guarantee electing members of particular racial groups. It is even being used to force smallish cities to go to district elections as opposed to at-large elections, small school districts to go to sub district elections instead of district wide elections.
The idea that we are one country, striving to become a melting pot, is destroyed by balkanizing us into Black districts, Hispanic districts, etc. so as to ensure perpetually electing a member of a particular racial/ethnic group.
How did we get to a place where a Hispanic person is deemed to have been disenfranchised if they can't elect a Hispanic representative? The VRA did that.
For anyone who hasn't kept up with VRA lawsuits and the bizarre gerrymandering arguments made, here is a starter link:
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/10/10/16449748/gerrymandering-majority-minority-voting-rights-wisconsin-supreme-court
3
Here’s the thing, Ross...
Shirley Chisolm’s words started ringing in my ears about the time Elizabeth Warren began proposing a very sensible wealth tax...
Those words:
“Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black”
Sooo – I keep glancing at the 2016 electoral map...
And then glancing back at Elizabeth Warren...
First, I don’t see a state that went for Clinton that would not go for Warren...
Second, I see about a half-dozen rust-belt states that might tip in 2020...
Third, Texas just might turn blue...
In a convoluted way – though Trump is president, and Biden (at least till yesterday) is leading in the polls – it’s looking more and more to me like the race is hers to lose...
Just take every moderate thing she says literally, and every ridiculous progressive thing metaphorically...
And the identity-demographics of American bankruptcy that shaped her bedrock thinking...
PS
Am watching how the early primaries go – but also who Obama, Clinton, and Bloomberg embrace...
I have no doubt at all about how Chisolm would see things...
PPS
Can the right escape racism – in a word, no...
But the center can...
3
Interesting how conservative is so dependant on social norms. Here in Quebec we have a few racists but they are away from our social norm of inclusion where French Speaking is a cornerstone of societal inclusion.
We were an ultraconservative society divided only by creed the Protestant had their schools and hospitals and the Catholics had their schools and hospitals and their theologically acceptable pre French Revolution Catholic Society. Jews like myself were Protestants even as my father had a Jesuit education and never knew a Protestant till he arrived in America I would be for the intents of government a Protestant like all non Catholics.
For Quebec religious piety and flaunting absurd superstition in public is more disqualifying from acceptable behaviour than flashing, streaking and public intoxication. We remember Catholic conservatism and that camel ain't getting its nose back into the tent.
1
Ross do you read your own new paper. Check out Astead Herndon's article "With the Faithful at Trump’s North Carolina Rally: ‘He Speaks Like Me’". No, I do not believe the Right can escape racism. And your both-side-ism about Sharpton anti-semitism, tells me that you are also comfortable with the racism that is so evident and part of the core of the right.
2
Separate church and state.
3
Ross why don't you talk about honesty which is utterly lacking in in the GOP or better yet why not you pontificate about Christian values and how the left has undermined American values...that is right up your alley.
1
Have the Democrats forgotten the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which supposedly established the Democrats’ bona fides on race, was passed in spite of the Democrats rather than because of them? Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen pushed the bill through the Senate, despite the no-votes of 21 Democrats, including Al Gore Sr. and Robert Byrd. In contrast, only four Republicans opposed the bill. Why?
Perhaps more recent history regarding the current Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam showing his racist roots dressed up in blackface and in KKK robes in his medical school yearbook, will jog their memories. How about Virginia's Attorney General Mark R. Herring, admitting to wearing blackface at an undergraduate party? Does that ring a bell? If not, what about
Lt. Gov. Justin E. Fairfax's accusation of sexually assaulting a woman in 2004, an accusation he denies. All three Democratic leaders of the State of Virginia still remain in power and have the full support of their party.
Nah, there's not a single racist in the Democratic Party.
3
Donald Trump has been a magnet for the racists and "under-educated" of America. And now that the Republican Party has chained itself to the corpse of this Presidency they can go over the waterfall with him. A MAGA hat or Trump 2020 poster screams racist to me. But the Democrats have their problems too but they haven't embraced the hate like the GOP has. This GOP has to die and be buried in an unmarked grave.
6
The election of Barack Obama fundamentally changed the Republican party. Suddenly it was ok to question a presidential candidate's birthplace and his religion, and accuse him of being a terrorist. The reality of a black President has energized a racist voting block. If you play them right, they can be as reliable as NRA members in turning out to vote -- and Republicans need the votes. Now, in order to win, the dog whistles have been replaced by overt racist comments. As long as it brings racist to the polls, racism will not go back in the closet.
4
The right has no interest in escaping racism. Do you see any blonde, blue eyed kids in cages? Do you see the right expanding access to the polls for brown people? Do you see any white Congressmembers being told to go back where they came from? Do you see Trump smiling, thumbs up as he holds a baby, orphaned by a man who came to kill Mexicans? Do you see money diverted from Puerto Rico to build a wall? Do you see homeless Bahamians turned away from our shores? "Defending conservatives against racism" should be right up there with the "hurricane threatens Alabama map", it simply defies reality.
4
Mr. Douthat,
Every time you sit down to paper, thesaurus at elbow, you directly aid and abet the racists that form the immovable, immutable bedrock core of the GOP. I am very sorry, there is simply no way around this. As surely as the false Christian Pence enables Trump, your words enable racists. They cling to every syllable of your writing, every belabored turn of phrase, to justify their continued embrace of the bigotry they learned at their father’s knee.
Conservatism is mere evolutionarily inbred reptilian tribalism masquerading, in the case of today’s GOP, as Christian virtue.
2
Perhaps Ross did not see the march at Charlottesville with the Confederate flag & Nazi symbols, racism not just against Blacks but also Jews.
He really needs to spend some time South of the Mason-Dixon line in churches & less time reading what his friends write.
Just one column that does not take swipes against his adversaries would be a relief.
He is also lacking in consistency in his arguments. Does racism exist in America today? Yes or no? To state Trump is not racist is to be willfully blind.
Dog whistles existed before & letting the genie out of the bottle in no way will allow them to go back. Come South go to churches them write your piece.
3
Ross D. has the knack of asking seemingly intelligent questions and then floundering in the answers, since he seldom wants to consider what is implied by the reality behind answers.
The reality here unmentioned by Ross D. is the decades of Koch-Limbaugh-Coulter-Fox relentless button-pushing and fakenewsing.
These lead to the same paradox seen in, for example France :
1/ Racist whites genuinely believing themselves not racist because they have non-white friends, colleagues etc. whom they can eventually like.
2/ Non-whites genuinely believing themselves woke, whereas they adopt anti-non-white prejudices, which they believe associated with the middle-class lifestyle they have gained.
My grandmother was black as coal, and I still hear her complaining about Arabs. I know many Arabs complaining against Blacks, and Jews. Never mind the Jews I know complaining against Blacks and Arabs, and never mind the Blacks complaining against Arabs and Jews.
The Black Trumpers of the Diamond-and-Silk ilk are the perfect example.
And the truth, the ugly truth behind almost all racism is this : hate the poor. And the moment the poor looks different, then you can rest your class hate on what you believe is a biological (i.e, "justified", "god-given" "essential" "eternal" "common-sense based") difference.
No matter who the racists and their targets are, this is what you find behind most racism (antisemitism behind a tad more complicated).
3
Reading through the comments here, I am struck by how many of us, from the extreme right to the extreme left, spout off generalized ideas, thoughts, opinions, etc. as though they're fact, based on nothing but their made-up ideas, very small samples of personal experience, what they hear from their friends or what they read or hear in the media (which is almost always skewed one way or another).
We ALL need to get a better handle on the (real) facts before we decide on absolutes about how the world is or isn't. - regarding race, climate change, politics, the economy, etc., etc.
And the only way to do that is by reading, including output from both liberal and conservative media, and studies, not garbage studies or those from organizations with agendas but reputable studies. (What counts as "reputable"? Admittedly, a difficult one to answer.)
But, of course, few have time for that. That should be the media's job. But they don't vet studies nearly well enough to count on them.
So, everyone can express themselves all they want, but unless there are (real) facts to back up their words, all they're expressing is opinion, not (necessarily) reality.
4
@Rich
I do not have to read anything. I have experienced white privilege in enough places and enough times. And I am not even a black person. I was in LA with the Rodney King thing. I have heard Trump and his supporters.
1
@gratis The pervasiveness of "white privilege" cannot be measured by facts. It is a subjective idea. One can even believe the term has no merit. There is no proving or disproving.
So, don't read and be ignorant of all things which can be factual or not. Ignorance is bliss. Sometimes I wish I didn't read, either.
2
"Escape " and "Racism " together ...it is making my teeth grind .
When someone writes on a serious subject like that and has absolutely no sense in the language of the triviality, " mal a propos " we say in French, if he wants to use French expressions , of the vulgarity of the expression. Then it is very annoying.
Racism comes from slavery and slavery was all about escaping. But not in the same direction as he is using it here .
The right escaping racism ?
What a perversely reversed program ! Personified bad taste.
Americans don't like that a French person tells them what a French word really means.
As their sense of apprehension of the world is all based on assimilation, they think that the colloquial use is the truth .
They don't want to know the real meaning .
"And Trump’s toxic Twitter influence will endure, no doubt, even once his presidency has ended." - Twitter is prohibited in prison!!
2
It has been Orwellian and masterful how the "progressives" have transformed opposition to illegal "immigration" into racism. It began innocently enough. It happened simply through the words used to describe the issue.
Illegal aliens, the term in the law, were transformed into illegal immigrants because "aliens" sounded so otherworldly. But "illegal immigrants" ran into the "no human is illegal" buzzsaw. They became "undocumented immigrants" or "unauthorized immigrants". Eventually, after all manner of editor-sanctioned lengthy workarounds, they became just plain old "immigrants".
Immigrants. You know, like your ancestors, like people who came through Ellis Island. Aren't we all just a nation of immigrants? All distinction between legal and illegal immigration was lost.
Fact: most illegal immigrants coming across our Southern border are folks of color. So, naturally, being against illegal immigration -- by people of color -- made anyone wanting our immigration laws enforced to be a nativist, a racist, a troglodyte wishing to preserve America's vanishing white past.
Like I said, it has been truly Orwellian and masterful the way this message massaging has happened. Illegal immigrants have been laundered into the stuff of the American tradition and racists wanting our laws enforced beware.
2
The statement: "Especially since there is little evidence that Trump himself is making Americans or Republicans more racist" is absurd.
Trump is not only a catalyst of racism but an accelerant. He may be a stone cold racist or may only be interested in his own pathetic self, but in any case, he uses racism as a political tool. His words, his actions, and his alliances encourage the hate and feeling of victimhood that is festering in so many individuals to grow and erupt in the national arena, encouraging others to follow along. By appealing to Americans' demons, Trump, and his apologists are destroying the country.
1
Nice to have Ross finally conclude that the Republican Party is Racist and will, absent almost divine intervention, stay that way.
So how can non-racists vote Republican and claim they are not racists?
2
All this abstract talk about "racism" is a pointless exercise unless, and until, someone at the NYT is willing to define what exactly they mean when they use that term.
Does "racism" refer to any ethnic group that advocates for its own interests? Are there different definitions depending on what group you are in?
Do you have to hate the other group to be racist? Or does acknowledging that some groups are better or worse at some things mean you are "racist?"
Can true statements be racist? Or only false statements?
Does the NYT have a definition in its guidelines for how reporters are supposed to use the word? Or do they get to "know it, when they see it" and use the term to disparage anyone they like?
If the NYT has no fixed definition, it needs one. Nothing is more pointless than having a debate using an undefined term.
3
I almost stopped reading when RD built his strawman that we Blues insist that breaking with racism would require the Right adopting the so-called "...progressive agenda of reparations..." etc.
Nobody in the Center or the Center-Left is making that argument. Nobody. Only a radical fringe is arguing for those things. It is not Democratic party policy. It is not something being called for by black people, by and large.
That is self-serving Right wing propaganda.
As for the rest of the piuece- yes it would be nice if a non-racist Right could emerge. I am not holding my breath.
2
Nice argument, Ross, but how do explain the popularity of black Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina who could hold that seat for life if he chose? Or the fact that South Carolina also elected a woman of color - Nikki Halley - as Governor. Are there racists on the right? Absolutely. Are there white-male hating anti-Semites on the left? You betcha. But the effort to demonize those who voted for Trump because they found Hillary a shameless grifter (and unable to hide her own disdain of straight white males) may just cause them to hold their nose and vote for Trump or just stay home on election day in 2020.
2
Mercifully I had not heard of Cheney-Rice until I read this column.
My question is: Why do you give people like him the time of day? In fact why do you cite anyone who writes for the New York magazine at all? It -- and its genre -- are all snobbery for fashionistas and foodies. Its progressive politics has no heart or soul or substance -- it is just a fashion accessory.
So far as I can tell from scanning the titles of Cheney-Rice's recent columns, every single one of them is about "race" or "racism." Hasn't he heard of the emancipation proclamation? He is free to move on.
But, no. If the remark attributed to him ("… racism has been fundamental to American conservatism, and the G.O.P. in particular, since the mid-20th century realignment of the parties") is representative he has chosen to make a career out of making wild charges of racism. Unfortunately it is a career choice that many charlatans have made before him, and will go on making so long as white liberals and the Democratic establishment go on rewarding it.
You go on to show -- far too gently -- that his history of the GOP is fraudulent. For goodness sake, Nixon invented affirmative action as we know it (not to mention desegregating Southern schools). Reagan might have rescinded affirmative action, but did not do so. Affirmative action became the charter for today's identity politics and for endless panhandling based on race and gender. It seems to have gotten Cheney-Rice his job.
3
The right can never escape racism since ultimately their ideology is about us and them. The fundamental tenants of conservatism are preservation of wealth and privilege, deference to authority and disdain of the mob, and all that presumes a world divided into the many and the few. There can always be room at the top, even for people of different colour, but the bottom must remain. And that bottom will be defined racially one way or another.
2
Does the Right want to escape racism?
It came around to it pretty quickly. And much more seriously than, say, balanced budgets.
1
Unfortunately, one probably cannot remove racism from the GOP because we live in a representative democracy. A large fraction of American citizens are racist and they will vote for members of the party that represent their views. The GOP has become this party - solidly. So the only way to beat racism is to defeat the GOP.
2
Note the other elephant in the room, misogyny. This columnist is strongly anti-abortion, as is the conservative evangelical community. Racism and misogyny are the two pillars of current American conservatism. I doubt many women will support his "religious-populist conservatism." We are not going back and we do see the connection between these issues.
3
Is there any reason why the deep south is totally Republican other than racism? Is there any other reason why these states all became Republican at exactly the same time? The Republican party's racism may sometimes appear to go into remission (according to Ross) but it always comes back as it has starting with the Trump era.
3
"And instead of defending conservatives against charges of racism, I could get back to my true vocation: defending conservatives against charges of theocracy."
Poor Ross, always chasing after GOP and cleaning up the mess for them instead of stepping out one step ahead to lead and direct the GOP to better pasture.
There is one sentence in this article that stood out to me.
Trump will be around with Twitter and other forms of communication as long as he lives. He will never stop running his mouth. He's like fly paper, he sticks to everything. Anyone who follows him will be bombarded with his nasty Tweets.
What to do, What to do?
2
I think they restrict cellphone access in prison — if he’s headed there, that might stop the tweets.
1
Not for theocracy Ross? You'd have a hard time convincing me a social democracy is not a "Kingdom of God" on Earth (very respectful of Jesus of Nazareth ex-deist here) - but to such you're evidently fundamentally opposed; way to keen to conflate them with anti-religious communist dictatorships. But if you check I think you'll find the Norwegians and the Swedes don't put the deeply religious in re-education camps. No - that's the Chinese. But it's not good enough for you - seemingly - that a democracy like Norway or Sweden allows freedom of religion, it must perpetually celebrate your religion - isn't that right? This is the only way I can understand your support for the patently anti-Christian - or should I say un-Jesus-like - GOP, and your hostility to the possibility of government by the Democrats, particularly by Sanders and Warren. Like other religious conservatives you're self-opposed: in denial of your true nature or madly confused. Jesus would vote for Warren or Sanders and the restoration of American democracy. I've no doubt.
2
Deep, deep down inside, the right doesn't WANT to escape racism. Because the right knows that if it doesn't tolerate racism, there is no way that it will win.
This is not the same as saying that most conservatives are racists. I don't believe that they are. However, the conservative movement has a LOOOONNNG record of tolerating racism, and indeed of ginning up a little racism when it thinks that a racist message will help win an election. Willie Horton, anyone? Harold Ford?
Winning is obviously more important to conservatives than recognizing that ALL human beings are made in the image of God, and behaving accordingly.
3
‘Especially since there is little evidence that Trump himself is making Americans or Republicans more racist, or that his most racially polarizing strategies are actually politically effective’
Emboldening racists is serious enough (and clearly Trump has done this) that this argument becomes specious. He didn’t need to increase racism, just unleash it.
2
The only thing in the entire Trump administration that works like clockwork 24/7 is the revolving door on the White House. For once I am glad to see Bolten shown (or find) it. Nobody should take war as casually as he did for problem solving.
From the Reagan years to the Obama years, the Joe Sixpacks raged against financial regulation, business regulation, tax policy, protectionism, autocrats: all the things that the GOP told them to rage against. Then Trump comes along, and without blinking an eye, they dump their old philosophy and sing the opposite tune. Surprising? Not at all. They never understood the first thing about economics and finance, but they were always keenly attuned to the central message . . .
3
The race issue falls under the more general problem of paranoia within the American Right. Many conservatives - most notably Trump's base - feel threatened and displaced by modern society; that fear motivates them to believe in far-fetched narratives like a worldwide globalist conspiracy, white replacement, the Deep State, Q-Anon, that climate change is an elaborately orchestrated hoax, and so on.
5
The chief source of racism in American politics today is in the "progressive" wing of the Democratic party. It makes everything a matter of supposed racial oppression, starting with the enforcement of the criminal law. Black identity is glorified.
Why are you surprised that some people, feeling left out of this glorification, celebrate their "white identity"? It has crept into the mainstream because its opposite has been glorified and because its supporters feel (with justice) that "diversity" means, to them, "not you".
If racial identity movements are pernicious (and they are), don't celebrate any of them. Celebrating one invites the celebration of others.
5
They won't even stop locking refugee kids in cages. There's less than a zero chance that they'll all of a sudden abandon the racist 'Southern Strategy' they've been using for nearly a half century.
6
The answer is no, because their party is founded on racism.
6
Wow.
Let's sum up: Douthat thinks that the Republican party can't actually give up race-baiting and racially-motivated policies, but thinks that they might be able to tamp it down a bit. A return to the good ol' days of dog-whistled rather than bull-horned racism, if you will. Of course, this is contingent on it being "in a way that wasn't just a capitulation to the left." In other words: we might do the right thing, but only if you let us win. We didn't want to hurt these minorities, but you will make us do it if we have to "capitulate."
There is never even a whiff of the idea that the Republican party might stop using white nationalism as a political tool, or stop pushing policies that harm minorities, simply because it's the right thing to do.
I suppose the answer to the title question is no, because they don't even intend to try.
9
The truth of the matter is that, "white power" is real and consequential for "others". America is not a homogenious society and identity politics has always been the preferred method to manage and control her. Class driven politics are far more complex which could lead to the dreaded socialism.
2
Can the right escape racism? That’s not the correct question. The real question is, do they want to?
Seems the answer to that one is no.
7
You cannot imagine how much I would like to see you return to your true vocation, although I think that it would be nearly as futile as defending the vast majority of Republicans from charges of racism. As a former conservative Republican who finally tired of defending what didn't exist - a party and candidates who actually acted as though they took Martin Luther King's desire that we judge people by the quality of their character rather than the color of their skin, I found that I had to take the only refuge with hope - the Democrats.
3
Conservatism, by its very nature, supports the rich and the powerful. Ultimately, that's all conservatism is.
The rich and the powerful didn't become rich and powerful because they were nice guys. Even those (and there have been many) that contributed something to society (railroads, the internet, pharmaceuticals) became rich and powerful by ruthless exploitation of those innovations.
This is not to say that that's always a bad thing. But it does mean that relying on the beneficence of such people is a fool's errand.
People of color in this country, for historical reasons we all know, have not been among the rich and powerful (that is changing a bit, but glacially and mostly in favor of new immigrants from Asia).
Because conservatism is all about preserving the status of the rich and powerful, even if it becomes 'softer' it is unlikely ever to support racial justice.
'Compassionate conservatism' thus sounds a lot like 'beneficent slavery.'
2
What does it even mean to be a "conservative"? Most I see are rampantly materialistic, divorced, could care less about the larger society except money, want war, but rarely fight in them, and yes are ok with a quiet, casual racism (it happened long ago before I was born).
Why so invested in being "conservative"? It would be much better to adopt a "data driven" approach to life with goals, timelines, and specific measurable results.
As an Asian female immigrant who has lived in this country for over 35 years, I think the left's oversensitivity on race and gender has gone off the rails. The term "racist" is so overused it no longer carries any meaning.
Here are things I do NOT consider "racist":
- wanting to control your borders and know who's coming into your country, it's called enforcing the law
- wanting to restrict immigration because you want to preserve your culture, it's called self-preservation
- requiring people to show ID when voting to ascertain their eligibility to vote, it's called enforcing the law
- wanting to give police the authority to do their job and keep the community safe by arresting and jailing criminals - it's called law and order
Here are things that I DO consider "racist":
- giving preference for jobs and college admission to specific groups because of their skin color -- even if it benefits me. Reverse discrimination is still discrimination
- insisting that minorities should hold on to their "heritage" because it's who "they" are. The left does not allow a minority to be an individual, they insist on putting all minorities in groups based on their skin tone, then accuse the right of being racist for wanting them to assimilate like all those who came before them.
As a one time Obama voter, I think the left has gone off the deep end on identity politics. It's no longer a party I can support. All thinking people in America should want to have Amy Wax as president.
12
@Listen
I would imagine that most Americans don't even know who Amy Wax is.
4
@Listen I don't know who Amy Wax is but I agree with everything you have said. Most Americans want to preserve our culture as well as our open spaces, our wildlife. Overpopulation due to immigration is destroying our country.
1
@LauraF
Most Americans don't even know who their senator is....maybe even the Vice President.
You are going with a lot of hopes, maybes and perhaps Mr. Douthat. I wish you luck with those endeavors. "As for me and my house" we deal with our nation as it historically been, and consistently presents.
Agreed that W was good on race, and more or less agreed with a few of the things you said in the last half of the column.
Otherwise I don’t buy it. The southern strategy predated PC, identity politics, male bashing, and our current immigration debates.
It sure seems like the right used the culture wars to appeal to the working class, especially the white working class, and then pursued economic policies that disadvantaged that part of their base. You haven’t shown otherwise so far as I can see, and it’s only a partial answer that the left didn’t stick up for working people like they’re supposed to either.
I don’t think the failure of W’s presidency is due to too much optimism on the part of the compassionate conservatives. I think it shows what happens when you go more or less all in on neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy.
Cheney-Rice wins this debate I think. And the political reflexes in this country forged in part by how both the right and the left have campaigned and governed these last 40-50 years remain.
@me
And yet, the GOP had Congress most of the time during Clinton's years, most of the time during Bush's years, and most of the time during Obama's years. Why did the GOP not do anything? Regardless, it all seems like the Dems' fault, I suppose because no one seriously expects the GOP to do anything?
1
Seems the thesis being explored here is whether the GOP can put the genie back in the bottle (or, if you prefer, have overt racism crawl back under the rock where it can do less harm). But it fails to address the more fundamental societal problem of the existence and perpetuation of racism itself (a plague on all political groupings). Society must commit to confronting racism through education (e.g. the 1619 project) , creating opportunities for young people to work across racial barriers (e.g. a year of national service for 18 year olds), and yes- social pressure from a culture that simply will not tolerate it.
56
@Hy L. "(e.g. a year of national service for 18 year olds)"
Mandatory service? Doesn't the 13th Amendment say something about involuntary servitude?
8
@William Starr I didn't say mandatory, although we certainly had no issue doing this when we had a draft for war.
12
@me
How is this even a question? Social pressure is the first line deterrent to all sort of anti-social preferences from shop lifting to racism to excessive alcohol consumption to domestic violence. Now of course, when a preference is sufficiently anti-social we also write laws and erect enforcement mechanisms as deterrents as well. However, it is not the crack security team at the mall that keeps the place from being robbed blind. Rather it is the social compact we make with each other to respect each others property - aka social pressure.
7
The revival of " racial chauvinism " ? What is that concept ?
Probably Mr Douthat has not even any idea of what " chauvinism " means in French.
It is not the first time that he uses French ideas at false or wrong employ .
Nicolas Chauvin a French soldier from the Empire who returns home in Rochefort after a dozen military campaigns .
Even more we know now that this Nicolas Chauvin never existed. he was an invention from the right to express a nationalism embedded in the terroir.
Racism has nothing to do next to chauvinism.
In the USA you read so many mixing of concepts that completely deform their origin and meaning to give it a new sense.
And they think it is cool. It looks erudite.
The ultimate sign of lack of education.
1
Didn't read the article. The answer to the headline is 'no.' You broke it; you own it. Conservatives have been consolidating their ownership of bigotry for decades.
3
The Left cannot abide a Right that isn't racist. The Left will not allow the Right to renounce racism. The left has defined itself by a racist Right. If the Right is not racist, the Left is without substance.
Reality does not matter to the Left.
9
@Daniel
I've taken a couple of stabs at expressing that sentiment, and I couldn't have said it better.
2
Douthat can make his case look reasonable only by broadening racism to include things like anti-immigrant sentiment. The incorrigible thing about the Republican party is not its views of immigrants, but its views of African-Americans. If that kind of racist voter were to stay home, the Republicans would be stale toast. And I fail to see what non-racist conservatives can do about that.
1
A large group of educated and politically literate Republicans voted for Trump knowing he was a racist and a misogynist, an incompetent businessman (something they claimed was important), and a miserable excuse for a human being.
They valued their tax cuts over the nation, and took the racism and mass murders and intolerance as fair exchange. They continue to defend his corruption and mental deficiencies and support for dictators and authoritarians and cheer on the destructive Mitch McConnell.
How is this group going to find a moral center?
7
(There has also been somewhat more racism lurking below the surface of progressive politics over the same period — as genteel eugenics, as elite NIMBYism, as left-wing or Sharptonian anti-Semitism — than most polemics against the right acknowledge, but that’s a subject for another time.)
And right on cue, there it is - the mandatory insertion by all conservative columnists, when writing about their own rancid republican party, that they must engage in some false equivalency that goes something like, "Yes, the republican party is full of hateful racists and bigots, but, but, but what about Democrats...."
God, this gets old.
2
The underlying problem with this is that you are going to get called racist by people on the left unless you unambiguously accept critical theory orthodoxy on structural racism. Any deviation from this makes you a racist. (And, in fact, accepting it actually means admitting you are a racist too and enacting appropriate levels of repentance and public flagellation). Likewise, you are going to get called a socialist by right wingers if you support any form whatever of social democracy, no matter how banal or typical or effective such programs have been in the dozens of other developed countries that have adopted them.
To that end, I guess I'll just have to be a racist socialist. The Republican party can be divested of racial chauvinism, but it can never be divested of "white identity politics" any more than I as an individual can divest myself of them or than the Democratic party can be divested of accusations of socialist. If I vote for my best interests, it is by definition "white identify politics" because I am white. I'm done getting my knickers in a twist either because of what some Twitter activist calls me or because of what some Fox news host calls me.
3
Interesting column, but the headline is wrong. It's not "Can the Right Escape Racism?", but rather "Does the Right want to Escape Racism?". Racism does not pursue the Right, the political Right pursues racism. The "Southern Strategy" was and continues to be a cold, calculated appeal at the baser instincts of many; the main difference to Nixon's days is that it's no longer just the South, and it's a lot more rabidly blatant.
5
I'm disappointed by the argument that Trump's Twitter influence will endure even after his term has ended. Surely this man is going straight to prison? Tweeting from prison is legal, I suppose, but I'm confident it will cramp his style.
1
To quote Bill Maher:
"Not every Republican is a racist. But every racist is a Republican."
3
No.
1
There will be no undoing of the racism of conservatives and their party until their leaders and followers give up the idea that ends justify the means. As long as conservatives believe that whatever they do is okay if it justifies and encourages their other policies, they will certainly not distance themselves from racism. Liberalism is first of all a doctrine that says "the means" count; you cannot push for your policies if doing so undermines such rules as fair play, respect for the law, and respect for human rights. The conservatives will never abandon their appeal to racists as long as it helps them pursue their other policies. And they still will until racism is no longer a successful posture for them.
2
"Muting" or "suppressing" the racism of republican voters will no longer work for the GOP. All future nominees for major office in the party will know that he has to appeal to the hard racists in the party in a more direct and overt way. Dog whistles will no longer suffice. Especially in Republican primaries.
I remember Senator Ted Cruz speaking to an audience in Michigan during the 2016 Republican nomination fight, and sympathizing with them about them "being chased out of their neighborhoods". The crowd cheered wildly. Ted Cruz, and many other republicans are quickly learning that republican dog whistles of yesteryear are no longer effective to be successful in today's Republican Party. In today's Republican Party, dog whistles are considered political correctness.
5
While I share Mr. Douthat's hope that the right will unequivocally denounce racism in all its forms including the claims of reverse racism implicit in its ongoing challenges to affirmative action, its Draconian stance on immigration as it consistently defines the U.S. as "a country of laws" instead of one created by immigrants and its refusal to even agree to discuss in a meaningful way the legitimacy and possibility of some form of reparations for slavery, I am not convinced that the majority of the so-called Christian right will denounce anyone or anything the GOP does, including overtly racist policies, as long as it continues to erode abortion rights in its ultimate goal of reversing Roe v. Wade. And while were on the subject of the history of racist GOP policies, I would like to point out that the welfare reform and crime bills pushed by the Gingrich congress and signed by Bill Clinton in his eagerness to placate the right and that Mr. Douthat cites as evidence of positive nonpartisan achievement were racist on their faces. Ending "welfare as we know it" did little or nothing to end poverty as the bill did not provide adequate funding for childcare or real job training but merely satisfied a conservative desire to punish minorities and the poor for having the audacity to use government dollars in order to provide for their children. Crime decreased because with the tax increases the economy improved and not because of the mass incarceration heralded by the bill.
1
Someday. Someday, a conservative unicorn will write a column on white racism without the false equivalencies of the "both sides do it" trope.
Bush 43 told Americans to borrow, borrow, borrow and go shopping as a way to fight terrorism. "Ownership society" he called it. And there were lots of hucksters out there ready to profit off that.
When the housing market burst in 2007, these same Republicans called the people who answered Bush's call to fight terrorism by going shopping as dead beats who can't pay their bills and who are putting a strain on the economy because of their greed.
"Are you listening, America?" was the cry in February, 2009, from the floor of the Chicago Merc. But the America referred to was that of the poor, hard working bond/equity trader whose clients were losing money due to the attempts of the poor to fight terrorism the Bush way.
5
It is certainly possible to have a non-racist conservative party. At this point in time I see no way for the Republican party to swear off its racist positions without losing a significant percentage of its popular support. For that reason, it is unlikely to happen unless the Republicans really do collapse in the coming years. Republicans politicians and strategists care more about winning that doing the right thing. That is why the party has become so racist in the first place.
2
No. Sure can't. It's core to current GOP identity, strategy and policy.
3
I completely agree that *nothing* lasts forever, maybe even including Republican revanchist racism. But I don't see most of your conditions for change arriving anytime soon.
1. Obama's mass deportations in advance of a grand bargain on immigration aimed to achieve "a sense among populist voters that... the debate over the pace of immigration and the security of the southern border, had been addressed..." But GOP leaders, terrified by their own voters, ran for the hills. What's changed about GOP voters to make it possible now?
2. "Imaginative statesmanship by the next generation of Republican leaders, who would be wise to [pursue] a potential pan-ethnic center" assumes there's a next generation of Republican leaders inclined to do so. I see ever-fewer Will Hurds, but ever more Liz Cheneys and Matt Gaetzes.
3. Some even-microscopic evidence of "...a recovery of... moral ambition by the Republican Party’s religious conservatives" would help to stifle audience laughter.
Parties have to find their voters somewhere. You don't get your pan-ethnic / religious / suburban / pro-small-business conservative coalition until people trust you've ended the racism. And you can't win in the meantime without the racists -- who don't look ready to go away quietly.
Maybe the GOP losing Georgia or Texas would help. All the more reason to fight hard for that outcome.
4
I'm just shocked that Mr. Douthat is acknowledging that Republicans have a problem with racism.
I disagree that they can disentangle themselves from it. The party of Moscow Mitch has shown there is no depth to which they will not sink in order to win elections.
3
The question you should be asking is the opposite one - Can the Left Escape Racism? Because it's seriously all they talk about. The Left is obsessed with race and racism. And I've never heard Trump so much as mention race even once. There is a small sliver of the population that is truly white supremacist, but the majority of Conservatives don't care what race people are. How you can claim that racism is the driving force behind the Republican Party, the one Party in this country that never mentions race, without citing any evidence, is beyond me. The Democrats continually use the label "racist" as a lazy way to discount Conservatives and their ideas, rather than actually refuting them on the merits. Immigration is a good example - Democrats have no idea what to do about the record number of people sneaking in trying to find a better life. So when the Republicans do something, like enforce the law, they call it racist, though it isn't, and think they've won the debate. The Left needs to stop calling everything they disagree with racist, stop using it as a crutch to avoid real debate, stop conflating the legitimate criticism of ideas or cultures with criticism of the race of the people involved, and stop warrantlessly assuming that it's what secretly, tacitly drives the Conservative agenda. Be more imaginative and recognize that people can have different views from you without being evil.
5
@Samuel Russell
Why are there no black Republicans in congress? Why do over 90% of black voters vote for Democrats? Have you ever asked them why?
Ignoring race is not the same as being anti-racist. In fact, ignoring race when it is clearly significant is just another way of being racist.
3
@Medusa
Ignoring race is not racism. When I talk to my friends, we don't tend to discuss the Special Olympics. Does it logically follow that we're prejudiced against the disabled?
The inconvenient truth in this country is the size of the fairly large minority of racists. If both parties disavow racism and support policies to address social, political, and economic justice, this bloc of voters will either not vote or hold look to the party that seems least genuine on the topic of race. Because government intervention is necessary to combat racism, the racist bloc is likely to support the small government party that does least in addressing injustice or at the very least favors strong local government that can turn a blind eye to racism practiced locally.
The inconvenient question in this country is: how do we create a representational democracy devoid of racism when a sizable and persistent minority is actually racist?
3
Interesting. I think what Ross is saying is, "We're not completely racist. Although most policies we promote have racist overtones, we have passed some legislation that is NOT 100% racist. I'm sure we have. Gimme some time and I'll find one." It's truly amazing that Douthat ties single-payer healthcare into his manifesto. Opposition to single-payer is one thing that is NOT strictly racist - it shows the Republican disdain for all of the 90%: red and yellow, black and white, they're all leaches in Douthat's sight.
4
“Religious conservatism’s compromise with Trumpism may ultimately prove fatal to its influence.” From your mouth to God’s ear, Ross....
1
I’m pretty left leaning, an immigrant from Mexico who now has American citizenship, I hold very liberal views. But older members of my family remain very conservative and very Catholic, and yet they vote democrat. Why? Because the republican party is racist. Can you imagine where we would be if the republican party wasn’t racist? As a hard core liberal it kind of makes me glad they are.
4
Racism is the belief that one’s race is superior to all others. As far as I have seen, this definition does not limit itself by skin color or whether one is conservative or liberal. We are not born with it, it’s not a genetic trait or a bacterial/viral disease. It’s leaned, and as such, people are vulnerable when racism exists among those with power over others — regardless of skin color.
The key in this discussion is power and how best to rest that in true egalitarian hands. At least that’s how I am thinking about it as we move towards 2020.
16
@Looking Out
Since the time of slavery, racism in this country has been primarily about skin color. There are myriad clear documented historic examples (perhaps not widely learned/read in some revisionists quarters), but, today additional examples in almost every urban/suburban society can be seen - from who gets a loan to purchase which house in what neighborhood to who gets accepted to some schools. Yes, there's anti-semitic, anti-asian, and anti-every-non-white racism (listen to the alt-right and white supremacits), but the historic basis of racism is skin color - those who look different from us.
7
@Looking Out Unfortunately I disagree with you: "ethnic chauvinism" or "racism" is a natural inclination of human beings that becomes expressed in adolescence and is merely reinforced by expressions of such prejudice (or alternatively countered by discourse against it). It's important to realise that people have been exhibiting prejudice against people of other peoples long before encounters with people of a different "race" were possible or common. "Racism" didn't begin when "white" people first met "non-white" people let alone "black" people. And it certainly didn't begin with modern racialist theories of genetic superiority.
1
@Looking Out that is a definition proffered by racists so they are not defined as racist. It isn't 'learned'. It is a matter of socialization, a zeitgeist in which we operate a normalcy that is bent against those who dark of complexion, or who's phenotype is far from the 'classic' beauty.
1
I was struck, reading histories of the Civil War era, by quotes from US Grant and other figures of the time, that places the roots of conservative racism much deeper than the 20th Century. In the 1850s and 60s it was common to refer to people who favored maintaining slavery and, later, denying full rights to freed slaves, as "conservatives." Those on the other side of those signal issues were "liberals." The case rests on this and other voluminous evidence that conservatism is defined by racist themes more consistently than by any other issue. Where are conservatives on budget deficits these days? Can we finally be finished with these attempts to salvage the righteousness of conservatism, and see it for what it is - a throwback to the days when slavery and tribal hatreds ruled the world?
3
Ross I find it really hard to understand how, if you're not for "hysterical polarization", and you're not for "theocracy", do you have such an "ABSOLUTIST" understanding of "conservative" and "progressive"!
A democracy requires at least two parties (or coalitions) to be prospective governments and it is totally unsurprising that they be "conservative" and "progressive" RELATIVE to each other.
Despite all the evidence you present suggesting that you know that what it means to be generally a "conservative" or a "progressive" can change with time (in the sense that the platforms of the alternative parties of government can change) you offer no suggestion that you could ever countenance thinking "Well if such is what counts as being a 'conservative' these days then I'm not a 'conservative'" and promote voting for the only alternative, the "progressive" opposition!
It's particularly strange considering the Democratic Party has been right of many centre-right parties in the rest of the free world, in some respects, for at least twenty-five years!
But then again I find it hard to understand how someone of your intelligence and erudition could think there's anything "conservative" about support for unfettered private enterprises in competition or "small government". Isn't such bound to produce significant change?
How are you not just another "religious conservative" conned by the egotists, the misanthropes, the nihilists and the just plain greedy in the Republican donor class?
2
“A religious-populist conservatism with more appeal to blacks and Hispanics could easily inspire as much fear and anxiety among liberal mandarins as the current Trumpist version.”
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it seems like Ross Douthat has openly acknowledged that it is organized religion, in and of itself, that poses the gravest threat to the whole of humanity.
Then again, it could just be that there are over seven and a half billion gods, all secretly toiling away on behalf of their one true subject.
2
@ubique
I found this line irritating, too. He seems to think it's a bit of a gotcha on progressives: you say you don't like racism, but when theocracy gets less racist, you still don't like it.
Well, yeah. Would-be theocrats are dangerous regardless of their melanin levels. Also, progressives can care about more than one thing at once: to wit, racism and theocracy.
(One must also note the irony of saying "liberal mandarins" when the leader of the conservative party is, in fact, orange.)
1
I've long believed that the right has less animus towards the "other" as they do disgust and anger at the way people are expected to discuss the "other" in order to prove good will.
It's always Jim Crow for African-Americans; it's always pre-Stonewall for LGBTQ people; it's always the Victorian era for women. It must be - always.
Never may you point to the bleedingly obvious fact that we live in perhaps the most open, tolerant, dynamic and pluralistic society in history. Never may we acknowledge that American institutions big and small are falling all over themselves to celebrate and create "diversity," that values of non-racism and inclusion absolutely dominate our society. Any such observations will be met with lectures about the legacy of slavery, or the fact that there remain some Americans who believe homosexuality is sinful.
This is what is behind polls showing white, economically comfortable liberals being more pessimistic about race relations than people of color: it's a cheap way to imagine themselves as brave activists, serves as a kind of cultural status marker.
This has created a claustrophobic, stultified, narrow and utterly dysfunctional "national discussion about race." Of course there are bigots on the right (and the left). But most are far more angry at the left's mau-mauing form of identity politics than they are people who don't look like them.
6
@Livonian
Your comment has the same underlying message as the article: Ugh, we conservatives are trying to at least look less racist, and progressives keep criticizing us for supporting racist policies. What more can we do! We're just going to have to keep using ugly words, they made us!
@Livonian
And that would explain the Confederate Flags we see even in the North? Seriously?
What they are mad about is that they cvan no longer bully their way through life just because they are white men.
I am a white man, BTW. I know lots of these guys. You would not want to hang around with them.
2
Hmm, I don’t see the right’s attempts to take away my reproductive rights as inclusive, or imaginary, or merely a trope of language. Am I missing something?
2
The following is the central issue, as I see it, with the Republican party. When they had a chance to stand up for conservative principles, by not giving Obama propaganda (He is not one of us) any credibility, as one example, they were silent for what electoral advantage? Let us win the race and we will sort out the principles later? This is not part of the conservative ideals, and it's absence is what is giving us the big liar in chief. The path forward now is to realize that this anti-anything is not conservative, and conservatives need to own that the base was driven not by principle but from naked self-interest. Which is fine as far as it goes, but it does not go anywhere if it's basis of inclusion is exclusion of others from basic civil and human rights. Own from where your base is really coming from, and try to be the leader that will lead them out from these very undemocratic impulses.
The veritable idol of the Democratic left at the moment is Elizabeth Warren, who was into DNA testing to determine trace elements of a person's "race."
That is about as offensively racist as it is possible for an American to get. When we think about it is is also extremely condescending to American Indians and therefore implicitly white supremist.
Was it cheap political opportunism?
You betcha.
Ross Douthat, there are already far too many people living in glass houses
throwing stones in American politics.
4
@David
Warren has spoken with several tribes and openly and explicitly apologized. Unlike the current inhabitant of the White House, she is willing to admit a mistake and takes step to correct it. That is true character.
1
Is this suppose to be comforting? Really? "Instead, his main achievement has been to activate latent bigotries rather than expand their influence, and what can be activated can presumably be suppressed."
This African proverb is retold in parts of Black Africa: 'Until the lion learns to speak and tell its story, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.'
2
"I think conservatism can be nonracist, or at least substantially less racialized, without embracing the current progressive definition (from reparations to substantial immigration increases to single-payer health care) of what anti-racism requires."
Please excuse my ignorance: How does single payer health coverage fit together with racist / anti-racist politics?
That said, the roots of GOP racism go much further back than Goldwater's campaign in 1964 against LBJ's Great Society. The Republican Party caved to racism during Reconstruction for political expediency (re: "Rutherfraud" B. Hayes' election), Eisenhower ironically re-segregated the 101st Airborne Division before sending it to protect the Little Rock Nine during school desegregation "riots" in 1957. Racism is a wildfire that runs through both parties' historic landscapes. Republicans (today) choose to inflame it, Democrats (today) choose to confront it. It's no wonder the racists now call the "modern" GOP home.
3
You are not looking deep enough.
Racism is endemic in white conservative evangelicalism, the primary driver of the GOP.
They see the issue of racism as a private matter, rather than a systemic, social evil. They do not believe government should enforce civil rights, and without enforcement—where are the rights?
Racism will not end until the mainstream Christian church declares white conservative evangelicalism a heresy, and stands by that declaration.
97
@Paul McGlasson
Alas- the Mainstream Protestant Churches appear to be in near terminal decline. The only growing churches seem to be the non-denominational evangelical worship center type places.
2
@Paul McGlasson
Raised Mormon. I well remember that church defending their racism for decades. We were absolutely taught that Blacks had been morally compromised in Heaven before we were born. They would act like they wanted to give them the Priesthood ( i.e. white male power) but it was God's will. God changed his mind when the church was going to be sued for discrimination. I have no doubt the Jeff Flake was instructed by the church to not vote against Trump. Hope that Mitt Romney can stand for his own morals- stay tuned! You're right about the evangelicals
9
@Lefthalfbach
Actually, white conservative evangelicalism is in decline as well.
American Christianity would seem to be at a crisis point. My own view is that Trump did not bring us here, if anything we brought him here.
But it is time to decide, yes or no, whether Trumpism and Christianity can coexist.
In my own view, to be a Christian means utterly and radically to reject Trumpism in all forms.
13
Conservatives have been embracing racists and racist strategies since Nixon. This is where your party has been headed for decades, and you are blind if you didn't see it.
Jump ship. Form a new party, or join us Democrats. We have cookies.
3
Douthat makes a specious claim about racism "disappearing" during the George W. Bush presidency, and yet there is no mention of Hurricane Katrina or New Orleans anywhere in his typically insipid apologia for the GOP's racist sins. Even Trump-loving buffon Kanye West recognized W.'s response to Katrina for what it was: Bush didn't, and doesn't, really care about black people.
4
Dream on, Ross.
Trump's can of racial worms in the Republican party has done long term damage to conservative "ideals." How can anyone take conservatism seriously after Trump? Everything was for sale, even the "deeply held" morals of the Evangelicals. The Faustian bargain you refer to was more like a total sell out. The result is a meaningless husk.
Conservatism has deeper problems than Trump and his racialized politics. By refusing to recognize any sort of social contract other than trickle down economics, the growing mass of relatively disadvantaged people find the philosophy to be less and less useful in their personal lives. And by adopting business friendly fictions like climate change denial, conservatism has become a toxic element threatening long term human success (survival).
The advocacy for theocratic influence on government is another element of conservative failure. Many Americans now seem docile when their tax dollars support Christian parochial schools, but probably won't be so sanguine when a Muslim Madrassa opens up in their neighborhood and demands the same financial support.
Conservatism needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror and come back with some good alternatives to its former self. Oh, that's not conservative. See what I mean?
8
Mr. Douthat:
Your true vocation is "defending conservatism against charges of theocracy". And... one of your solutions for saving conservatism from it's racist critics " would require a recovery of influence and moral ambition by the Republican Party's religious conservatives".
Good luck with that. Was this column edited? God help us all from logic like yours. Perhaps, your true vocation is pretzel maker. I might suggest to that we have too much religion in our politics, with or without theocracy. " Moral ambition" , not so much. Especially on the right. Your G.O.P. continues to be a purveyor of divisive hatred and, yes, racism.
Once you accept that, your writing will improve and you'll feel better. I promise.
2
I feel that Mr. Douthat’s whitewashing of the Republican Party in the eighties and nineties are missing two key factors that decimated black families; the crack epidemic, which surged in part due to less than benign neglect at best. (And active promotion at worst thru collaboration as exemplified by Iran-Contra). Secondly, Clinton’s triangulating crime bill with it’s zero tolerance, two-strikes policies feeding a privatized prison system.
Perhaps Mr.Douthat came to political awareness too late; those of us who lived in that era remember.
6
@Brynniemo
I lived that era, and remember that among the strongest proponents of Draconian drug sentencing to fight the scourge of crack were African-Americans themselves. It was their children being shot down in the street, their neighborhoods being turned into war zones.
5
Liars are liars, racists are racists, just as cancer by any other name is still cancer, an insidious corruption on the cellular level
that attacks healthy tissue, bleeding life out of organ, bone, muscle and soul. Yet I agree that this president, who utilizes tribal racism for his own ends, does not have the strength of character to kill the Republican Party or this great country. He alone is not malevolent enough to slay an honorable nation with feckless racism.
However, as his toxic insults to naked truth and human decency burrow into the soft flesh of ordinarily virtuous people, it's not difficult to see how a malignancy can take root, multiply upon itself as the ignorant slander, the sniveling venal deceits and racial insults go through thousands of oncological replications until they destroy what is left of the withering soul of a democracy built on truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help us ….
2
There's little else I'd like to ask Mr. Douthat and conservatives like him other than why is this president still in power, what will it take to get rid of him, what are you doing to make it happen, and what we can do to make it happen? Are you alarmed by him, what he's done, and what he might do? If not, why not? will you join the protests, letter-writing, voter registration, donations, aid and protection for refugees, Muslims, LGBT, and persecuted minorities? If not, what response, solutions, and policies do you put forward that hold on to humanity and reason?
3
Not nominating a flaming racist as your party's standard bearer would seem to be a good start.
11
"... [PT's] main achievement has been to activate latent bigotries rather than expand their influence, and what can be activated can presumably be suppressed ..."
So, first Republicans have to undo Trump, Ross? Get back to me when you've "suppressed" that. Then presumably we can talk about doing something with the influence of bigotries.
2
Trump supporters are racist, period. But does that make every conservative a racist ? Debatable. It depends on their acceptance of the GOP as the party of Trump or a political party that can shed Trump.
Lyndon Johnson led the Democrats away from their distaste for the civil rights movement knowing fully well that it would cost them Southern votes in the years and decades to follow.
Trump does not have either the intellectual ability or mental capacity to understand how his rhetoric will negatively affect race relations in the US.
So it is entirely up to the party philosophers to decide where they want their team to end up. Trust me, we will punish the GOP at the polls for their continued adherence to White identity politics. And yes, some well minded conservatives will get caught in the cross fire. It happens.
Ultimately, whether you like it or not, Conservatism as an overarching philosophy is rooted in adherence to a certain set of values that the rest of society decides it is time to shed. So we will always face this question of whether conservatives are an antiquated bunch. Today it is race. Tomorrow it will be something else such as women's rights. You will be branded as being misogynist. That stuff happens too.
Only cure for it - stop being in love with yourselves and your opinions.
3
They can't escape racism anymore than the Left.
6
Let me save you time and energy and jump right to Douthat's conclusion about whether the Right can escape Racism. No, and it's not his problem anyway.
Short answer, nope. Long answer, keep dreamin' Ross.
The modern conservative philosophy came of age in the 1970's. To the extent that there had ever been any doubt, conservatives concluded that Dr. King was correct: one size fits all. They echoes the arguments of the plaintiffs in Brown: governmental must NEVER consider race.
Simultaneously, the left decided that Brown and King were wrong; we are NOT one country and one people unified around shared ideas, but mutually exclusive, arbitrarily-defined groups, each with an “identity”.
The belief - that physical characteristics define one - is essentially leftist monopoly. If a willingness to judge people, or accord benefits or burdens, expressly on skin color, is "racism” – and it is – every leftist is patently guilty.
Unable to find actual “white supremacy”, leftists resort to “disparate impact”; “mass incarceration” MUST be racist, because it impacts more Black criminals than whites. Attempts to deal with electoral cheating - which has always hung out in cities run by Democrats - MUST be racist, given who tends to live in cities. Etc.
GOP policies have enabled record numbers of women and minorities to enter the workforce. Enforcing immigration laws helps poorer Americans, disproportionately minority, secure higher wages. School choice is a huge benefit to minority children. Which party puts the desires of the mostly white teachers’ unions ahead of the education of minority students?
Nope; won’t sell. There is only one Party which obsesses about race, and it isn’t the GOP.
3
@Brenda The most common reason a person goes to jail (or prison) is poverty, not criminality. If you have money, you can make bail, get out on electronic monitoring pretrial (and keep your job and family), and hire a private attorney who will more than likely get you a suspended sentence, time served, probation, etc. If you're poor, you stay in jail, lose your job or family, plead guilty just to get out, and then discover you've ruined your future.
I'd also point out that the American Nazi Party, the KKK, and all that ilk never seem to find common cause with Democrats but seek to join with the GOP. Why is that?
1
I'm a liberal immigrant who grew up in Texas. Conservatives are vocal about racism, and I admit that I like that. Liberals hide their racism. Ill take vocal conservatives that are openly racists than liberals who hide their racism. In Texas, I've felt most welcomed by conservatives, and now I live in the most liberal city in the country: Los Angeles. It is one of the most racist city I've lived in. Asian American women and White male couple who sneer at my dark skin color while wearing a badge of honor of being an inter-racial couple. Liberals are more racist.
3
If you excised racism from the Republican Party you could indeed drown it in the bathtub. I grew up in Kentucky and watched as the former Democratic majority moved overwhelmingly to the GOP and race played a huge part in that transformation. Even committed fiscal conservatives played the race card to get elected since they knew they needed those votes. Trump won because of his solidly racist immigration stance.
2
the headline is incorrect. it should read "Can the Left escape racism"
the left as represented by the Democratic Party is fully focused on identity politics. they count how many of x are hired by companies etc. Republicans couldnt' care less
5
I've said it for years- Not all republicans are racist. But racists find a welcome and comfortable home in the republican party. That's been true my whole life and will likely be true for the foreseeable future.
4
"Racist, racist, racist"
"Socialist, socialist, socialist"
"Racist, racist, racist"
"Socialist, socialist, socialist"
See, now everyone feels better.
7
Black people did not need this article to understand that the Republican Party has, since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, become the home for the KKK and their White Nationalist brethren. We've known that this cesspool of hate has had no goodwill for us. When human beings fight (as the racists did by running to the GOP) against an act that "outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin", you know that the root of the party is vile and filthy to the core.
Many Republicans are fine with racism & for this reason, I can't help but lose respect for that large segment.
In addition, they are disingenuous; they say that we must care about the LEGACY to our children (i.e the Tea Party fiasco) regarding the national debt (Don't Tread on Me-remember that mess?)-but the debt increased under Trump and they say nothing; they say that they hate abortion, but when they have the House, Senate, and the White House, again they do nothing; they say that they have family values, but then watch idly as children are taken away from their mothers (they're brown so it doesn't matter).
What else remains?
You have links to writers who are not so kind about the existence of racism in the Republican Party. These writers know the truth; racism is in the marrow of their bones.
To summarize: The Republican Party is upheld by hate. Without it, the party would fall. The non-racist Republican is the outlier.
Racism (and more debt) IS the legacy they leave for their children.
2
The simple truth of the matter is: NO conservative Americans particularly in the South, for the most part, are racists. That high school in Georgia not far from Atlanta that has two junior-senior proms, one segregated and white the other integrated and mixed is living proof. Folks we have some Americans amongst us who are still fighting the Civil War. The election of Barack Obama drove them crazier than ever before which led to the election of Colonel Donald "Beauregard" Trump.
Your other right.
As long as the likes of Moscow Mitch, the white supremacist enabling republican leadership and the Siberian Candidate, Trump are around, No.
1
Muted racism is still racism.
No. Without racism, the current Republican party is nothing.
1
I generally only read Douthat to point and laugh, and I only came over here today because I saw reference to this column elsewhere and wanted to see if Douthat really got wrong the name of the author of the piece on which he based this whole column. (He did, for which see the acknowledgement below the column.) But I imagine your accounting will score it as a click no matter the motives.
OK, Ross. And now for your next column, you can address why Republicans, evangelicals, and Trump supporters are misogynists as well as racists. Then, try, just try, to imagine you are a woman of color. Or even a white woman, especially a poor white woman. Just really try, and then tell me that the Republican Party should be saved. It should be destroyed, torn down completely and replaced with conservatives who are at least decent human beings.
2
Actually, we're closer to a post-racial society than ever before, almost to the point where the only people that carry on about such superficialities are the last remaining racists, rather like those forlorn Japanese WW2 combatants clinging to their bayonets on an abandoned island two decades after Hiroshoma.
2
Ross. You are a bit late to the party. It is just more overt these days.
Unfortunately the left destroyed the meaning of the word "racist". It has been used as a political bludgeon in nearly all disagreements, and people now simply shrug it off.
6
The vast majority of white Americans who feel threatened by the country’s growing racial and ethnic diversity are not members of the KKK or neo-Nazis. They are much greater in number and far more mainstream.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/16/white-identity-politics-isnt-just-about-white-supremacy-its-much-bigger/
Racism is baked into the Right.
2
Nope, they can't
Let's get real, for a second, about this "population" of non-racist republicans. It's a fraction -- maybe even a sliver -- of the party. To wit: According to the latest Gallup poll, Donald Trump's approval rating with Republicans is 88 percent
2
Reading Ross is like having a tattoo that says, "Whatabout..."
He can not argue a point without bringing up , "Whatabout..."
It's maddening and shows that he is unwilling to critique the right with a clear eye.
3
Mr. Douthat,
If you talk with some political scientists you will find that the Democratic party has not moved to the left, while the Republican party has moved dramatically to the right. There is solid statistical data as well as textual analysis (see an op-ed piece in your paper) that the party is now not simply the party of racists, but the party of fascists.
Your columns will be much better when they acknowledge the facts rather than the party's spin.
Sincerely,
Christopher Mulvaney, Ph.D.
3
Oh, do tell, Little Johnny-one-note Douthat, what is "genteel eugenics?" I'm sure I know, you're nothing if not predictable, but it would be refreshing to see you approach something in a *non* passive-aggressive manner.
1
Mr Douthat's column is hilarious. The Right has, in varying degrees, relinquished its war on blacks- well, at least overtly- but has cleverly adopted a strategy where minorities are kinda sorta acceptable, but the GOP always have The Gays in their back pocket for when they need a group to demonize. That is Pat Buchanan's gift from 1992.
4
I think Douthat is fundamentally missing the point, which is that Republican conservatism is now tainted and exposed in a way that grants no effective recourse. Perhaps the closest trajectory to examine for guidance may not be the Republican Party of the '90s but the Klu Klux Klan of the '20s, with membership as high 3,000,000; which included doctors, lawyers, and generally wealthy, middle-class, otherwise intelligent individuals. Was the Klan always racist? Yes... but in the 20's it was as much about rural, Christian, conservative, agrarian values: anti-bootlegging, anti-adultery, patriotism, etc. as it was about open racism. For many, there was a positive network externality associated with the membership... A feeling of belonging and pride, etc.
But as the nature of more and more Klansman became evident, i.e. sadist, culminating with David Stephensen the leading Indiana Klansman conviction for murdering a girl, the membership dropped precipitously. As with Trump, once you start throwing kids in cages, no sensible person wants to be associated with that, regardless of whether some of the other points the group makes are laudable. Eventually, the only people left are the ones no one wants to associate with.
You can track the number of college graduates in the Republican party since Trump became president as a proxy for social acceptance. The decline has been precipitous. The taint will not wear off so easily. The negative network externality will be around for years.
2
The Republican Party was irrevocably changed by two major political and social events:
1. The defeat by Goldwater Republicans of Rockefeller Republicans.
2. The passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Acts by a coalition of Northern & Midwestern Republicans and all Democrats, except the Southern.
From Goldwater through Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1, et al. Republican politics has featured racism/bigotry as its modus operandi. How many of these Republicans have conservative pundits, columnists, etc. endorsed, praised?
Trump is the just the latest, and most viral, extension and expression of the Republican Party’s modus operandi of the last 50+ years.
True, not all conservatives are racists/bigots. But those that are not have a sad history of aiding, abetting, enabling and supporting those who are racists/bigots.
1
The point about racism is that it hurts others, as it seems to benefit us. Why does the Republican Party want to be a party that hurt people even if that gets them into power? This is a futile question because people who hurt others love power, don't they?
I nevertheless ask it because, conservative like Douthat, always assume themselves to be on moral high ground, bemoaning the moral corruption of homosexuality, transgenders, abortion, lazy takers on welfare, etc.
What is more fundamentally moral than the attitude and the resolve to not hurt others?
2
"Can the Right Escape Racism?" Pretty pointless question. Call them the current Republican party or the past Democrats, they are always the same. The leadership knows exactly what they are doing when they "activate latent bigotries."
There is no philosophy of conservatism here that is worth saving. The heart of conservatism that Ross expounds is basically dark, greedy and immoral.
1
One of the reasons racism in this country is perpetuated is that our elected officials have to decided to follow, rather than lead. The Republican knew and still know how to blow the dog whistle, perpetuate the stereotypes, and divide rather than unify this country.
For any politician to stand up and say that racism does no longer exist in this country is lying, and I am white. We need leaders who will stand up and say without hesitation, racism is un-American.
Unfortunately the Republican party does not see the changes that are necessary, and are looking to further their grip on power and the grift by any means possible. They cannot face reality. Change will come with or without their acceptance of the facts.
As I have said before and will say again, every last Republican needs to be voted out of office down to Town Clerk. The party needs to be destroyed before it destroys America.
1
The last two Republican presidents won the electoral college without winning the popular vote. This shows the Republican Party does not have a vision that can unite the country or even garner a majority. Therefore it must use division and gerrymandering to win. All of the Trump's racist language, all of Karl Rove's anti-gay bigotry - these tools are deployed in service of clinging to power. It's nakedly machiavellian. Call it what it is.
1
The Republican Party's survival as a national party depends on gerrymandering, felon disenfranchisement, and the unequal policing of black and white communities that then translates into differential ballot access. Asking it to become less racist means asking it to lose every major statewide race in every swing state for the foreseeable future. That just won't happen. Instead, Republicans and their supporters will soothe their consciences with reassurances that more blacks are disenfranchised because they just commit more crimes, that gerrymandering is ok because we live in a "republic" not a democracy, and so on.
1
If they GOP was smart, they would keep the anti-black racism that is the foundation of their existence and abandon their anti-immigration approach. Immigrants want to be Republican. They come here to make money and be self-sufficient and are easily convinced that only the lazy need government help. Hispanics build their identity on being hardworking and non-problematic in contrast to lazy, government-dependent, criminal, and troublesome black people. Old World immigrants adopt the same distaste and fear of black people that white Americans have. The majority of them could become solidly Republican were it not for the anti-immigration stance. This could more than make up for the few, if any white Republicans who would switch allegiance if the Republican party adopted this tactic.
Yes, it's a cynical approach that depends upon the ignorance that immigrants have of American history, especially of the fact that none of them would have the opportunities and freedom that they have were it not for the black struggle, none of them have the political will or power to challenge white discrimination alone, and whites have none of the healthy fear of any of them that could generate any true social change.
As an African American, demoralizes me and to a degree makes repulsive all non-black people to be aware of these dynamics, but such are the cards we were given by history and nature's imposition of our physical characteristics upon us to play.
And still be the right? That's kind of an oxymoron in American culture.
1
Mr. Douthout, while well-intentioned, continues to write with his head in the sand. Conservatism is certainly not synonymous with racism; however, the Republican party has aligned itself with racists and racist policies in the past 50-60 years with the adoption of the "southern strategy." This was a backlash to the civil rights legislation of the 60s and currently pervades the Republican party. Ask yourself why neo-nazis and white nationalists identify with the Republican party. This has nothing to do with conservatism. It has to do with the heart and soul of those who call themselves Republicans. The Republican party is so intimately entwined with this virulent stain on America that the only solution is for concerned Republicans to form a new party based on Burkian ideals permanently and staunchly in favor of liberty and pluralism.
2
This anti-racism is getting out of hand.
If we posit that everything becomes pathological when taken to excess, then what would pathological anti-racism look like?
Ross Douthat is correct that white progressives are now the most racially pessimistic group in the US; I wonder how they rank in US history. Isn't it possible that some of that pessimism comes from progressives' historically novel ideological framework, that sees racism as pervasive, institutionalized, intractable, and terrible, while supplying no realistic means of addressing it?
If every year, you have more people telling you that white people are racist in ways we never realized before, and that white people are incapable of freeing themselves from a racist mindset, and that this low-level (or unconscious) white racism is responsible for all of the racial attainment gaps that we see... isn't pessimism the only response? And doesn't that represent something that has gone too far?
I mean, come on. All people are racist on some level, because all people make generalizations about the world and the people in it. But it seems like this natural racism, when present in white people, is being framed by Democrats as the fountainhead of evil in the US.
And so, we go to extremes to be anti-racist. Reparations for slavery? Completely unworkable as a policy, and a political disaster. Open borders? Same.
There are some hard-core racists in this country. There isn't one hiding in the heart of every white person.
4
Some of what is perceived as racism is just a common sense reaction to fear. For example crime, including murder, is rampant in parts of St. Louis. Thirteen Black children have been murdered this year. If white people choose to avoid those areas of the city where all these killings have occurred, is that racism?
5
In my book if you tolerate racism to get what you want it's just as bad as being racist. I know many in the GOP aren't racist, but they tolerate it and that's the issue. It brings acceptance to something that isn't acceptable.
3
But we now know that despite some policies that were helpful there has been enduring racism in the Right. Gingrich is now pandering to Trump as is the rest of the GOP. They are all amoral and most are immoral. Those who claim to be religious are worse. Aren't they always.
1
It's so much easier than this.
The Rich exploit the Bigots to get their votes.
Depending on the circumstances, they let the Bigots turn on the heat a bit more and stoke the flames to reach out to the not-so-Bigots, but still Bigot enough to tolerate and appreciate the zeal of the real Bigots.
When the situation is less dire, they turned down the flame just a bit to reassure the not-so-Bigot Bigots.
2
The author writes that prior to his getting overly involved in politics, that welfare, crime and affirmative action was the sway of things:that these issues had receded upon the time of his full interest and caring attitude about politics came into fruition. Mr. D the reasons these issues had receded is because that militant racist right wing this article is about put in place viscious and atrocious attacks and used race as a method of accomplishing their mission. Based on their success in quashing these issues only allows for their (conservatives) continued incitefulness with the predator in chief at the helm and the role model in moving forward. Your article will probably be "highly" recommended reading for the right wing, and considered a rallying piece for continued engagement.
1
It's important to remember that, to Republican representatives themselves, racist signalling is just a vote-getting tool. In this sense, it is like signalling to Christian conservatives who, like white nationalists, represent a minority of Republican voters, but command a lot of attention. The reason is that their votes can be secured with very little effort. They are single-issue voters with whom most Americans disagree, but they still represent fairly signficant minorities. Thus, all one needs to do is to grab all of those votes is to speak to their obsession and weather the blowback from the rest of the country.
The trap is that Republicans long ago lost the ability to govern for the majority. They now rely on well-funded donors and propaganda machines that get a quid pro quo in the form of tax cuts or other anti-democratic benefits. Since that is not enough, they cobble together the rest of their coalition with onerous, but large, single-issue minority groups who are obsessed with racism, xenophobia, or decreasing cultural relevance. That's why they have no coherent governing platform and why they are replete with internal contradictions.
The classic Republican voter is not racist or consumed by bible orthodoxy. They are normal Americans who haven't yet seen the fraud their representatives are commiting. But they will. And when that happens, the party is in for a reckoning, and may have nowhere to turn, since the country will not quickly forget what they have done.
1
I am a person of colour married to a white conservative catholic. Her family to the best of my knowledge are very welcoming and not racists. Once at a dinner talking about dogs, one of their family friends said "black dogs matter". Everyone but my wife and I laughed. Now please tell don't me that his statement wasn't racist and the fact that not one person condemned him saddened me. Her family might not be racists but have friends who are and were willing to tolerate him. That only encourages them racists. Guess what, he's a hardcore trumper. Racists are an integral part of GOP.
Unfortunately though, the left has its own issues.. when Rep.Omar makes comments about "Benjamins" and liberals stay silent, we are racists too.
39
@SHY His statement, as you described, was not racist. Maybe a lame joke, but not racist. If you twist everything to make it racist, then the charge of racism becomes meaningless. That is what is happening with the left right now. People are starting to ignore "woke" people because of these exaggerations which unfortunately increases the likelihood that actual racist acts will be ignored.
15
@Heferen
reading something i wrote vs being in my position.. it's not the same.
anyways I try to ignore these things... been through a lot of these. It just is different when you hear from someone who's your extended family.
5
@SHY
I agree 99% with everything you said, but I beg to differ when you suggest that liberals silently agreed with Omar's amateurish veiled attempts at anti-semitism. Re-read that week's news cycle pieces. While conservatives may have been screeming blue-bloody-murder, liberals (Schumer, Nadler, and others) did speak out, and the House of Representatives did vote to condemn all hate, not just anti-semitism, which seems to be all the conservatives cared about since they stayed loudly silent while the president lobbed hate-filled speech at every minority group, except Jews.
7
As usual, some thoughtful observations from Ross Douthat. But the fact that Republican administrations have pursued some policies that aren't purely racist, or the "what about them?" point that some on the left have views that tend away from racial justice cannot distract us from the core reality: any national Republican politician who, in words and deeds, consistently repudiated the racist chunk of the party would be a pariah within it. And if a collection of supposedly principled Republicans came together to do this, it would blow up the GOP, full stop. There is a significant demand for white racist politics in America, and since the 60s the Republicans have been all too ready to supply it.
4
As I mentioned in my response to your previous column on this issue, Republicans and the right in general can escape charges of racism by publicly acknowledging what they have done over the last 70 years, publicly disavowing it, and then taking real steps to chart a different course. Republicans think of themselves as the party of freedom and opportunity: It should live up to that, literally, and follow the guidelines set forth after the 2012 campaign. Why not welcome all comers into the tent and broaden the base of the party? Only then will it restore itself as a viable political presence, free of the taint of racism.
2
Douthat has always defended religious conservatives because he is one. This simple fact blinds him to the irrefutable truth that religion in any form sets up an us-versus-them paradigm that instills an elitist perspective from the beginning.
Whether it's Roman Catholicism (whose creed declares that it is the "one, true" church) or Pentacostalism (which declares that salvation can only be achieved by accepting Jesus Christ), religion plants the seed of superiority in the minds of its believers. And the bridge from superiority to supremacy is easy to cross. That supremacy spreads to race, of course, but it also infects the perspective on "others" (hence, the GOP's vilification of Islam and the numerous attempts to withhold civil rights from LGBTQ citizens of any race or ethnicity).
While guaranteeing the "free exercise" of religion, the First Amendment begins by barring the establishment of any religion. Whatever "big tent" arguments religious conservatives may put forth, by merely affirming their religious beliefs in the practice of their politics, they contradict the First Amendment.
5
The GOP has made it's bed and now will be buried in it. Thanks to voting for Trump, and then enabling and supporting him, forever will the Republican Party of the early 21st Century be known as an intellectually failed, dead-end political organization. As the GOP claims to be the party of Lincoln, so too will Trump's shadow forever be cast darkness upon it.
Why? Because a substantial percentage of the population, greater than existed before, will NEVER again consider voting for a Republican. Conservatives can try to change, but as long as they stand under Trump's banner they will forever be associated with his and the GOP's crimes. A person can seek to define themselves, but if a majority/plurality of others define that person differently, the mob wins.
Short of electoral malfeasance, or refusing to leave, the next election will break and bury the GOP. Goodbye and good riddance.
7
The Obama and Trump eras have been enlightening to me, even as someone who knew the history of Atwater and Reagan and Nixon.
I cannot see how you can look at the past twelve years and not realize how fundamentally racism is tied o the Republican party. So many insinuations that President Obama was dumb or laze, the telepromter meme, suggesting he had to read from one or was incoherent. The security briefing meme; he actually read documents, unlike his Republican predecessor or successor, and he was called dumb for it. The hatred of him was intense, and he governed as a moderate republican.
Then President Trump comes in, and it turns out all of his Obama criticisms are projection. Trump cannot finish a sentence coherently without reading it from a teleprompter. I don't think this is an exaggeration. He can barely read. That may be eyesight, who knows.
From the right? Silence. The right has no claim to integrity on anything resembling a position or moral stance, except lower taxes and hurting liberals. that's the whole coherence of the party. And hating liberals has a lot of racism in it.
5
Here's the main problem with this column: It's not for us, as white people, to gauge the level of American racism at this point in time. It's for black people, who actually experience racism in all of its subtle and not-so-subtle forms, to tell us what is racist. And from everything I've been reading ("How to be Less Stupid about Race," by Crystal Fleming, "Faces from the Bottom of the Well" and "And We are Not Saved' by Derrick Bell, "The New Jim Crow," by Michelle Alexander and everything Ta-Nehisi Coates has ever written) we are FAR, FAR from the end of racism in America. So perhaps let the people who actually experience racism tell us what it looks like, what we can do about it, and how to rid this country of its original sin, Mr. Douthat.
6
Pointing out the truth, Mr Douthat, is not "smeaing," it's pointing out the truth.
It was the father of modern conservatism, Republican Barry Goldwater, who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Richard Nixon launched his spectacularly successful "Southern Strategy" in 1968 to attract Southern racists to the GOP. George HW Bush won election to the presidency by appealing to racist fears with his Willie Horton ad. Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of civil rights workers by the Ku Klux Klan. Reagan declared his support for "states' rights". And now you have Donald Trump calling the Neo-Nazi's, Ku Klux Klansmen, and other white supremacists "very good people."
With nearly 90% of registered Republicans nationwide non-Hispanic Caucasians, and given its long racist history, the GOP does not have a "problem" with "white-nationalist infiltration." The GOP is the party of white supremacy.
5
You have to assume that every journalist including RD, and especially headline writers, would know "Betteridge's Law": if a headline ends with a question mark, the answer is ALWAYS NO!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
There's no evidence the GOP has any desire to escape racism. To the contrary, racism now appears to be the party's raison d'être.
3
These intellectual conversations are engaging, but miss the underlying trait of homo sapiens that drive this and all other us/them fights. We are a tribal species and it’s impossible to eliminate what’s programmed into our collective genes. We are doomed to keep playing wack-a-mole with ism’s of all stripes.
2
Can the Republican escape racism? They'd have to first stop EMBRACING racism.
This isn't some odd coincidence: Republicans have been pushing a racist agenda for decades. The only difference is that Trump isn't sophisticated or intelligent enough to keep his racism coded, like most every other Republican before him. He's dragged the GOP's intentional, purposeful racism into the light of day. If history has anything positive to say about him, it will be that: he pulled you racists out of the closet.
The GOP is the part of white nationalism, full stop. Will the Republican party survive that fact? They have for decades.
2
"(There has also been somewhat more racism lurking below the surface of progressive politics over the same period — as genteel eugenics, as elite NIMBYism, as left-wing or Sharptonian anti-Semitism — than most polemics against the right acknowledge, but that’s a subject for another time.)"
Ehhh, maybe not a good plan to delay that subject. Smug above-it-all postures by the Left makes it weaker, not stronger when fighting for its ideas. The Right gleefully leverages our obvious hypocrisies against us, and we thus cede the high ground. As long as we're opening up all these worm-cans for self-examination, let's go all-in and clean up the whole house.
2
Who are the "elites' of the Republican party if they are not the actual candidates? Reagan ran a campaign that was based upon race and both Bushes used the execrable Atwater and Rove to spread racist based slime throughout American politics. Rove even tossed in some bonus homophobia. Apparently the only people who can't see this are Ross and his invisible GOP non racist friends. Rove is still making truckloads of money advising GOP candidates. No one within the GOP has ever paid any price large or small for Willie Horton or Rove's smear of McCain as having fathered an African American child out of wedlock., they have been rewarded with money and power.
1
Right is conservative. Conservatism can escape racism. It was so easy when you could get rid of any dissidence, black or not.
Identity - I was raised Christian and was very devout in my youth through high school. The Vietnam War changed all that.
Who is more responsible for the deaths of millions of poor peasants from S.E. Asia to the Middle East than America's Christians?
They have sustained the GOP long after it has shamed America before the world with decades of militant A-holism.
Of course evil war is not the only thing the Christian GOP is guilty of. They have stuffed America's jails like no other country - mostly over marihuana. They have sustained and economic philosophy that blames the poor for their poverty - as lack of "personal responsibility".
Christians are finger pointers that need a whole lot of fingers pointing right back at them. America will do the change it so desperately needs when we PICKET THE CHRISTIANS ON SUNDAY MORNING.
2
Mr. Douthat does a credible job identifying a pathway for conservative politics to “escape racism”, convoluted and as unlikely to be followed as that path may be. Regardless, he acknowledges that he is not “arguing that racism is going to disappear outright from conservative politics after this presidency.” And if we take the Republican Party as the vehicle for conservative engagement, that is to acknowledge that, at base, the Republican Party will remain the party of racism (yes, other things too) while the Democrat Party has already proudly become the party of multi-cultural pluralism. Aiming to become “substantially less racialized” or just a “more muted” repository of racism isn’t what I’d call a high aspiration...and, in the long run, not sufficient to maintain the Republican Party as a viable agent for conservative policy.
2
Racism in America?
The goal in America is to have at least a political economy that does not fall along racial lines when it comes to class, that if there must be an underclass (and society for all left wing ambition, socialism, shows no signs of overcoming the existence of such a class) it will not be one defined by race.
In other words, society is relatively comfortable not only having an underclass, but declaring that such people are not as intelligent or hardworking or what have you compared to the winners in society so long as this underclass is not defined by race, is an underclass that we all can agree on, and agree there is little we can do about, although of course the left wing would rather not have any underclass at all, and the right wing in its most extreme manifestations does not care if the underclass is defined by race.
So society see-saws between the two extremes of left and right, but the middle appears to be that an underclass must exist and it's really a question of how we are going to compose the winners and the losers in society, which is to say ideally, and according to the left wing, nurture over nature will one day prevent any underclass from existing, but everybody today seems comfortable with the opposite, nature triumphing over nurture, so long as this nature does not have society breaking along racial lines, and especially does not mean the natural right of white people over everybody else. We make progress on race, but invent a new underclass.
1
"Second, it would require a recovery of influence and moral ambition by the Republican Party’s religious conservatives ..."
LOL. About 75% of White Evangelicals (they're pretty "conservative" Mr. Douthat) support Trump.
2
I'm waiting for the right to fully embrace its racism and rebrand itself some variation on Racist White Nationalist Party. I'm tired of watching people be offended by being called racist, but are perfectly comfortable with the ways in which racism benefits them. I'm tired of changing the subject to what about Chicago, and black on black crime defenses to avoid any meaningful discussion, or calling people of color "the real racists" for daring to point out uncomfortable truths.
In a nutshell, Ross, no. The right cannot escape racism because racism is the solid rock upon which it stands.
2
@Jeannie And I will add that muting open racism is no cure, because if it was, we would not be experiencing present reality. You want your racism muted. What a luxury that that is enough for you.
Absolutely. They just have to reverse their positions on education, healthcare, criminal justice, the war on drugs, endless war, gerrymandering, call out racist organizations and people for what they are regardless of donations, party affiliation, or role in the government.
1
The "Right" is a foggy term that in this instance must be more closely defined. It's the commercialized Conservative influence machine, the media, and the think tanks whose barrage of internally consistent narrative points fit together like bricks. When the machine succeeds the narrative is a wall around the minds of their faithful. If they don't want to admit something, or see it, or hear it, it stays out.
This "Right" can't "escape" racism. They need it. They distill it, blend it, and sell it like corn liquor. They have changed the label as per the counsel of Lee Atwater, who instructed them on how to dilute the firewater (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater) without sacrificing its kick.
An entire school of our political thought treats this addiction as a traditional privilege and as a political weapon. It gets them votes and raises money for them. It's a career for people whom Ross Douthat counts as friends and colleagues. The very idea that they'd "escape" it, or ever want to, is silly. In proposing it, Douthat, speaking from behind that brick wall, is either naive or prevaricating.
1
Douthat assumes that the debate is a clash of ideas, in fact it is a simple question of how to get votes for unpopular ideas. The GOP has never managed to articulate its views coherently enough to gain an electoral majority without enlisting the support of white racists.
2
I think our latent xenophobic tendencies as a society were provoked by too much immigration before the Obama administration. I know that all the small rural communities around here changed more quickly than most people were comfortable with, and this lead to more toleration of white supremacy. Even many people of Latino decent were disturbed by the rapidity of the change and some support Trump. They were born in the USA and don't want to live south of the border or anywhere like it. Trump is very xenophobic and very tolerant of white supremacy and his election has made the situation more transparent than it was. The situation will resolve simply by the passage of time since immigration has been reduced, beginning with the Obama administration.
3
Implicit in this entire column is that racism has been, and will continue to be, a problem in the Republican party and the best we can hope for is an interlude before another flare-up.
The only way to resolve this is to throw them out of the party or start a new one. But that would result in a dilution of power on the right to the benefit of the left. After all, the "non-racist" Republicans still need those racists to obtain supreme court seats and legislative majorities.
Politics makes racist bedfellows in the Republican party.
3
Trump's and the Republican Party's embrace of racism is a feature of modern Republicanism, not a bug. Sure, some Republicans are not racists. But the party survives and thrives partly by appealing to people's worst impulses, not despite doing so.
Actually, Douthat, summarizes his blind, unrealistic faith in the party moving beyond racism in his own closing line: "Someday, God willing. Someday."
4
Yes, the GOP could have a mild resurgence if only they moderated their bigotry to a sort of racism-light that educated conservatives could tolerate.
Some goal.
3
"liberalism, influenced by the revival of racial chauvinism in the Trump era, is increasingly tempted to smear mainstream conservatives as racist"
Mainstream conservatives are racist. If not all of them, then a great many of them. If you looked for racists, that is where you'd look.
Calling it a liberal smear is a way to avoid discussing the truth of it.
Conservatives need to confront this, not divert from it.
5
Not without cutting into their appeal...
When i talk about racism and especially immigration Trump policies I am struck by how fear based it is. They fear loss of jobs to that other group. They fear the loss of value to their homes. They fear the crime that they think is inevitable with a deluge of immigrants.
There is no recognition of what immigrants and what persons they view as different from themselves add to the vitality of the country or the fact that like most people there is a need to screen those coming in for those who may be destructive. Instead fear drives them to make blanket statements and the desire to exclude anyone who may be at all different.
Racist hatred and fear is the essence of Trumpism, but it can not be allowed to drag the whole nation down into the rabbit hole of that fear.
5
@just Robert You make a great point, but I think you miss an important element.
Yes, people fear losing jobs to immigrant groups. That is not an irrational fear for people at the bottom of the economic ladder, Calling them racist for wanting to provide for their families dismisses real concerns through use of lazy shorthand.
Look who loses to forced busing, affirmative action, and other such programs. Hint: It ain't the middle class.
3
@Liberty hound Thanks for the comment. At the root of racism is fear and that is my comment about my conservative friends. Sometimes I think racism is the wrong word, perhaps it is narrow minded fixation on what we have and the fear of losing it that drives them and admittedly drives us to rejecting others especially those we see as so different from us. Perhaps if somehow we can break this fixation we could find a basis for trust and a more open spirit. Sorry for going on, but thanks.
I've got to push back gently. While we rightly complain about so-called "white identity politics," among conservatives, we accept black identity politics on the Left. Indeed, the Left has made identity politics its stock and trade, and has used it to target anybody who opposes their policies as racist.
Former Congressman Charlie Rangle (D-NY) infamously said, "They used to call us N-words and S-words, now they talk about tax cuts and welfare reform."
The goal was to rally blacks and Hispanics as a voting bloc against policy changes.
Or remember the rise of "multi-culturalism" and its advocates complaining about DWEMs--Dead White European Males--as they pushed to deconstruct history and society.
And, of course, affirmative action pits women and minorities against white men ... and the Democrats wonder why they lost the working class. It had nothing to do with Nixon, "dog whistles," or "speaking in code." It had everything to do with the Left using identity politics to target white men for political gain.
If you are offended by race- and gender-based identity politics, then you should be offended by everybody who practices it.
5
@Liberty hound Women and minorities ARE the working class. All politics are "identity politics." It's just that White identity politics have have been considered the norm for far, far too long.
2
Can they escape racism? Not as long as the confederacy along their current leader are in power.
1
Another article designed to destroy the legitimacy of any political space to the right of the Dems. Let's make being a non-Dem unacceptable, racist, misogynistic, ignorant, evil, etc.
If a democracy is to function, there must be space for ideas outside of those supported by one party. I know that for a lot of Dems this is simply not possible. They are becoming the party of intolerance and tyranny.
Is the person who is holding up the "Resist Hate" sign directing it to the Dems? She must be, because they are the ones who are overtaken by debilitating, psychotic hate for this president. However, it would be too much to ask that they recognize the irony.
4
American society has always been unequal and unjust. However, its ideals of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness were on a solid foundation. The current Republican party has re-defined what it means to an American. If you're white (even a recent immigrant), your citizenship is legitimate and automatic. For all non-whites, their citizenship is a privilege and always questionable.
Since the passage of the civil rights act in 1964, the segregationist democrats switched to the republican party. Fortunately, America is growing more diverse and the influence of the racists will be diminished in the near future.
1
The bizarre underlying assumption of this piece portrays Republicans as conservatives. Nothing could be further from the truth. Conservatives don’t consistently enact huge deficit budgets, far in excess of their more liberal opponents. Conservatives are proponents of free trade, the GOP is not. Conservatives value the original meaning of the Constitution and would never find themselves in the thrall of evangelical religious cults. Conservatives cherish the individual citizen and would naturally eschew the GOP policy of race baiting that flowered with the Republican Southern Strategy.
The only justification for putting Republican and Conservative in the same sentence is to illustrate the vanishingly small intersection in the Venn diagram of these two terms.
5
The problem here is that the left, the academia and the media are creating racism where there was none. Black nationalism and racial intolerance is a much more significant problem than its white equivalent.... and because it's allowed to fester (because of past racism) it is waking up its equivalents on the other side. Stopping the identity politicking would help, and it'd help everyone. i know this is too much to ask for.
4
How so? Do we have “black nationalists” in power right now? We do however, have a current administration that has been making the KKK and neo-Nazi groups very happy. Why might that be?
2
Racism isn't the only problem (to use a euphemism) within the "Right". Deep-seated religious prejudice and over-the-top xenophobia long have characterized the "Right" and plagued both those affiliated with it and those who suffer oppression and persecution as a result.
3
"the error of unbounded moralistic optimism": liberals at work trying to impose their worldview. On Iraq, or on the USA. Isn't this a free country, where we can pick the light bulbs and insurance policies and cars we want, rather than have the Bureaucratic Party tell us what we can get?
3
@Andrew Lohr
Pretty rich that one would blame liberals for Iraq. I seem to recall false "intelligence" coming from Bush's administration in the lead up. Where's all that Iraqi yellow cake now?
Conservatives at work trying to impose their worldview. On everyone.
Isn't this a free country where we can choose to marry whomever we want, have children or not, get treated for injuries and disease without going bankrupt?
1
Mr Douthat,
How can you defend conservatives from charges of theocracy when your goal is “religious-populist conservatism?”Not sure exactly what that is but it kinda sounds like theocracy. If you disagree, perhaps you could enlighten me. I’m all ears.
5
My scenario also has one piece of grim plausibility going for it: It wouldn’t end the hysterical polarization that defines our times so much as redirect it. A religious-populist conservatism with more appeal to blacks and Hispanics could easily inspire as much fear and anxiety among liberal mandarins as the current Trumpist version. And instead of defending conservatives against charges of racism, I could get back to my true vocation: defending conservatives against charges of theocracy.
Someday, God willing. Someday.
Ross. How do you feel about separation of Church and State? And fear and anxiety among liberal mandarins? I think you enjoy just a little too much the "battle" against liberals rather than embracing some kind of legitimate middle ground of coming together. Defending against charges of theocracy as your true vocation - is that really so much fun? A religious populist conservatism seems your goal. Why don't you describe that more fully and see who "bites". You might be surprised.
3
When people complain about taxes, they're talking about blacks. When they complain about fiscal waste, they're talking about blacks. Entitlement programs? Safety nets? Socialism? Blacks, blacks, blacks.
Economists as well as others like to point out the irony when people say that government is too big and wasteful, and yet see no waste in any program that benefits them or their community directly. I see no irony at all. It should surprise no one that the most diverse nation, not defined by ethnic commonality, should have such problems with human services such as education and healthcare.
An NYT review of Max Boot's "The Corrosion of Conservatism" states "Boot sees rot on the right that has been there from the start." Further, "Boot concludes that 'extremism is embedded in the DNA of the modern conservative movement,' as if Trump is where the movement had been headed, or fated to end up, from the start." In my entire adult life, I have never had a political discussion with a right-leaning person that did not devolve quickly into a race discussion, followed quickly by bald racial epithets. Especially if alcohol was involved. Seems when people drink, they lose their inhibitions.
15
@Joyboy In my area, when they complain about taxes, they're talking about Connecticut.
4
Exactly.
1
This seems to be wishful thinking, to say the least. In order for the Republican party to escape racism, only fourteen things need to happen. Is that really likely? One cannot help noticing that Trump's racism becomes more overt and more outrageous--he's now intent on blocking people from the Bahamas because they may be terrorists--but it's being silently supported by all the Republicans in Congress, that would be all the Republicans who would have to change fourteen modes of behavior to defeat racism in their party.
3
Like a college freshman's suitcase on their first trip home, there's a lot to unpack here and none of it smells very good. I'm particularly impressed by the powerful aroma of "genteel eugenics" left unexplained, and "hysterical" polarization, as though Mr. Douthat did not know the origins of that word. Other malodorous examples abound, but I'd need to open a window. Suffice it to say there is no defense for racism.
10
I don’t agree that the Bush era was a halcyon one for race relations. To the contrary, the War on Terror was one of the major causes of the pervasive xenophobia today, and the Great Recession was the main cause of the economic anxieties today. While African-Americans have been strongly Democratic for decades, racial polarization increased during the Bush years as Hispanic and Asian Americans (a Republican demographic in the 90s) became more solidly Democratic.
2
Governance is largely about economics and allocating the budget. Republicans claim they are better, that a vote for them is a vote for our financial well being, but here we are with Americans so economically desperate that our life expectancy is dropping with the number of overdoses and suicides. Our income inequality has reached unsustainable levels.
Republican policies have failed us and they know it. The racists know that too, but when Republicans disavow racism, there goes an entire voting bloc.
The best thing is to scrap the party and start fresh with conservative economic ideas that work for all Americans. If they need culture wars to win, their ideas have failed.
4
Sorry Ross. There is no way a list of “complexities” and a convoluted, intellectualized interpretation of those complexities can ever disguise the ugly reality of conservatism’s deeply imbedded racial history. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
The current eruption of white nationalism isn’t some random occurrence; it sprang from a deep conviction programmed in the conservative DNA (aided by conservatism’s religious-based beliefs and theocratic impulse) that in the great chain of being people of color are below the white race.
Douthat shoots his argument in the foot when he claims that conservative racism can be tempered without taking “radical” steps like reparations. But the essential part of reparations is less monetary compensation, and more a hard look in the mirror and heartfelt confession of our nation’s past sins. No national healing will take place without that admission – something conservatives are loathe to do. Douthat is fooling himself if he thinks the Right can escape racism without contrition first.
And Douthat thinks that the Religious Right’s Faustian bargain with Trump can be easily fixed. But that bargain seems unmovable as long as conservatives get what they want e.g. anti-abortion laws. Hypocrisy has been hardwired into religion from the first moment humans fell to their knees thinking there was something greater than themselves – something that could be conveniently manipulated in the pursuit of power.
First step Ross: face reality.
5
I read this with some dedicated over my first cup of coffee this morning. The analysis presented is primarily policy-based, and thus--as complex as it was on those terms--can be simplistic about, or overlook, the white conservative "heart of darkness" that often (but not always!) smolders in racism.
Thus the analysis had one supposition that requires further work: it presumed that (government) policy defines, corrects, changes (racist) personality and belief. What generates racism, or any belief: policy changes? Despite my aversion to Trumpian conservativism, I want an essay that reveals the conservative heart in all its contradictions.
You say that "I think conservatism can be nonracist, or at least substantially less racialized, without embracing the current progressive definition", and I agree- but it can't be a winning party. It certainly never has. The fact of the matter is, Americans don't want conservative/libertarian/Republican policies, because they don't work for the average person. So the Republican party has never stood entirely on the strength of those policies, that was the whole point of the Southern Strategy, to make it so that they had a winning coalition of the old racists and the libertarian core of the Republican party. Without that coalition, there's no winning, because Americans do not want Republican policies.
You know how I know? Because in the last primaries, each and every actual Republican lost and lost badly, the conservative voters wanted Trump's outright racism and non-Republican fiscal and social policies instead.
8
I had to LOL at Mr. Douthat's penultimate sentence: "And instead of defending conservatives against charges of racism, I could get back to my true vocation: defending conservatives against charges of theocracy."
That is I think the crux of it. The post 1900's Republican party has always been led by and for the wealthy and for business. Whereas that constituency is naturally a very small part of the population, it has always had to thus aggregate support from other groups, using whatever shiny objects it could muster. Anti-communism in the 50's, racism, drugs and sex in the 60's, women's rights in the 70's, theocratic anti-homosexuality in the 80's, guns in the 90's and 00's, and now nativism and again racism in the 10's.
As the gap between the small, wealthy population and the much larger lower middle class and poor populations continues to widen, it will be harder for the GOP to make the case for conservative politics, and sadly it will have to continue to try to attract votes with more and more passionate pleas to hate and anger.
Maybe Mr. Douthat, you should look for another vocation altogether, and let the GOP die once and for all.
12
I'll disagree with this article on several points. Largely that while yes most conservatives are not racists, there is certainly a willingness to say nothing about racists and even tolerate racism within the party. Steve King was for many years making overtly racist commentary but had not been disavowed by the party until recently. Trump made a habit of overt racism both before and during the campaign and still mainstream conservative figures lined up to support him as the GOP nominee. How many republicans stood and and decried the president by name for defending racists in Charlottesville? Or when he refused to distance himself from David Duke on national television? Did Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan say that at any point Trump was not representing the Republican Party for any of the many instances of blatant racism? Again, not all conservatives are racist but at what point is the general acceptance of overt racism no different than the real deal? You don't get to have it both ways of neither being racist but refusing to confront it when it is so obvious. This article seems to be ignoring the realities of the political moment for a handful of nostalgic remembrances that while illustrative of a possibility are not representative of the here-and-now of the Republican Party.
191
@DanielAnd when will Mr Douthat write a columns denouncing the evil racism of the party of slavery, segregation, and "affirmative action"? Even in today's columns he mentions bits of liberal racism.
Taxing white people for being white--reparations--is racism plain and simple, and needs to be tossed out the Overton window so we can deal with the real problems, including some racism, that we can properly tackle and shrink. (Claiming we can completely solve and eliminate them is "the error of unbounded moralistic optimism.")
3
@Daniel: Comment sounds to ABH as a typical, sanctimonious, Mr. Goody Goody academic reaction to an "ism" of no importance least of all to Africans themselves whose ancestors were victims of South Atlantic slave trade and equally virulent Arab slave trade in the east. Curtinn, estimated 11 million enslaved Africans were brought to the US ,whereas Arab slave trade in the east--remember Livingstone's work as a missionary doctor at UJIJI where he met Stanley? resulted in grosso modo 17 million victims. Married to a Ghanain whose brother fled South Africa where he had a small business, I regard preoccupation of our scholars with problem of racism, a word w/o anthropological validity, as irrelevant and worse, a topic embraced because it advances careers! Did Cornell West volunteer for an NGO, sponsor an African family for visas?Having spent 4 years earning my living in west Africa, sponsoring a family, along with their pets for immigration and who r now all living state side, I challenge writer and Mr. Douthat to do likewise!U have to have known Africa to appreciate how irrelevant the traffic in human flesh hundreds of yrs. ago is to Africans today, who r concerned with the here and now.First day as Fulbright in Coloban, asked students what they wanted, and response was unanimous: a visa!Divestiture?"Connais pas!"Gates, Yancy,Douthat regards topic as important, but average African and American could not care less.Handsome is as handsome does!
1
@Alexander Harrison
What does the African , or Arab Slave Trades have to do with how African Americans have been oppressed , raped in all manners , and discriminated against for hundreds of years in America a Country who half of its early formation was built on their deprivations ? . Answer- Nothing
. Neither does your other examples , and unfortunately the preoccupation of scholars who make or influence little decision making , or the behavior of White People themselves has not stopped discrimination one iota .
12
Ross, the crux of the matter is what Republican presidents do to get elected, not what mild, non-racist programs they support once in the White House.
Every Republican president since Nixon has played the race card to win an election. Why? Was this necessary?
Apparently the party pollsters and intelligentsia felt it was...otherwise their candidate would lose.
What that tells me is that racism is ingrained in a large portion of the American population and Republicans have no qualms about appealing to it to get elected...which just maintains a vicious, hateful cycle. It is absolutely reprehensible and deeply cynical.
11
Douthat sees [black] crime and [black] reliance on welfare as driving white racism.
Ross, this itself is paradigmatically racist thinking. You got the cause and effect backwards: it was white racism that saw crime as an urban thing, welfare as an urban thing, dysfunction as a black thing.
Whites commit crime, whites take welfare. It's racist to think of those things as black.
Best evidence of this is public attitudes toward the current (mostly white) opioid epidemic / addiction, vs. how black communities are seen, in relation to drug use/abuse.
I was born in 1962, grew up in the 70s, in a city (Providence) with its share of crime, both black and white. I don't have rose-colored glasses, but I have lived long enough to know that a white, conservative apologist for the "Reagan Democrat" (white urban ethnic switching from D to R) or white-working-class-voting-R phenomenon as some sort of principled reaction to purported black crime and dependency, has it backwards. They're racist, so they see bad things as inherently black, and black people as inherently bad.
10
Ronald Reagan's campaign kicked-off in Philadelphia, Mississippi. That's about when the contemporary Republicans began "suppressing" the racism.
3
We live in a country with a long history of slavery, Jim Crow, and racism. We had the Chinese exclusion act, we a racist immigration law in the 1920s. Social scientists have established Republican voting patterns - current voting patterns - are causally linked to the numbers of slaves those counties had 150 years ago.
But liberals like me aren't immune to racism. We live and breath our culture, and it has a racist history. The point is to not have racist policies.
But the point about the Republican party is this: they actively exploit racism for political power. Now more than perhaps any time since the 1920s. Lee Atwater famously detailed this racist playbook, and it's back in full force with Trump.
Moreover, many Republicans who aren't overtly racist are perfectly happy to jump on the racist bandwagon if it accrues them power. To me, that almost makes it worse than just being Jonny Racist.
3
It is possible, I suppose, that there are people who do not, from time to time, harbor a single racist thought or idea. Possible, but not very likely. Whether we want to admit it or not, this is one glass house in which we all sometimes reside.
2
Mr. Douthat, not only you are defending conservative racism, you are defending the systemic racism USA is founded, built upon, and continues to operate on. Until the laws, policies, justice system, and attitude that are based on implicit racist thinking are present in the country no politician can diminish importance of race in America. You are looking for a symptomatic relief not the cure.
Yes, many of the progressive liberal's proposals are unfair to whites, impractical, and misguided but they are not racist because they are an answer to our racist history.
2
Most Republicans won't even acknowledge that Trump is racist, or that racism is a big problem within the party. Kind of hard to address a problem when you can't even admit it exists.
255
@Jess
That is also a problem for society at large.
7
@LES
True, but it's particularly a problem in the Republican Party. One is a genuinely diverse party, the other is a largely homogenous party.
11
@LES Yes, and when progressives address that problem, Republicans accuse them of unacceptable levels of "political correctness."
One aspect of racist conservative messaging is misrepresenting reparations as a common or credible component aspect of the progressive agenda.
The reparations discussion is designed and forwarded by conservatives to create racial fear and resentment in white voters.
4
The Right can escape overt racism in the same way the Left can escape "We'll save you because you can't save yourselves" crypto-racism. The Left's racism is based on stereotypes that are, perhaps, worse than those of the Right, because the Left's are patronizing and cloaked in a false veil of sympathy. Fans of "Everybody Hates Chris" may remember the misguided white teacher who wrongly assumed that Chris came from an impoverished broken home -- simply because he was black -- and constantly offered sympathy that he didn't need or want.
Both sides need to stop wasting time shouting and pointing fingers. White people aren't demons. People of color aren't demons. White people aren't superior and aren't the only ones who can save the world. People of color are strong, smart human beings who can think and act for themselves.
The only way out of this mess is for all of us to acknowledge our shared humanity. Without that, we'll be at war forever.
2
As Mr. Douthat acknowledges, the Republican party has been pandering to racism since the days of Nixon, be it a southern strategy, welfare queens, Willie Horton, Birtherism, etc. More recently the pandering has been extended to religious fundamentalism, which is another divisive curse. I guess the question is whether employing such tactics makes the candidates racists and bigots themselves, and whether those Republican voters who oppose such tactics but nonetheless accept them in exchange for other benefits similarly damns them.
2
Republicans have used racism for political gain with Whites. Democrats, some of who have been racist or made racist comments in certain ways no doubt, have not. It's not complicated. This is why African-Americans both in power and as voters are almost all Democrats these days. If say 10% of the Republican party and some of its highest officials were Black and say 40% of Blacks voted Republican as was once the case this would all be different. Conservative policies would be coming from a better place. I could imagine a George W. Bush party led by Michael Steele going that route however much I might disagree with their policies
There is also the matter of personal racism. What is said and felt behind closed doors. Republicans have reliably produced racists at the highest level.
Trump would have felt right at home conference-calling with these two past Republican Presidents
“As you can imagine,” Nixon confided in Rogers, “there’s strong feeling that we just shouldn’t, as [Reagan] said, he saw these, as he said, he saw these—” Nixon stammered, choosing his words carefully—“these, uh, these cannibals on television last night, and he says, ‘Christ, they weren’t even wearing shoes, and here the United States is going to submit its fate to that,’ and so forth and so on.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-reagans-racist-conversation-richard-nixon/595102/
3
I am so weary of reading cravenly dishonest Straw Man arguments from NYT conservative writers.
Ross cites convincing and frankly self-evident points about the GOP's racist nature by Zak Cheney-Rice, but then pivots to claim disavowing racism in the eyes of progressives would entail an embrace of "reparations to substantial immigration increases to single-payer health care".
This is sophistry of the worst kind: dishonest, transparent, and morally abhorrent.
12
Ross, I think you've slightly missed the point here.
"Cheney-Rice is right that there is considerably more racism on the right than Republican Party elites wanted to believe pre-Trump and that the elite has conspicuously failed to confront its more overt and toxic forms[.]"
No, the elite had no problem, pre-Trump, with condemning the Klan and Neo-Nazis and the like; some even still will. The problem is that the elites conspicuously failed to confront racism its more subtle, systematic, and cryptic forms.
2
Your assessment is too simplistic. Suppression of racism just makes it more insidious, and you left out of your review of history the backlashes that occurred when racial progress was made, e.g. reduction of crime: school to prison pipeline; Obama elected: rise of the tea party, birtherism and Trump. You certainly have left out how black men and boys are at risk of being killed by police officers, vigilantes and white supremacists and how the fight against gun control is directly tied to the terrorization and oppression of brown people. Systemic racism and white privilege is real and creates all kinds of social and economic inequality for brown people. Until conservatives and liberals (I agree with you that liberals are at fault, too) acknowledge that fact and work together to dismantle systems that have been in place since white people "discovered" this country, racism will always be present and supported.
98
Here's a hard question: If substantial numbers of voters in a two-party democracy are motivated at least in part by racism, doesn't at least one party have to reflect that? Responsible leaders can exclude a fringe organization like the John Birch Society or the KKK. But there's no mechanism to disenfranchise voters because of their attitudes toward race. If those voters are going to the polls motivated by racist reasons, then by definition those motives are legitimate, because those votes must be counted. Somehow, somewhere, they're going to surface. The only solution appears to be for leaders to promote policies in which race isn't very salient. That's hard, and always temporary.
The term used by Douthat, racially conservative, is telling. What exactly differentiates the racial conservative from the racist? Is it a matter of degree? Of public policy? Or something else?
Trump and his white nationalist supporters don't deal in nuance. They trade in the divisive rhetoric and actions that elevated him to the presidency and now spells ruin for either the Republican Party of the nation.
The cancer eating away at the major organs of the Republican Party is unlikely to go into remission, as Douthat would have it, it has in the past. They are in stage four with no miracle cure in sight.
3
The claim that " the Republican Party’s religious conservatives" have in the past or the present opposed racism in the party is false. Those who most support racism, mainly in the South, are also those supporting conservative "Christian" religiosity. Douthat's picture of a substantial body of "true conservatives" of high moral principles within the Republican party is a fantasy if not a deliberate fabrication.
4
@skeptonomist
100% spot-on.
1
"Second, it would require a recovery of influence and moral ambition by the Republican Party’s religious conservatives — a group whose elites shaped the Bush presidency’s racially inclusive efforts and whose rank-and-file are still less inclined to white-identity politics than other conservative constituencies, despite their Faustian bargain with Trump."
Mr. Douthat fails to mention that his own newspaper has had recent articles concerning the racism the forms the foundation of the white Southern Baptist coalition.
1
A thought provoking essay, Mr. Douthat.
You are right that the roots of Republican racism extend to the Nixon era.
You are wrong that this represents "conservative" racism. It is Republican, and the GOP has not been conservative in any sense that I understand that word, since the Nixon era.
There is no natural conflict between the fundamentals of conservatism – budgetary discipline, focus on the Constitution, respect for individual rights, limited central authority over people's lives – and civil rights.
The problem has been that those who call themselves conservatives do so because calling themselves theocratic, dictatorial bigots (which is what many are) doesn't sound appealing to them. LBJ, when he signed the first Civil Rights Act, noted that that consigned the South to the GOP for a generation. Only, it's turned out to be more than a generation.
We all have our stories about so-called conservatives whose principal character traits were greed, bigotry and a strong desire to sit at the seashore and tell the tide not to come in. Trump did not invent these people: they were there beforehand. What Trump has done, however, is give them license to flaunt their bigotry, to express their abusiveness and to gush their desire to control the lives of others.
These are not conservatives: they are reactionaries with a huge inferiority complex who need to bully and abuse others.
7
Both parties, everybody in any field, should concentrate on solving our economic problems. We've got economic death staring us in the face.
It is so much easier to rant about racism than work for a society in which workers are paid a living wage and no one camps in the street.
2
The existence of the modern Republican Party came about because of the backlash against the Democrats who were pushing for the Civil Rights Movement.
Until you can acknowledge that original sin, no, the right will not escape its foundational racism.
5
There was a time when the Republican Party was the champion of racial equality. It was once Southern Democrats who refused to let go of the Civil War. To that end they promoted states rights and an associated conservative agenda. Then the historic Civil Rights legislation was passed. First the deep South and then the border states switched their allegiance to the Republican Party. By 1990 former southern Democrats took control of the Republican Party and liberal Republicans were drummed out. True ideological conservatives pandered to bigotry because they need their votes to reach a majority. Now they have brought us Trump. Having made a pact with devil the time has come for ideological conservatives to pay up. They must now either fully embrace the racism they pandered to, or go off alone in the wilderness by themselves as a minority third party.
2
Ross clearly has the benefit of an advanced education and most probably truly believes the things he says in the NYT. But more and more his offerings seem to be exercises in the "hey, we may be doofuses but the libs are just as bad, if not worse" school of rhetoric. And let us not forget that Ross absolutely believes that if we all were to became good Catholics/Evangelicals and applied ourselves to the task of procreating more and more children this country would be oh so much better.
So let's give Ross his props: he's a conservative Christian with one foot planted in the Bible and the other wedged in a thesaurus. But he apparently hasn't noticed that many respectable conservatives (see Kristol, Frum, Will, Senor, Sanford, Flake, Corker et al) have either walked away from Trump-style conservatism or disappeared completely. And that means that the choir he keeps preaching to have less in common with him than with Duke and Spencer. When he finally gets around to asking sitting Republican lawmakers to stand up and against Trump and retake the embattled heights of true American conservatism I'm afraid he'll find that they no longer understand the language of his sermons.
2
"The Clinton-Gingrich years brought compromises on welfare reform and affirmative action, successful policing strategies that helped bring down the crime rate, and an economic boom that made every policy debate seem somewhat less zero-sum."
By eliminating welfare, throwing thousands of mothers and children into financial precocity and malnutrition, eliminated affirmative action in government leading to our current era of essential resegregation, and locking up scores of black men, we made conservatives more compassionate and everyone happier? Absurd.
The times should find someone humane to write in its pages.
2
While adamantly claiming they're not "racist," too many fear not only a hit to the pocketbook if Trump is voted out, but also the loss of their "white privilege." Some will deny such privilege exists, but ask any making that claim whether they'd surrender their whiteness and walk the streets of America as a person of color. Color-blind, indeed. So many factors contribute to these racial divisions, but Trump certainly threw plenty of fuel on the fire. We need leaders who will help America see we have a lot of healing to do, which will required looking back with a clear eye for the legacy of slavery, failed Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the ways a legacy of white supremacy continues to disturb the peace for one and all. No easy task. Let 2020 Vision bring a real model for change that's been a long time coming.
2
It will take another generation or two, but I could see a shift where today's centrists and moderate Democrats become the new Republicans -- more driven by traditional fiscal and defense concerns than hot-button social issues -- as the Democratic party becomes more progressive again. As the older Tea Partiers and MAGAs die off and religious influence continues its downward trajectory, the extremists who make up the modern GOP will be shunned back to the margins.
Of course, most of us will have been killed off by climate change by then.
1
In and amongst this muddle of thought on whether the Republican Party can be saved from its inherent racism is a stream of lucidity. The Republican Party in general, and President Trump in particular, are not racist and are not inspiring racism.
The racism drumbeat is nearly entirely heard on the left and in the media. Accusations of racism are stuck to every policy from rollbacks of environmental policies enacted without proper government protocols to cutting Federal taxes to the appointment of conservative judges and justices.
These actions are not racist and all the screaming and labeling will not make them so.
The differentiation of Americans by race, wealth, genders (all 51 or 2000 of them), age, ethnic background, eye color, etc. is a practice of the left. It leaves each subset of hyphenated Americans feeling a bit less American, and a bit more jaded toward all other subsets.
But making slices of America hate on all other slices of America is racist itself. If all you talk about is race, then look in the mirror to find your racist.
Republicans are not racists. But those constantly accusing them of racism in every action they take see racism everywhere and need to look in their mirrors.
1
Ross Douthat claims the right's that white identity politics (aka racism) might somehow be partially suppressed?
This partial suppression could become a goal of the right wing? And the motivation for this partial suppression would be religious?
Why am I laughing out loud?
4
We ought to stop using the incendiary word "racist" to demonize those who verbalize racist ideas. Because it suggests that some of us surely are, and some of us surely are not, racists. Better to think of racism as a part of our genetic makeup which can manifest itself in the expression of abhorrent ideas, but which can also be managed in the same way that a chronic illness like diabetes can be managed.
There is no cure, but fortunately most of us are successfully managing this condition in ourselves. What's needed is not condemnation of persons whose racist gene is flaring, but rather the treatment that has a proven record of success, which is education. Learning to tolerate people who don't look like use is an acquired skill. It's not something we're necessarily born with.
1
No. Exclusion is the bedrock of any conservative movement. Keep things the same, "conserve" the status quo. In our are maintain the supremacy of whites.
2
I am flabbergasted by how few people understand what differentiates people along the political spectrum. It is unconscious fear which means we were born this way from evolution. The more fear you have, the further right on the political spectrum. This is where racism resides. Oh sure, some of it is conscious hatred, but most of it is more subtle. If you think you take in information, digest it and come up with a rational conclusion, you are wrong. The information is first passed through the right amygdala in your brain (it varies in size which correlates to where you are on the political spectrum and can be determined by an MRI) before it gets to the cortex where rational thought comes into play. That amygdala defrlects that information if it is in conflict with an inherent fear. That is why Republicans vote more readily (they're easy to scare), often vote against their own best interests and many more irrational thoughts. It is considered by some to be evolutionarily useful during the first 50,000 generations of humans in order to survive, but not the last 500. Until everyone recognizes this inconvenient truth, discussions like this article are incomplete.
1
This is a very revisionist picture of history. Things weren't better under Bush Jr. They weren't even better under Clinton. The racist structure of our society was certainly *quieter* but it was no less present - as can be seen in Bush's handling of the Katrina aftermath, as well as Clinton's gutting of welfare, which was undoubtedly the single greatest betrayal of his presidency.
A quick note on that: welfare throughout the 70s and 80s was working. Slowly, but it was working. The fact that the changes negotiated under Gingrich and Clinton managed to be branded as *reform* is one of the single greatest frustrations among those who study anti-poverty measures. It was a disaster, and it made things much worse.
Free market conservatism is racist. Period. Why? Because a "meritocracy" isn't fair when one group of people have been actively and deliberately disenfranchised and economically gutted ever since the end of slavery. Until conservatives grapple with that legacy, and I doubt they will, they will remain the racists they are today.
5
If this article had been written between GWB's election in 1999 and Sept 11, 2001, there might be something there. But we do not live in that world anymore and like toothpaste out of its tube, we aren't going back.
2
@CB
correction, election in 2000. If only we all had a sharpie...
Comparing the republican party of the Bush--late 90's with the party today is virtually absurd. The equivalent absurdity is comparing Reagan governance - policies, laws, taxes, etc, with trump's. The gap is so broad and so deep that the gop does not recognize itself in the comparison.
Combine that with the absolute fact that 60 million Americans gleefully voted for an outright racist in 2016 and 90% of them continue to support him (along with their elected leaders) and you have the reality of today. The gop has willfully taken itself deep into the gutter from which there is no recovery at this point.
2
Mr. Douthat seems to think that Republican racism is a side note to their other policy preferences. He should try polling the Republican electorate some day. They clearly are far more unified by their racism than by their economic theories. That's why Republicans constantly lie about supporting coverage of pre-existing conditions and the targets of their tax cuts (the rich).
Mr. Douthat predictably ignores Republican voter suppression and gerrymandering, their core racist policy that is also the only reason they hold power today. Unless Mr. Douthat will commit himself to one person one vote and not brush off voter suppression as politics as usual, he's just another enabler of the racist Republican party.
What does it mean if you eschew Trump's obvious bigotry but still huddle with Mitch McConnell, who has posed with the confederate flag and has made a career out of diluting minority votes? Absolutely nothing.
4
What exactly does Mr. Douthat mean with the term "mainstream conservatives"?
The mainstream of conservatism in the U.S. today is all about giving Trump exactly what he wants, whenever he wants it, no matter how outrageous and no matter how racist it is.
5
Can a leopard escape spots?
1
It is highly unlikely that USA will truly become progressive given the obstacle they face. To name few: the Electoral College, gerry pandering, The Senate with equal representation by largest State and smallest one, voter id laws, McConnell refusal to hear and confirm Obama nominee for Supreme Court. A Supreme Courts rulings that favoured conservatives in vast majority of cases including voting rights, money in politics and gun laws. With all tools the racists and white nationalists will alway be part of Republican Party and conservatives.
2
As a White, left-of-liberal Democrat, I could do with a lot less use of the "racist" branding iron, applied to individuals and the whole GOP. Yes, it's a festering problem, and Ross is right to acknowledge the dirty history. As the composition of the electorate changes, and as Democrats get a better grip on their inclusionary and reforming message, the narrow-mindedness of the other party will be more exposed. Racism is not its only flaw.
Ross is right that Democrats also have to own up to their collusion with systemic racism. We all need to recognize that racist ideas and attitudes are one thing, and there is racist behavior. And racism can show in our actions when we least expect it: in what we avoid, what we put off, what we fail to do in spite of good intentions. Democrats are better than the opposition at going out where they are uncomfortable, where the problems may be intractable. The blame game is not a winning strategy.
1
Who does Douthat think he's kidding. The Republican party is no more likely to largely cleansed of institutional racism than it is likely to eliminate its obeisance to the gun lobby. Both are fundamental to its continued electoral survival.
8
Compassionate conservatives are not compassionate and never did exist. That was spin to gouge the middle and lower classes.
3
That is a weird article because the list of necessary actions to eliminate racism in the GOP by the author himself is so long and so difficult to achieve that he's a guaranteed impossibility. It is weird again when the author says that the actual Trump policies are developing EXISTING bigotry or racism instead of developing it and that is wrong because when you develop existing racism you make it more visible and obviously more palatable thanks to Fox network and you are convincing younger generation that racism is great and racism is expanding and 90% of the GOP voters are racism. The auteur is trying to reconcile his faith with the racism in the Christian GOP party, rare blindness from this good journalist.but nothing is stronger than faith to make you blind to the reality of the world the political world and science.
2
Trying to completely stamp out racism is like to trying to stamp out ignorance, which is what it is underneath it all.
What people generally refer to as "racism" in America and elsewhere is merely a symptom of ignorance, which in itself is a symptom of poor education.
You do not rid a country or a mind of "racism" by demanding anything. You rid a country or a mind by tackling the underlying ignorance, and you do that with education.
And, as always, Democrats are fighting a battle the entirely wrong way. As a white person who's been working with many black people in the trucking industry, I can tell you that many black people have a handle on racism, and know that it says more about the one showing it than themselves. But aside from that, they also know there are currently more important things to think about, such as jobs. And the truth is that many are working now when a very short number of years ago they weren't.
Everyone knows the Republican party is racist. But you do need to ask yourself why any black people are Republican, and why any are Trump supporters.
Get answers to those two questions and you may actually understand American politics a bit more.
2
Hispanics are an ethnic group, not a racial group. They can be of any race or combination of races, but most Hispanic Americans are white. According to the Census Bureau, 53 percent of Hispanic Americans are white.
Source: The Hispanic Population: 2010, U.S. Census Bureau, page 15
https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf
Current Census Bureau data shows Texas is 78.8 percent white.
Non-Hispanic whites make up about 41.5 percent of the Texas population while Hispanic whites make up about 39.6 percent. Virtually all Hispanic Texans are white. This is why Texans refer to Anglo and Hispanics rather than Anglos and whites. State and federal courts in Texas also refer to Anglos and Hispanics.
Intermarriage between Anglos and Hispanics in Texas is so common that the distinction between two ethic group sill vanish within a generation.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/TX,US/PST045218
1
For decades, conservative pundits like Ross Douthat have been telling us that the GOP's divisive rhetoric on hot-button social issues was a sideshow, and that the heart of their movement was small government and free enterprise: "come for the dogwhistle racism — stay for the free market principles!" In fact, the movement has always been about the base's toxic resentments, and its chattering class has been the sideshow.
2
"I think conservatism can be nonracist, or at least substantially less racialized" - there is a huge difference. Simply dampening the effects of racism because that becomes apparently more politically rewarding - is just hypocritical. The Dog Whistles have to be not just stored away in the attic but destroyed, and the capacity to manufacture them has to disappear.
Conservative institutions DO have to make themselves inhospitable to white identity politics.
1
Douthat is either wrong or lying.
It may be that 10% of the Republican Party rejects Trump and his blatant appeals to hate and division, but 90% of the party still supports him, even as he repeats and retweets the memes and conspiracy theories of white supremacists.
Trump has blown away the veil of decency that the Right tried to cover its racism with. The Right has tried to cultivate racism quietly, using code they understand, but leaving them plausible deniability. But Trump is too arrogant and out of control to play the subtle racism game.
The Right thrives on the divide and conquer model. The Right has spent hundreds of years pitting minorities and majorities against each other. This model is ten thousand years old, and the Right, which was loyal to the king during the revolution refuses to give it up, even as the 14th Amendment (which Trump claims he can ignore) gave equal Rights under the law to everyone born here.
I don't actually believe that racism is the root of our problem. Trump and other mega-rich corruptors of our Constitution only care about one color, green, but they have systematically funded white supremacists and put them in leadership, to dehumanize minority groups so that they can be disenfranchised, defrauded, and violently terrorized.
The base of the Republican Party has been trained to think in racial terms by Fox, Limbaugh and other highly respected outlets. It is not an accident. It is not a side show. It is the plan.
See the obvious.
3
@McGloin
Love the first sentence. I’ll go with both, as usual.
1
"[T]he strategic and policy choices that the Nixon-era Republican Party made — in effect, rallying voters who opposed the Great Society’s vision of racial redress…. "
Ross, that vision of "racial redress" involved abolishing the Jim Crow laws in the South, giving black Americans the right to vote, desegregating the schools, etc. After the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the Republicans gleefully accepted the southern segregationists (c.f. Strom Thurmond) into the fold.
The Democratic Party split over this, with George Wallace ("segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!") and his wing of the party fighting a rear guard action to maintain American Apartheid.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party embarked on their "Southern Strategy, quickly absorbing these racist elements into their embrace by aiding, comforting and encouraging the racist attitudes of the country.
Racists are now a core constituency of the Republican Party, and the Party can no longer afford to shed them, as the Democrats did with Wallace. So they continue to double down on policies such as voter suppression and "border security", which despite all protestations to the contrary pander to this core.
2
I once attended a concert by the punk-country singer Hank III (grandson of Hank Williams). It’s hard to find explicitly racist content in his act - though, plenty of dog whistles. That was enough to attract a large contingent of conspicuous skinheads and neo-Nazis. It was not the majority of the room, but they made their presence known. That was enough for me. I decided this is a party I didn’t want to be a part of. I left.
I’m fascinated that the author can freely speak of the overt racists that show up to his party, without a hint of shame for deciding to stay at the party.
1
The United States evolved into a two-party political system, though other parties pop up from time to time. Both parties have platforms that are morally defensible. Both are plagued by, but also supported by, extremists. Even extremists have civil rights, and that includes bigots and xenophobes and homophobes and sexists. It includes black nationalists, anarchists, communists, and Antifa direct action squads. Among these are freedom of expression and association and the right to vote (if not voided by a felony). If you don’t like that, then by all means amend the constitution, but give those of us who want to leave time to get out. I’m a stalwart supporter of the “civil rights wing” of today’s ACLU.
1
"Can the Right Escape Racism?" No. Whether previously known as the Democratic Party or today as the Republican Party, the Right was founded, and exists today, on the fear and hatred of "the Other" - which is people who are not White. It has been dressed up as many things over the past 243 years, but in the end it is the definition of racism (small "r" - its just a word to describe a belief system).
1
“Second, it would require a recovery of influence and moral ambition by the Republican Party’s religious conservatives“
Oh, dear God, no. The religious conservatives have already done more than enough damage because they have always had too much influence and too little morality. They were always intent on putting a religious veneer on naked ambition.
Mr Douthat, I am sure you mean well but respectfully, you have no idea. I live in a very red state. Liberalism has been so successfully vilified by the right for so many years that voting for a liberal equates with voting for a Satanic overlord. Trump proved that no matter who makes it to the top of the GOP ticket, he or she will get the Hoosier vote. He might be a complete buffoon but at least he isn’t a Dem.
For 40+ years I was a Republican and pushed back against the notion that racism was at the core of the Conservative movement. But the election of President Obama allowed the conservatives true colors to bleed through as I heard what I thought were reasonable, sensible people call President Obama the Monkey-in-Chief and worse and watched Republicans in Congress do anything and everything they could to thwart him, no matter what.
The racist cat’s out of the bag, Ross, and it’s going to be hard to stuff it back in. The last election, I absolutely voted blue all the way down the line and will again in 2020.
1
"And instead of defending conservatives against charges of racism, I could get back to my true vocation: defending conservatives against charges of theocracy."
I had to grin. This is in the Orwellian realm of renaming the Department of War the Department of Defense. I'm happy to know, after being thoroughly puzzled by the meandering hopelessness of this column on the dim prospects of the GOP shedding white-identity politics, that Ross Douthat remains committed to his true calling advancing American theocracy. All is well. Onward to the 11th century.
1
Ross Douthat says the GOP is clinging to a thinning white majority in Texas, but current Census Bureau data shows Texas is 78.8 percent white. That is not a thin white majority.
Hispanics are an ethnic group, not a racial group. They can be of any race or combination of races, but most Hispanic Americans are white. According to the Census Bureau, 53 percent of Hispanic Americans are white. But in Texas, virtually all Hispanics are white.
Non-Hispanic whites make up 41.5 percent of the Texas population while Hispanics make up about 39.6 percent. Since virtually all Texas Hispanics are white, Texans refer to “Anglos and Hispanics” rather than “whites and Hispanics, as do state and federal courts in Texas.
Intermarriage between Anglos and Hispanics in Texas is so common that the distinction between two ethic group may vanish within a generation.
Perhaps Douthat refuses to accept Americans of Latin Americans ancestry as white. But then the question should be: “Can Ross Douthat Escape Racism?”
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/TX,US/PST045218
Source: The Hispanic Population: 2010, U.S. Census Bureau, page 15
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/TX,US/PST045218
1
Can the right escape racism? Does it even want to? The Republican party has used racism for decades, as a dog whistle in its language and also in the construction of its policies which, wouldn't you know it, tend to impact communities of color more harshly. Now, the Republican party has a full-blown racist at the top, who uses his office to attack prominent people of color and enact draconian and fatal policies against immigrants.
As far as Douthat's desire for religious conservatives to gain more "influence", religious conservatives have poisoned our social discourse for decades. They are overwhelmingly homophobic and misogynistic. I'm a gay man. You have no idea what I, and millions of Americans like me, have gone through under the dehumanizing, relentless hatred of the religious right. The equal rights that we are just now starting to win have been unbelievably hard-won. We are not going back.
The primary goal of the Republican party is to destroy the working of our government, and sell it off for the benefit of the 1% to create Neo-feudalism with a wealthy, white elite running everything, and the majority struggling just to survive. They have been working toward this goal since Ronald Reagan. Of course, it's anti-democratic, anti-American, horrific, barbaric, inhumane, and deeply unpopular. Hence, the racism, the hot-button social issues, and the fake populism. No one but oligarchs would vote Republican if they understood their true intentions.
1
Latent bigotries can be activated or suppressed. But they are an essential presence in the very structure of right wing politics.
1
Only if this White National Party crumbles into nothingness, and new, moral, decent people reinvent it as a bona fide conservative party that serves a secular country, and thinking people, instead of constantly, intentionally hurting the lower half of income earners, immigrants, and women and children. There is no hope for that, right now.
1
That phrase "racially conservative and racist white voters" is a little troubling, implying a more acceptable level of racism.
Proof of Republican racism can be found in one simple fact: most minority cultures share the social conservatism of most Republicans, but shun the party because of its racism. That said, racism is the most obvious manifestation of a fundamental human trait that divides the world into in-group and out-group. Like the reformed alcoholic, we all need to recognize its pull and reject it, one day at a time.
1
There are people who are natural equalitists, and there are those who must have a hierarchy.
Racism, sexism, economic inequality are all simple and easy hierarchies.
Think caste, think Jim Crow, slavery, think misogyny.
Sometimes it the color of a person's skin, but it is always the configuration of their anatomy. In America, it is both.
A very wise woman once said, "Before you marry a man see how he is with a child, a waiter and a dog."
That's our warning on Republicans.
They have never met a hierarchy that they didn't approve of.
Now that love of the hierarchical has flung them off the cliff and, frankly, I'm not tossing them a rope.
I'm no longer willing to bail them out, rescue them and I certainly don't spout, "Oh, but every society NEEDS an opposition!"
Every society needs ethical and kind people and Republicans are no longer that.
Save yourselves, Ross.
I no longer intend to.
Only 420 days left to vote.
2
"There has also been somewhat more racism lurking below the surface of progressive politics over the same period — as genteel eugenics, as elite NIMBYism, as left-wing or Sharptonian anti-Semitism — than most polemics against the right acknowledge, but that’s a subject for another time."
That is factually incorrect and it negates what could have been an otherwise constructive article.
No one denies that there are racists individuals on the left. However, there is one party that overwhelmingly uses economic and political devices to limit the constitutional and basic human rights of non-White American citizens.
1
No, the right can not.
You completely discredit yourself when you use phrases like "there is considerably more racism on the right than Republican Party elites wanted to believe". This kind of naivete is simply not plausible in a thinking adult. Republican elites are not only aware of how crucial racism is to the founding of their party, they are actively involved in cultivating and maintaining it every day. Of course, this has always had to be properly encoded (plausible deniability is as crucial to the strategy as white supremacy itself), and when you make statements like this, you are following the party line that requires conservatives to play dumb about the crucial role racism plays in Republican politics.
1
Mr. Douthat goes all the way back to Nixon.
This is typical of the failure of NYT columnists: they won't get fundamental.
This philosophic failure renders the columns as superficial.
Perhaps the best example of this is from David Brooks.
Mr. Brooks in 2019, regarding his decision to write a book in 2015:
"American culture seemed to be in decent shape and my focus was how individuals can deepen their inner lives."
If one can get fundamental, one can see—immediately—that this is painfully false.
If your culture's relationships with the sky and ocean are deadly, your culture is not in decent shape.
To get fundamental, best to adhere to wisdom from Sir Arthur Eddington:
"We need scarcely add that the contemplation in natural science of a wider domain than the actual leads to a far better understanding of the actual.”
eg
Better to get one's pattern recognition from the 4.54-billion-year sample space of evolution rather than recent history.
The patterns are far more fundamental, hence far more reliable.
eg
Fundamental, selected relationship code, conserved across myriad species, is: Fitness is > Truth.
This code is always operable, but it is especially expressed when the margins of selection are in contraction.
As James Lovelock points out:
“Under pressure, any group of us can be as brutal as any of those we deplore: genocide by tribal animals is as natural as breathing …”
Pressure:
We're arming the Sky & Ocean with weapons of mass extinction.
4
If the GOP gives up it's racist base it will never hold power again. It was only Trump's overt racism that gave him the presidency. Otherwise Ross would be denigrating president Hillary.
3
You must be in touch with a totally different set of religious conservatives than the ones whose leaders we see frequently in the news. They certainly have appointed themselves our most pious followers of the savior, far holier than me or thou. And they adore Trump, they even say his presidency was prophesied, and their followers flock to him. It is not religious conservatism's "compromise" with Trumpism but it's ecstatic ululation for Trump that the rest of us see and hear. Who else has about 90% support of any major group? That doesn't happen because they're holding their noses at "They're rapists." It's because they love it.
1
Does Conservatism as an ideology even have any ideals that aren't based on disdain or hatred for others? Whether it's hating people of color, or poor people, or sick people, or lazy people, or non-Christian people, it seems like the entire Conservative ideology would collapse if they didn't have someone to hate. They don't actually BELIEVE in anything, apart from making sure that other people who are different from themselves do not get to enjoy the same benefits and civil rights that they enjoy for being in this country.
1
Thou protesteth too much, Rev. Douthat.
Conservatism cannot be defended against charges of racism or theocracy because the evidence is overwhelming.
2
As usual with Conservative writers straining for "sensibility," Douthat is willing to pillory Nixon but won't even mention Reagan or Lee Atwater, who deployed the Southern Strategy to great effect. Reagan was using coded terms about bussing and states rights.
Ross, the GOP has been using racism to scare white folks for 70 years. It wasn't just this guy, or that guy, here or there. It's been a critical strategy for Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1 & 2, and their henchmen like Atwater, Rove, Bannon and Baby Falwell.
There isn't enough lipstick in the world to make these pigs pretty.
2
I read the title. The answer is no. Without it they have no totem to gather around and worship.
2
How exciting a thought: "another MUTING" could happen".
If you want to make American Conservative politics and politicians, that is the ACTUAL ideas and ACTUAL people who represent the principles, as detached from racism and misogyny, and by the way from Mussoluni style fascism, as possible then You, and other so called conservatives of like mind will have to have the fortitude and stand up and directly. unequivocally and PERSISTENTLY condemn those evils WITHIN your ranks.
At the moment it appears that you have the alcoholic's problem of fully facing your demons.
It also appears that progressive politics is more the home of some of what you claim to be conservative values: sanctity of the vote, fair and equal treatment under the law, fair and equal treatment in the work place, educational opportunity... in short level playing fields for all. Maybe you reached your current political age in the 90s but looks like you are not fully grown. Grow a little more. Start by truly facing the demons. The first step is in admitting you have a problem.
1
okay, it's a start. now would you like to write about why "Blacks as well as whites had a relatively optimistic view of race relations around the turn of the millennium, and that sentiment persisted until Barack Obama’s second term."?
Hint: operative words, "Barack Obama’s second term"
"from reparations to substantial immigration increases to single-payer health care) of what anti-racism requires. "
another bit of false equivalence from doubat. no one is saying this.
Country Clubs
Chamber of Commerce
Evangelical churches
This is the beating heart of the GOP. They are all segregated, or nearly so, along racial lines. How can the GOP recover if its core base is segregated?
2
Can the Right Escape Racism? In a word. NO.
And it has nothing to do with God or conservatism, and everything to do with hate and the need to subjugate a race considered to be less than human -- or even American.
No matter how you address it, racism is here to stay and it is so deeply entwined in this country's DNA that it will take nothing short of a Revolution to change it.
Of course, it would be very easy to put this all on Donald Trump, but for the fact that this kind of bigotry started well before he even got into office and if anything allowed him to get there.
It's always interesting how white people try to find a way to call racism for something other than what it is, then provide quotes, graphs and references to make it seem more official if not more acceptable to a wide audience.
But ask any person of color what it means in the end and they'll tell you it always comes down to the same thing.
There's no way to escape racism in America.
And that's why it isn't going anywhere.
2
Short answer is "no" and the longer answer is the GOP is gone and is now the party of Trump where racism is a central pillar of emphasis. How else can the Trump zealotry be explained? The stock market is actually below the Obama curve and the entire economy is running on a knife edge. Or environmental protections have been gutted and the education system is being starved.
2
I am a Democrat and I am not for reparations, substantial immigration increases, or single-payer health care. I am for allowing refugees into our country, for the Dreamers, and for comprehensive immigration reform. I am for providing more assistance to poor areas, no matter the color. Unlike Republicans, I am for food stamps and expanded Medicaid. I am for revising Obamacare to insure more Americans. Unlike Republicans, I am completely against white supremacists and say so out loud and publicly. Unlike Republicans, I don't think the Senate needs to wait for a green light from the White House before passing legislation. I think they are just afraid it will make their president look bad, as if he doesn't do a good enough job of that all by himself.
4
Mr. Douthat, to your credit, at least you recognize there's a problem. Now if only McConnell, Graham, McCarthy and the rest of the overwhelmingly white male GOP leadership and party at-large would realize there's a problem, maybe some progress could be made.
Just a reminder, the one and only black Republican member of the 435 seat House of Representatives has announced his retirement. In the year 2019.
Yes, your party has a big problem.
1
I believe you are shouting into the void - I think it is best to acknowledge that, Zak Cheney-Rice is correct and acknowledge that the right defines itself with themes that are emblematic of racism and misogyny.
117
Mr. Douthat,
For you to assume the right is racist is outrageous!
The title alone of your article is what's racist; which is why I didn't even take the time to read it. Shame on you.
1
@Goghi Satire, right?
1
That's a mighty twisty pretzel you curl there, RD. Taking the racism out of the GOP is like taking water out of coca cola - you're just left with dust and sugar. Oh and PLEASE don't equate grifter Sharpton with the dems, its intellectually dishonest.
"Liberal Mandarin" David, NYC
2
Douthat coins a phrase here: "racially conservative". How is that distinct from "racist", Russ?
3
My own father, a Jew who fought the nazis in WW2, married a woman who was a refugee from the Nazi regime, watched the nazi make America great rally in N.C. last night on Fox and friends.
He watches fox and supports republicans.
He knows that the bigot in the Whitehouse wouldn’t lower the flag for John McCain, he saw the marchers in Charlottesville shout@jews will not replace us” and then the bigot calls them fine people.
I am so disappointed that I have a bigot as a father.
I am glad my mother died in 2014.
May she Rest In Peace.
4
@Manderine
So sorry. In today's world so many take inexplicable and confounding actions.
What are the “genteel eugenics” Mr Douthat refers to?
1
Racism knows no political bounds. Biden has proven it from his days in the Senate. Smearing the conservative right as racist is the best the liberal left can do to attack the realities of mass immigration, crime, unemployment and poverty. After 8 yrs of Obama, we’re emerged worse in race relations than ever before.
1
"Cheney-Rice is right that there is considerably more racism on the right than Republican Party elites wanted to believe pre-Trump and that the elite had believed." As LBJ said, before our politically correct era, "All they know how to do is shout n-word, n-word, n-word." It was all they had to do. No, if anything, there's less racism on the right than the elites wanted to believe because it makes their job easier. Lee Atwater was quite frank about the way in which squeamishness about racial cruelty made their job more complicated.
Ross, do go back to your equally Sysiphean task of convincing us that Republicans don't want a theocracy. When racial invective became ineffective, Republicans seized on abortion as a dog goes after a bone. I know a lot of people down here in the Bible belt who are one issue voters who have gladly slit their own throats over that issue.
1
The right is terrible even at pretending not to be racist.
2
The Republican Party, AKA the Donald Party, is the current spiritual home of America’s angry white people, including neo-Nazis, the Klan and large numbers of otherwise unaffiliated -- but enthusiastic -- racists.
The country is badly in need of a new political party -- representing traditional conservative voters like myself -- to replace it.
Liberal Democrats -- alone -- will never be enough to restore a measure of unity to this country.
It would probably start rather small.
We could call it The Never Again Anybody Like Donald Party.
5
I want to thank Mr. Douthat for admitting that there is a dangerous element of racism within conservative and Republican Party ranks. But I want him to know that it was excruciating for me to witness his failed attempt to wiggle out of the fact that conservatives and Republican Party supporters and advocates have done and continue to do serious damage by refusing to confront the systemic racism that they have perpetuated in America. I urge Douthat to continue to study in order to understand the nature of systemic racism that has brought suffering to so many--and to see this moment as one in which we have an opportunity to work together to restore the American dream.
2
Can the right escape racism?
Conservatives-Yes
Republicans-No
I'll listen to Ross Douthat on racism in American when I know he's had long, meaningful conversations with Black Americans and Black members of the GOP on this topic. Until then, he's just white-man-splaining.
5
Can the South escape racism?
There is your answer.
1
America was born birthed bred and founded based upon black African American enslavement and separate and unequal exploitation of lands, lives and natural resources stolen from brown aboriginal First Nations pioneers. Neither were ' immigrants'.
And the perpetrators of the twin American holocaust crimes against humanity were white European American Judeo-Christian majority colonizers and conquerors and invaders and occupiers.
They were the only divinely naturally created equal persons with certain unalienable rights of life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They were ' we' while everyone else was the ' other' or ' you people'.
See ' The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and The Making of American Capitalism' Edward Baptist; 'Dog-Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class' Ian Haney Lopez; ' The Invasion of America: Indians and the Cant of Colonialism' Frances Jennings; 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West' Dee Brown
God bless America?
For what, when, where and why?
Ivana Trump? Melania Trump? Ted Cruz? Jared Kushner? Bill Kristol? Donald Trump? Mark Zuckerberg? Jeff Bezos? Mike Pence? Chuck Schumer? Joe Biden? Al Sharpton? Bernie Sanders?Elizabeth Warren? NYT? WP? WSJ? Fox? CNN? MSNBC? Elon Musk? Ivanka Trump? Don T. Jr? Eric Trump? Tiffany Trump? Ben Carson?
1
"Some of that difference reflects philosophical differences about what constitutes racist public policy."
This comment can be expanded to include what constitutes ANYTHING deemed "racist." That word, along with the word "racism" is so ubiquitous, who knows what it means anymore?
It is mostly used by those on the far left (I am a moderate Democrat) to describe any circumstance or on anyone who doesn't fully and wholly agree with whatever their views are.
4
No. The right can not escape racism. Racism is the core electoral strategy of the right.
3
Ross, Your columns on this topic represent a desperate cry for victory by the Democrats at all levels in 2020 in order to begin the process of weakening the hold that racism has had on Republican political orthodoxy since 1960.
In fact, racism was deeply imbedded in the policies of both parties, perhaps most notably and openly among Southern Democrats, prior to the triumph of the Civil Rights Era, when MLK finally gave LBJ the political cover needed to pass the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
LBJ's historic landslide in 1964 was the purging force. For a brief time during the Nixon years, moderate and liberal Republicans were able to make common cause with northern Democrats and the Supreme Court to keep the racist strands of "states' rights" from weakening the efforts to make the US into a true multi-ethnic democracy. But Nixon's campaign strategists, and all the GOP strategists thereafter, served to re-kindle and shape the white backlash in the North to the GOP and turn Southern Dems into Republicans
Another Democratic Party landslide in 2020 that crushes Republican political power in both houses of Congress and in many of the historically safe "red" states is needed to cleanse, or at least marginalize, overt racism in the GOP.
Are you ready to advocate for a 2020 rout of the GOP in order to remake a truly multi-ethnic conservative party for the 21st Century?
1
Mr. Douthat provides a prescription but misses the diagnosis. Conservatism can't be saved until it's defined. It's not clear AT ALL what conservatism stands for anymore. While politics and political motivations can be fluid, and parties can shift priorities over time, that shift has to be predicated on something.
At best, the underlying ethos of today's Republican party is pure, naked self-interest. The most charitable explanation of that self-interest is that Republican voters simply don't care about about maximizing societal utility, and only care about their own interests. But if that's the case, I'm not sure how religious conservatism would save the party. Even if we were to forgive the evangelicals for their Faustian bargain with Trump, they have lost all moral authority. Once you've made a deal with the devil, you can never again assume the moral high ground. That's what it means to sell your soul.
How could the religious conservatives come back from this to assume leadership again on any issue? They have compromised on their core principles and thus revealed they have no core principles. They won't save Republicanism. Or rather, they can't.
No, Mr. Douthat, I think you're writing for yourself here. I'm in my 30s, and will remember this era for 50 years. I'm also white, wealthy and very well educated. Oh yeah--and I'm still a registered Republican. How are you going to change my mind about what the party has become? If you know, please tell me what it stands for.
3
The Trump administration have implemented policies in place that have resulted in the lowest unemployment rate for minorities in history:
First, the tax and trade policies have incentivized US multinationals to move jobs back here;
Second, by staunching the flow of illegal immigrants, the supply of workers vying for the entry level jobs in the economy( a group which largely consists of minorities) is reduced thereby enabling the remaining legal US residents to bid up wages. . With these factors in play, US legal minorities are finally able to envision an optimistic financial future. Meanwhile, those absorbing scarce social, educational and health services( including illegals) in their communities are being reduced. To paraphrase Forest Gump, "Racism is as racism does"So, as they pertain to US legals( which is, after all, the group that our government works for), what is so racist about the Trump administration's policies?
4
@pete Both of your points are nice ideas with absolutely no foundation in data or fact. But the right hides behind anything they can in order to willfully ignore the nearly continuous flow of racist statements, racist policies, and racist behavior of the leader they so venerate.
1
This name calling is absurd. More people of color are working today than ever, there is more representation in every walk of life than ever. Where is the "ism" except in the left's rhetoric.
41
@DJ Care to address incarceration rates? Care to address systemic poverty?
57
@Paul
Trump passed landmark prison reform, which even democrats and Obama didn't do. And before you claim the First Step Act isn't working, let me state that I have a close relative who was released early because of it. He was not the only inmate released early in his cadre.
9
@DJ Your point about more people of color now working would have some validity if they were the only group impacted by the current economy. But everyone is working more, exactly like the 7 year trend under Obama indicates. But calling out dozens and dozens of explicit examples of trump and gop racism is not absurd, no matter how much you want to hide behind the denials.
63
After Romney's loss, it looked like the Republican party was going to do some serious soul-searching and decide it needed to expand its appeal to new voters in order to survive. But instead, the party took a different track: push voter ID laws to suppress minority voters, gerrymander districts to push all the blue votes into fewer and fewer seats, fear-monger the poor and uneducated into thinking there was a wave of illegal immigrants coming for their jobs, and pack the courts with ultra-conservative judges to ensure these immoral policies had legal backing.
4
The modern GOP has created its racist party through voter suppression. It doesn't have to appeal to minority groups as long as it suppresses their votes. What if the GOP actually fought FOR democracy and allowed all people to vote? At that point, it would have to be inclusive in order to appeal to a variety of people.
3
Ross did a excellent job of explaining his position. This issue most likely won’t be solved on the pages of The NY Times. People make mistakes, sometimes these mistakes define us. We don’t always know what’s in people’s hearts, but we can at least hope that every human heart is open to change.
1
First on the your list should be immediate elimination of all forms of voter suppression, including gerrymandering (rep or dem). 2nd, universal health care,arguably stymied for years over fears of black people getting medical care. 3rd, enacting policing, judicial, sentencing, and prison reform. 4th (along with libertarians) decriminalizing drug use, used disproportionately to imprison minorities. 5th, eliminating payday lending. Each of these could be designed and enacted as conservative proposals.
5
While I disagree with a lot of conservative economic policy, both domestic and international, I can live with it and hope that rational dialogue will achieve compromise. These policies are potentially race- and class-neutral. What I cannot abide, however, is the monumental silence of conservative politicians who know well, but publicly ignore, how their economic policies have hurt workers (union busting has made the economic playing field in this country grossly unequal), have hurt poorly educated/unskilled workers in rural areas, and have helped to vastly increase income inequality. And, how their international economic policies of many years past helped to create the immigration crisis we have now. Worse, they justify their failed policy of trickle down/colonial economics and put the blame on workers and immigrants for their unpleasant lives.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that vast swaths of the population (white, brown, black) don't have proper nutrition, need to hold two jobs to support their families, can't afford to send their kids to college or a trade school, have no savings to help them survive an emergency, have to live with the violence of gangs and guns, etc. All you have to do is read this newspaper to learn about these facts. This is why I do not trust the honesty of most conservatives. Racism is not the GOP's only problem.
2
The "Solid South" was Democratic until 1964 when the Civil Rights Acts were passed. LBJ knew full well that the passage meant the end of the Democratic Party in the South.
Any poll taken then and today shows self proclaimed Republicans harbor more racial animus than self proclaimed Democrats.
The only difference between all Republican candidates campaigns then and Trump's was that the former campaigns were a bit more subtle in their race baiting. The Republican base had been waiting for Trump for decades.
I do not know how Douthat defines "Conservatism" but it is as sure as night follows day the current Republican Party would shrink to the level of the Green Party if it purged the racists and changed the policies.
8
Oh, Ross.
"Second, it would require a recovery of influence and moral ambition by the Republican Party’s religious conservatives..."
Yes, the main problem in our country today is the lack of influence of religious (let's just say it out loud, Christian) conservatives. If only somehow they could have a stronger voice, the country could be brought together and racism would be obsolete.
Religious conservatives form the rock-solid base of support for Trump, they are the ones chanting "Send her back" at rallies. They exercise effective veto power over any Republican initiative or politician. I think Douthat describes a religious conservatism that exists in himself, but is rare in the wild.
More interesting, and sad in a way, is the reference to "moral ambition". What would that moral ambition be? The religious right appears to have two main objectives, outlaw abortion and make discrimination legal for those with religious beliefs. Oh, and to stick it to the rest of us, just to make a point. Of course Ross's political philosophy would rule out the government actively helping families and children. I guess he is hinting at the end that the ultimate ambition is theocracy?
11
While I applaud Mr. Douthat's recognition of the growing seed of hate within the Republican party, I feel that he remains in denial about the nature of American conservatism. The reason why conservatism will never be free of racism is because the entire political philosophy is based upon fear. Racism is just one form of the fear that conservatives promote whenever their power is ever in jeopardy. Indeed, fear girds every plank in the republican platform: Family values (misogyny); small government (racism); rule of law (xenophobia). Republicans just trot out whichever trope they need when it suits them, and I'm not sure at this late date whether you can extricate the fear and hate from the movement. Mr. Douthat's detractors may indeed be correct -- they need to start over from scratch.
3
At this point I do not see a resurrected or even redeemed Right. The racism is entrenched within our neighbors across the aisle. Can we not remember LBJ’s prescient words upon the enacting of civil rights legislation? To paraphrase: The Democrats have lost the South. Indeed, they have, and so much more. The onus of fighting for minority and gender rights is almost overwhelming with the courts becoming more conservative, nativist, and theocratic. There is a vigilante aura within the Right. By darn, don’t take our guns away. We need to protect our children against the Brown and Black skinned, the Jew and Muslim, the gay and transgender. And those children will very likely grow to be clones of their parents if they can not transcend their ignorance. No, Ross, I do not envision an enlightened Right. Yet, anything is possible if not probable.
3
Is it me, or is it truly remarkable that racism is being discussed openly and at this level by a conservative columnist? And wow, I’m blown away by the insightful thoughts of many responders. The challenges in our society are deep and complicated, and meaningful discussion between the parties has been largely absent. As with gun policy and climate policy, something seems to be budging slightly in our national discourse. Maybe—just maybe—we’re finally approaching bottom and the pendulum of national discourse is starting to swing the other way.
1
I'm not sure how Ross thinks religious conservatism will become an optimistic benevolent force within a new multi-cultural populist Republican party. A pluralistic open society is not something that conservative Catholics and Evangelicals are currently advocating for. All one needs to do is spend time listening to them. Within Catholicism, Ross' own tradition, see the reactionary response of conservatives to any hint of "change" made by Pope Francis. A more promising option is to re-invigorate a religious Left into the political sphere.
2
What if the final thought in this piece is cherry-picked to the point of obfuscation?
Douthat's inferring there (as he's been explicit before) that liberal pearl clutching (or virtue signalling) will go from unreasonably painting GOP policies as racist to unreasonably painting GOP policies as theocratic.
What if we strip it down to the essence instead, to see if liberals are being logically consistent?
Are arguments for granting asylum to refugees from third-world countries more or less authoritarian than arguments against?
Are arguments against access to birth control or abortion more or less authoritarian than arguments for?
Are arguments for the death penalty (oops, caught a bipartisan issue there, especially for Catholics like us) more or less authoritarian than arguments against?
If Mr. Douthat reads his criticisms with an eye towards creeping authoritarianism, he might (sometimes) come to agree with criticisms of the modern GOP
4
The core issue is whether racial inequalities are a result of racism in the past and, if so, whether there is role for government policy to undo those inequalities.
Liberals say yes and yes.
Conservatives say, leave the past behind, and therefore the second question does not apply.
Douthat's piece does nothing to address the core; it is pure political frosting.
6
Ross Douthat asserts “Trump himself had the opportunity and the credibility to make a base-satisfying deal on immigration, but that opportunity has passed.” But as the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, a federal district judge undermined the administration’s attempt to reach a compromise just as the Democrats appeared ready to bargain.
The WSJ said, “The best example of the harm done by these nationwide injunctions is the current litigation over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. In 2012, after Congress repeatedly failed to grant legal status to so-called Dreamers, the Obama administration declined to enforce the immigration laws against them. Five years later, the Trump administration announced it would restore enforcement of federal law, prompting Democrats to negotiate in search of a broad solution. Just as a compromise appeared near, a district court judge in San Francisco entered a nationwide injunction prohibiting the Trump administration from ending DACA, thus awarding the Democrats by judicial fiat what they had been seeking through a political compromise.”
The injunction took away the Trump administration’s bargaining chip. Democrats got a DACA extension without agreeing to changes in immigration law designed to reduce future illegal immigration.
4
@William Case
What many ignore is that Trump was more than willing to make a deal on DACA. He seeks deals whenever possible. To obstruct him, democrats are forced to refuse his offers This is terrible mistake and bad for our nation as he is the first republican willing to make these kinds of deal -- not on everything but most things. Immigration was one such thing, but it got derailed through no fault of Trump. Fortunately, prison reform made it through.
2
It isn't that conservatism has to be racist, there have been plenty of conservatives pushing economic and social policies who are not racist. The problem is what is defined as conservatism these days, it has gone from one driven by intellectuals and people with ideas (whether I consider them wrong or right doesn't matter), to one defined by the anti intellectual, reactionary right that is defined pretty much by what they are against, not for. The only thing the modern conservatives have that remains the same is the idea of slashing taxes on the well off. Conservatives were advocates of the US being involved internationally, with a strong defense, today conservatives are America first, we don't care about the rest of the world. Conservatives in the past acknowledged the problems around race and proposed, whether right or wrong, that the answer was in economics of marginilized communities, today we have denial and the support of racist notions with economics, like welfare and social programs are all the domain of 'welfare queens' that benefit 'those people'. Interestingly, conservatives back when drug addiction was mostly the province of inner city minorities, blamed the scourge on moral defects in those communities, the culture of dependance, etc...these days they are silent as large swaths of rural/working class white America is besieged by opiod addiction.
1
In 1972, Richard Nixon provided a welcome landing place for Southern Democrats who no longer felt welcome in an increasingly liberal Democratic Party. Over the following 40 years, the GOP cleansed itself of the moderates among them and the GOP became more and more the party of white grievance. And that's where it is today. Despite its claims to be the party of fiscal conservatism (it isn't as was demonstrably proven by the latest round of fiscally irresponsible tax cuts), what the GOP stands for is nationalism, social conservatism and absolute gun rights because of the NRA's disproportionate influence.
If you want to eliminate that, you need to figure out how to make the party a place where people like Jacob Javits, Christie Todd Whitman or Dwight Eisenhower would feel welcome.
Good luck with that.
11
"the Republican Party’s religious conservatives — a group whose elites shaped the Bush presidency’s racially inclusive efforts and whose rank-and-file are still less inclined to white-identity politics than other conservative constituencies, despite their Faustian bargain with Trump."
I would like to believe that this is true. My own experience with hundreds of others indicates that in general, it is not true. Evangelicals, in particular, have shown and continue to show me that they are not 'holding their noses' with respect to Trump. They are all in.
14
It’s admirable that Mr. Douthat chose to grapple with the responses to his last piece — admirable, but I think ultimately futile. Politicians know what works. For 50 years, Republican politicians have known they win white votes by appealing to racism. The most successful and influential voice in the Republican ecosystem, Fox News, is founded on increasingly shrill appeals to white grievance. Notwithstanding the intellectual arguments of Mr. Douthat and others like him, I don’t see how that changes anytime soon.
18
Religious conservatives cannot save Republicans from racism, because they are a core racist constituency of the Republican party. To abandon racism would be the end of the Republican party as it is its defining principle.
5
"Can the Right Escape Racism?"
If you have to ask, Ross, . . .
12
@Robert Henry Eller
Why even ask this question? No, the Right will never escape the identity-driven accusation of a highly partisan Left that uses identity as a weapon in its political arsenal.
If anything Trump has neutralized this weapon, exposing how overused and misguided it has become.
3
@AACNY
That's a laugh. Trump doesn't even know the difference between neo-Nazis and those who oppose racism -- At least that explains why he was endorsed by the Klan.
1
You make good points and in the second half of your sentence destroy them. How does activating bigotry not expand its influence? Did you miss the tiki torch Nazis screaming "Jews will not replace us"?
8
I am struck by Mr. Douthat's essential acknowledgement that the Republican party is entirely dependent on Democrats in power doing the right thing to ameliorate the prior (and future) effect of the conduct and policies of the Republican party while in power.
If your economic policies are racist and your social policies are racist and your language, coded or otherwise, to your base is racist, what is it that make the Republican party not racist? Reagan era immigration policies did not, per se, make Republicans non-racist in the same way Reagan's "welfare queen" dog whistle did not make every Reagan voter a racist. But the objective intent of the immigration policies were eventually over-ridden by the subjective need for dog whistles, by the need for dog whistle racism to sustain the Republican party in power.
301
@Livingston
Well, let’s see: GOP economic policies enable huge numbers of “minorities” to secure jobs and reap higher wages; racist? Social policies, like being pro-life, would, if implemented, save millions of Black and minority children: racist? GOP advocacy for school choice and charter schools is a huge help to “minorities”, while the left carries water for the overwhelmingly white teachers’ unions: who’s the “racist”?
And, on the left, who needs “code words” or “dog whistles”? “VOTE ON THE BASIS OF YOUR SKIN COLOR” (unless you’re white) is shouted from the rooftops by every Democrat.
Nope, there is only one Party with an idee fixe on race and identity, and it is not the GOP.
6
@Brenda
Counterpoint:
How is the GOP "enabling huge numbers of 'minorities' to secure jobs" exactly? The labor market is more insecure than ever, with stagnant wages, jobs moving oversees, automation, and the disappearance of full-time unskilled jobs, leaving people on the edge between employment and destitution. These economic realities are the effect of GOP (and Democrat, for that matter) policies that favor the capitalist class over everyone else, and they (targetedly) hurt black and brown poor people the most.
Is it prolife and "saving children" if you condemn them to a life of poverty and being channeled in the school to prison pipeline because the mother was not able to provide for them or get an abortion? Is it "saving them" when you think the government shouldn't offer them the help they need to succeed because you'd rather punish the child's parents for the "choices they made"?
Is it helpful to minorities to privatize public education and under the auspices of "choice", especially if, like many low-income POC, you live nowhere near a good school, cannot afford to move closer, and the only realistic choices available to you are terrible ones?
The left engages in identity politics because it understands that specific identity groups have been systematically excluded from fully and equally participating in our society. The right engages in identity politics to protect "us" at the expense of "them", with no interest in actual history or the reality of power dynamics.
26
@Livingston In addition to that, I'm struck by Mr. Douthat's fervent belief that this blobby undefined middle of Hispanics and Black voters will somehow forget 50 years of this coded/uncoded language and vote Republican.
You reap what you sow and you've sown salt for 50 years. Most of the young Republicans I meet at campus events want to out Milo Milo Yiannopolus. When even bright young Republicans in office, like Ron DeSantis in FL ghost write books about how slavery was so great, you should just admit that this is who you are.
10
Unless right wing conservatives nuke themselves, or go through some deep conversion therapy, racism will always be at the core of their philosophy. The right wing must always have scapegoats, whether black people, brown people, gays, feminists. etc...They need those scapegoats to keep support of the middle and working classes. Without fomenting hate, they would never get support from other than rich folks and corporate executives. You have to keep people hating the "other" to bamboozle them into supporting policies that hurt them. It's grotesque.
13
Mr Douthat conflates polarization and racism.
Whether he’s in denial or oblivious, that Mr Douthat could write an entire column that barely recognizes the systemic nature of racism lays bare the unlikelihood of non-racist conservatives leading the party of Nixon, Atwater, Gingrich, and Trump into the light. Even the idea of a “non-racist conservative” is depressing: It amounts to pointing somewhere, anywhere and saying “it wasn’t me.”
108
@Paul Goode
We are polarized.
The Right believes in hate. The Left believes that we are one human family.
The Right believes that the races should be separated, and political power should be based on wealth and race. The Left believes that we all have the right to live, work, and play anywhere.
The Right believes in political violence outside of the rule of law, cheering while their president calls for his supporters to commit violence against citizens without due process, and claims he can take away birthright citizenship ignoring the 14th Amendment. The Left believes that all people are politically equal and all voices should be respected.
We are polarized because the Right believes in hate, greed, and violence, which contradicts the Constitution of the USA, and the fake corporate center keeps demanding that we accommodate their hate, greed, and violence, because it makes it easier to extract profits and resources when We the People are divided against each other, instead of working together to create justice.
I believe that the real moderates are not halfway between the hateful, greedy, violent Right, and corporate sellout Democrats that want to compromise with them. I believe that the history of Amendments to the Constitution (which require very large majorities to enact) proves that large majorities of the population are with the Left in wanting to treat all humans as political equals, and that corporate corruption, not minorities, are the root of our problems.
21
@Paul Goode - I vote for both Denial and Oblivious in today's Douthat/FooBird offering. It must be physically painful twisting oneself into such contorted positions.
4
It's pretty sad that the best Douthat seems to be able to hope for is that the racist arm of Republicanism might be "muted." Whatever that means, given that Douthat's analysis largely does not grapple with things like voter suppression that has a funny way of making it harder for black people to vote, Republican tax-cutting and safety-net-abolishing policies that have disproportionate impacts on people of color, and the failure/refusal of the right to grapple with the reality that policing culture, police use-of-force rules, and implicit bias misguidedly glorified in the name of "see something, say something" toxically combine to make ordinary daily life anxious and threatening for many people of color.
2
To suggest that hyper-religious conservatives are somehow anti-racist or “less inclined” as Mr. Douthat states is naïve. If anything, they exhibit white identity politics more than anyone. Particularly in the South white churches, racism is alive and those of the strongest faith are the descendants of those who biblically justified slavery. The problem is that the modern conservatives who are neither religious nor racist have allowed both under their tent to gain and maintain power. Racism has no place anywhere and religion should be a personal conviction that has no influence on any political ideas. Republicans should reject both but won’t because they would never gain power again. Since Mr. Douthat needs to defend conservatives from charges racism and charges of theocracy, he should consider that they are intimately associated and as one goes so should the other.
5
When I was 10 years old I asked my father what all this Truman - Dewey stuff was about. He said, "The Republicans are the party for the Rich. The Democrats are the party for the rest of us."
THis is what I think Douthat misses. Undoubtedly many in the GOP are racists. It may be that Republicans support policies that support the Rich because people of color do not tend to to be rich.
On the other hand it may be they support the the Rich for religious reasons. God made them rich. Therefore there are better, finer people than the non-rich. It may be that the non-rich have just been duped by the the Rich. They may believe that letting the Rich take more and more of the wealth of the country is sound economics in spite of 150 years of economic history to the contrary.
It just doesn't make much practical difference. The raison d'etre of the Republican party is as my father said in 1948.
"The Republicans are the party for the Rich."
19
Why does the GOP need racism? Why do they need homophobia, and misogyny? Why do they need to demonize the poor?
Why do they obsessively promote conspiracy theories about their political opponents? And why, for that matter, are their successful politicians, unlike the Democrats’, always their least talented thinkers (contrast Reagan, Bush & Trump to Carter, Clinton & Obama on this front).
The problem is that Republicans cannot run on the ideology & policies they actually believe in & pursue. If they campaigned on shifting the tax burden downward, if they openly promised to take money away from the public interest in order to reward the rich & powerful, if they explicitly championed dismantling barriers to corruption & bribery, they would win no elections, ever, anywhere.
81
@Martin I think you hit on the piece missing from Douthat's op ed. Douthat focuses on changing the GOP from the top but ignores that without pandering to the racism of the voters, GOP leaders (whether themselves racist or not) will not be elected.
9
@Martin - What you said, a thousand times that. As long as the Kochs and Mercers and Adelsons own the party their policy will be “give rich people all your money” and “we’ll worry about AGW after we’ve extracted and sold every last ounce of carbon in the ground”. They have no choice but to lie and focus their campaigning on the most gullible and easily persuaded. Trump showed them how and they aren’t likely to drop it until they’re driven from power.
6
@Martin Yes, a "conservative" party that believes in government and that in a democracy to lead is to serve the people - is that really too much to ask for? The fate of Humanity rests on the answer to this question. It's time to pull out the word "evil" when speaking of latter-day Republicans and their influential supporters.
1
Good article Ross. I have a little different take on racism. I don't see it as conservative or liberal, as much as party affiliation, Republican or Democrat.
When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, the Democrats lost the southern states. The Dixicrats (racists) moved over to the Republican column. Then the Nixon's, and Atwater's took advantage of the situation and nursed the racist minds with more propaganda than you can imagine.
And it remains so to this day. Maybe in a generation or two or three, but it won't be easy. And individuals like Trump just exasperate the problem.
3
The author somehow seems to downplay the powerful influence Donald Trump exerts over the entire Republican edifice.
Trump has proven unusually adept at understanding and capitalizing on the fundamental racism and xenophobia that grips his base. He knows how to excite that cohort of the electorate. Almost the entire party--or at least its elected officials--are too cowardly to go against that flow because their electoral survival depends on it.
A lost election here and there seems unlikely to change that dynamic and it's quite apparent that Trump is too self-absorbed to strike off in any other direction that doesn't depend on race baiting and middle-school name calling.
1
It's not the right's escaping "racism". It's the fixation on racism that is worrying and keeping us stuck. This country is so much more than any single group's identity. That's our secret sauce, yet some just cannot get beyond it.
3
@AACNY
If you really knew the first thing about America's history, you'd also know why this country is so "fixated" on racism.
After all, it is racism that built it.
1
Douthat ignores the obvious. The Republican party’s strategy for winning elections has been to pander to an ever-smaller majority of white male voters. The Republican party is not racist out of any sort of racist beliefs, it is racist out of electoral convenience. Deploying this strategy since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 has providing them with many victories at the ballot box, but it has ruined any chance of credibility with most non-white male voters. If the Republican party makes a real effort at changing its ways it will lose its one reliable voting block – white males. The Republican Party has dug itself into a very deep hole from which it cannot escape. If conservatives want to escape that ditch they must be willing to leave the Republican party and spend some time in the wilderness.
2
"Instead, his main achievement has been to activate latent bigotries rather than expand their influence, and what can be activated can presumably be suppressed.' Acknowledging upfront that we all have biases, I think you totally overlook the racism in conservative media that has lead the many economically depressed citizens beyond biases to outright hate (whites in the 99%). It has given them someone to blame instead of Republicans' policies like trickle down economics and lobbyists' directed policies. You also need to consider columnists such as yourself, David Brooks, etc. who no matter how dire the behavior of Trump, can always find a false equivalency with Democrats. It might be worthwhile to take an in depth review of Fox News and company overtime to understand their influence on the dumbing down of voters through their dog whistles broadcasts.
7
A precis summary of Mr. Douthat's arguments are as follows:
Republican / white conservative racial prejudice takes a back seat during times of economic plenty, but the moment things get tough, white folks should be at the head of the line for any benefits. The republican party exists to entrench these rules to make the structural gap between white and non-white populations ever wider.
1
Political policies and actions should not be the measure of racism in America. When liberals hold sway they will encourage anti-racist laws to close racial gaps (housing, voting, crime, education, etc.), laws that will be decried by racists. When conservatives are in power they will pursue contradictory policies (limit affirmative action, restrict voting, crime, etc.), actions that anti-racists will attack. But the presence or absence of policies and laws do not alter the minds and hearts of White racist Americans. Color matters most to them, not policy. Ben Carson was never going to get the Republican nomination and had no chance in a general election. Political successes may change the extent to which government impacts racism, but they will not alter the pervasive existence of racism in the souls of many Americans.
2
A couple of years ago Ross wrote that he attended the wedding of two men he was friends with. This did not in any way minimize his assault on gay rights. Though he did concede that it was a done deal and he pretty much accepted that as a loss. But if the Supine Court figures out how to reverse gains it is hard to know where Ross will come down. Ross has friends who are women. Still he had devoted his life to assault women's reproductive and sexual lives. If his dream of patriarchal terror reaches full strength and a close friend or relative gets an abortion, I have no idea whether he will inform on them, follow them so he can help the police shut down an underground location or stay out of their way and maybe even help them. I am sure that Ross has Jewish friends and black friends and a whole rainbow of colors as friends or at least people he feels that he can chew the fat with, go on picnics with and talk about all types of things. Ross seems to be working himself to a place similar to David Brooks who recently pronounced that slavery once existed in this country.
23
White Americans have always denied the existence of racism ( even during Slavery it wasn't about racism ) , so even this unnecessarily complex question " can the right escape racism ?" demonstrates the deception of White Americans ( responsible for all of our messages whether in the history books , or on television , or the internet today ) along with their denial . We acknowledge discrimination against women and homosexuals , but when it comes to racism Abraham Lincoln removed most of it and the Civil Rights Movement and President Johnson got rid of the rest by the end of the 1960's .
That's been the White Narrative anyway that has allowed schools , neighborhoods , and jobs to remain mostly , or all White and White Males to run everything without racism having anything to do with it .
So, the obvious shock of Trump's election and continued support despite his promotion of racism and racist behavior and hate spewing as President proves that many White Americans remain racist and powerful enough to dictate blatant policy and destroy the American Dream , so why not just state the obvious without subterfuge ?
Is it because all White Americans benefit from Racism and must suppress the guilt of privilege ? I don't know , but I do know America is in crisis as White Racism is back out of the closet .
6
Ross, the short answer to your question is no. And "partially suppressed" is a preposterous goal. Right wing conservatism rests on three pillars: racism, religion and avarice. Take any one of those away and it falls over like a two-legged stool. Trump wouldn't be president if it were not for racism. Moscow Mitch wouldn't be packing the federal courts with right wing judges if it were not for religion. And the NRA would not control the GOP if it were not for greed. Conservatives seems to have missed the part about "all men are created equal". They also lost the trail on separation of church and state. Religious freedom does not mean imposing church dogma on society. I now realize that the New York Times runs your columns only to demonstrate how right wing values are untethered from what is right and just - morally, politically and legally, for that matter. Your futile efforts to rationalize conservatism brings to mind medieval theologians debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
7
This is classic Ross, over-complicating the simple to explain away an obvious truth. But even for Ross, this column has an oversupply of naivete and wishful thinking. It's like he knows the truth and is desperately trying to parse it away.
As far as the mitigating actions of Reagan and other GOP presidents, it's called politics. They understood the game (why else would Reagan launch his 1980 campaign with a call for states rights in Philadelphia, Miss, home to one of the most brutal crimes of the Civil Rights era?) and sought to balance out subtle and not-so-subtle racist appeals with lip service and some modest action here and there toward racial progress.That formula stopped working when a combination of the first black president, demographic changes and economic decline unleashed the racist underbelly that has been at or near the party's core since Goldwater. The bear that the GOP tamed and unchained only on special occasions (Willie Horton in 1988, John McCain-has-a-black-daughter in South Carolina in 2000) broke free of its bonds and began running amok. After Trump, I doubt the party can stuff the beast back into its cage.
6
A couple of years ago Ross wrote that he attended the wedding of two men he was friends with. This did not in any minimize his assault on gay rights. Though he did concede that it was done deal and he pretty much accepted that as a loss. But if the supine court figure out how reverse gains it is hard to know where Ross will come down. Ross has friends who are women. Still he had devoted his life to assault
women's reproductive and sexual life. If his dream of patriarchal terror reaches full strength and a close friends or relative gets an abortion, I have no idea whether he will inform on them, follow them so he can help the police shut down an underground location or stay out of there way and maybe even help them. I am sure that Ross has Jewish friends and black friends and a whole rainbow of colors as friends or at least people he feels that he can chew the fat, go picnics with and talk about all types of things.
Ross seems to be working himself to a place similar to David Brooks who recently pronounced that slavery once existed in this country.
5
No. The stench of racism will follow them for all times. Trump and republicans let their freak fly so it is apparent to anyone paying attention. They have forever tainted themselves and the Republican Party with their burning of the straw men that had propped them up ever since Reagan. I can’t imagine a way in which they even try to reach POC with any success considering they way in which they speak of them. At least it’s all out in the open and by their words we know them.
3
But where are the conservative religious leaders running for office to lead the Republican party away from its current racist positions? Republicans who run for office are required to appeal to their base which includes a lot of racists who vote. This eliminates any truly religious people. So who are these leaders that Douthat fantasizes about? He fails to mention any.
3
Are you implying, Mr. Douthat, that escaping racism falls only in the purview of the Right?
What about those who use racism primarily to further their own cause? Would that not be racist as well? Take the Left, for example....please.
Perhaps, we will one day soon have the Non-Racist party. At the very least we know what they are not....even if we don't know what they are. Ooops! That's what we have right now!
2
@Lake. woebegoner
Democrats never miss an opportunity to use race to their political advantage. They certainly have they own "racist" behavior to answer for, including the Congressional Black Caucus', which aways chooses its own political interests when push comes to shove. Just look at how it has resisted efforts to get guns off the streets of Chicago or how it refuses to acknowledge Trump's landmark prison reform. Heaven forbid Trump get credit for helping African-American men get released early from prison.
Race, today, is really about political power. In fact, the charge of "racism" is now just another political pejorative
...my gosh the hoops that conservatives must jump through, and the gyrations that result, when they attempt to explain themselves: it must be painful to construct the world they live in.
I don’t want to live in their world, a utopia in which selfishness needn’t be justified.
4
Can the Democrats escape their roots of racism in the south or more appropriately said, the Civil War battleground states. Forget elections, these wounds run deep and bleed red all over the political map. The civil war, the war to end all wars, the current detente of mutually assured destruction, a world constantly at war, in every case tribal and based on everything but our common interests which should only bring us together, a world being led by shortsighted and self-interested fools.
Interesting, but Ross is a voice crying in the wilderness. True conservatives like him are at present an insignificant and powerless minority; they have no meaningful influence on the policies of the GOP, which has become a Trump cult with racism as a central tenet.
5
Read the record. It was Nixon who introduced the Southern Strategy, and was revealed as such a racist on the White House tapes. The GOP he took over loved it, and never looked back.
4
@Portola absolutely !!! BRAVO.
2
If the left wants to win, election after election, then it has to bring right voters over. Unavoidably, this means to confront their racism directly.
I hear impatient objections to this proposal: the racists can't be converted.
That's bunk.
My politics are left of Blue. But I grew up in a racist town in the California outback. I heard viciously bigoted words about once an hour for fifteen years.
I fled to the cities at the first moment. I had no hope that this half of my cohort would ever change.
I was wrong.
I ran into many of the racists later, shocked to learn that they had become quite humane. They spoke sensitively and with some insight about minorities.
How do you help along such transformations?
You listen, with a well-tuned ear and some imagination. In part, you learn. In part, you teach. You draw parallels between the person's situation and that of a minority person. Being poor for example.
Blues can do this, and bring over enough Reds to secure a stable dominant majority.
But it will take some effort even to begin a conversation.
The sanctimony of the left has poisoned the well for fifty years. The racists have needed a hand, reaching to lift them out of the miserable muck of their lives.
Instead, they have heard, for half a century: You're no good. You're no good. You're no good. Baby, you're no good. You're no good. You're no good... [you get the idea]
Do you want to win? Then, first, you've got some apologizing to do.
1
@alyosha
If you want to win over republican voters, you must strip away all identity references. Identity politics is lethal to the Democratic Party outside its its leftwing.
1
There just aren't that many plutocrats around. The Republicans need some way to get the average white guy to vote for them. Militarism and racism are all they've got. If the party abandons blowing people up, sending the cops after black people and immigrants, and arming white guys with AR-15s, what are all the average white men going to vote for?
2
Conservatives always harken to the past. Our past was overtly racist, sexist and theocratic.
4
As a Republican, I read this and wonder what the author is talking about. Identity politics is the purview of Democrats, and one of the reasons Donald Trump was elected. Ever hear of the Scarlet A? Democrats are obsessed with putting the Scarlet R (Racist) on others. It is driving voters away.
2
@mainliner
It explains their ignorance of GOP voters. They have a caricature of republicans, based on this weird obsession with identity. One has to wonder, where would democrats be without identity? For so long their political strategies have been based on identity. From heir incessant use of the ""War on [fill-in-the-identity]" political strategy to their pandering to identity groups. It's almost as though that's all they have.
Isn't identity politics the purest form of racism, which is the promoting one ethnic background above another? Isn't the Democrat platform, and their candidates running for the Presidency, all in on the identity issue? So can the Left, and the Democrat party, escape Racism?
2
Can the left escape elitism?
1
It will be difficult for the Right to escape racism, if publications like the NY Times continue to find "racism" under every rock.
It could be argued, for instance, that balancing the budget is a "racist" concept, since it would involve cutting spending, some of which was going to be going to minorities.
The person wanting cuts in spending might argue "Well, we're going to hit a wall at some point if we keep spending on an out-of-control basis."
The person or party on the other side of the argument would be spared from any evaluation of the merits of the policies, by claiming "Ah, but you have a hidden agenda - you're simply a racist and that's why you want the spending cuts."
1
@Maurice Gatien
When everyone is a "racist", no one is. This is the major flaw in identity politics.
1
Identity politics is alive and well on both sides and intellectual honesty requires that both sides recognize it.
1
You can't escape what you are! The right wing CONTINUES to support policies that harm minorities and women.
Nothing has changed... except, they no longer have plausible deniability.
They own Trump and Trump owns them.
6
The root of racism is capitalism. Capitalists need capital how better to get it than slavery? But first you need to have an underclass and stages of that underclass. This is all structural and the way we have always done it thru history. What you do is reinforcement of those sad standards.
Did you know the modern diet knowledge studies arose from trying to understand how little to feed slaves for maximum profit?
2
Republicans could escape racism, but they choose instead to embrace it. And why shouldn't they. It's a sure ticket to winning elections in today's America. To defeat racism, we need a paradigm shift in human thought - in America and around the world. In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a linguistic "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of all. When we understand this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
3
Your sudden desire to reform the GOP's racial issues at the end of this Republican administration is about as sincere as your desire to reform its economic policies at the end of the last one. And will be forgotten just as suddenly and comically the instant you feel conservatism's political power is once again on the rise.
Given the left's recent interest in deploying its own version identity politics and garbage policy you might too long to wait.
Again I point out Mr. Douthat the fatal flaw in all your arguments, that you can't undo centuries of racism with incremental changes, no change. You most certainly can't do it by "placating the fears the racists". The reason they have these fears is precisely because they are racists.
The welfare bit? That was racism down to its very bone. The lies that came with people's concern over welfare (concerns they did not have when Blacks were denied it) reveal it. The welfare queen was always black (and also fictional).
The way crime was dealt with at least in part, increased racism and racist outcomes. So how is this good?
Only if you want window dressing. What people are actually accusing the conservatives of is being racism and promoting it, and pushing agendas that create more unequal outcomes based on race fits the bill, even if those white supremists speak in more polite language, and froth less at the mouth.
This is the fundamental reason the party is considered racist, not because it is the only place racists are (most certainly not true) but because as a political movement it is perfectly furthering structural racism. It only blanches occasionally at language.
5
Ross Douthat is too polite. The racism thing is essentially rhetoric. No one group of people is necessarily more racist than another, and claiming that they are simply makes the problem worse.
20
@Michael Livingston’s All groups may be equally racist, but what is not 'equal' are the outcomes. If everyone started at the same point with equivalent resources, the results might be equal. Historically our education system is a case in point and the viable solution in moving up the income ladder to middleclass and beyond. If you live in an impoverish area, your education system is under funded with property taxes and your schools remains in disarray. 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps;' most people don't become enlightened adults/parents when they turn 18, 25, and so on and know how to do so; it becomes a vicious circle generation after generation. The New York Times' 1619 project should be required reading for all Americans and outlines it well.
33
@Michael Livingston’s "no one group of people is more racist than another" may be true when looking at a random sample, but not when looking at political parties or activist groups who gathered around shared ideological principles. The Nazi party, for example, was no more or less racist? The antebellum Democratic Party? The proof is in the pudding, here: did 88% of black voters choose the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020 because they are confused, or because they see that one party is, at best, uninterested in their political voice and economic situation?
9
@Michael Livingston’s Drive a few hours south from Cheltenham and across the Mason Dixon line down 81 and try explaining that it's just rhetoric. It may be lesser than in the past but it is ever present.
3
Racism has always been the by-product of keeping the wealthy wealthy. It's also a great wedge issue to get ignorant people to vote against their own pocketbooks. Why stop now, Republicans?
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Ross confuses mainstream conservatives with Trump supporters. The former may just be selfish - I got mine, get yours yourself regardless of your disability, recent disaster, or poverty. The Trump supporters in our family are racists as our the Trump supporters I encounter at work.
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@kathryn The "mainstream conservatives" in my family (lots of them) were against deficit spending when done by Obama but are all for it when done by Trump. They were plenty happy to tell anyone that there is no such thing as a free lunch but more than happy to line up for free lunch as soon as it was served up by Republicans.
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@kathryn 80 plus percent of Republicans are Trump supporters. If mainstream conservatives are not Trump supporters, they are but a small minority of the Republicans.
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@kathryn Main Stream Conservatives have been quiet about the problem and by staying silent have ensoursed the bad behavior.
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I find this mystifying. Setting aside Trump -- one should be able to call out the Democrats. The dominant base of the party is blacks and hispanics, to whom the party panders with handouts and preferences based purely on race.
Racial profiling is at the core of preferences: it makes assumptions about people based on skin color or origin, and then passes out, or refuses, government or university or other employment preferences according to race.
Republicans have a long way to go to catch up to Democrats on racial bias.
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@Allan H. So for you is there any chance of finding a non-racist reason, i.e. democratic exercise of preference for one Party's history, personnel and policies and general tenor, why so many African-Americans choose the Democrats as their party, rise to positions of power in the Democratic Party, vote almost 90% Democratic, are essential to the Democratic Presidential pick, are indeed the core of the Party however you slice it.
Why do they do that do you think?
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@Allan H. I suppose you don't consider large tax cuts for the very wealthy a 'handout', right?
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@Allan H.
Any facts to support your contention that Blacks and Hispanics are the dominant base of the Democratic party? In the 2016 Democratic primaries 62% of the voters were White, 24% were Black, and 6% were Hispanic. Seems to me that the base of the Democratic party is White, and will remain so for quite some time.
You seem to believe the canard that White Americans are the ones being persecuted, marginalized, and oppressed.
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An excellent exposition of the changing times from Nixon to Trump. It leads me to re-examine the essential differences between liberals and conservatives. In my experience, conservatives seek to maintain the old established order, essentially an English-like aristocracy, which can easily be morphed into a meritocracy, since both forms seek to establish and maintain a minority of elites. This flies in the face of the American ideal of equality, which then becomes the liberal ideal. It is rather curious that the liberal party is named justly named Democratic and the Conservative party justly named Republican. But I must point out that equal opportunity maximizes competition, which in turn results in a Darwinian survival of the fittest, which in turn gives rise to an Aristocracy which acts to mitigate and civilize. The Yin and Yan of American politics as foreseen by our forefathers who designed our constitution as a compromise between Aristocracy and Democracy.
@Ron Bartlett
The founders got rid of aristocracy, the notion of landed titles and power, the compromise was between democracy and a government run by elites, often not directly elected, they eschewed titles and such.
However, that doesn't mean that the rich and powerful haven't tried for aristocracy. The 19th century robber barons saw themselves as Lords, and had an almost feudal relationship with those 'beneath them'. Like the aristocracy, they thought based on their position that only they could decide things, and in the election of 1896 Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan basically bought the election of McKinley. Carnegie,notorious for how he ill treated his workers, argued that he deserved most of the money, because he knew what was best to do with it to improve 'the common man'. In the UK Churchill was in favor of social programs, as long as it was controlled by "his class", so they could decide who deserved the largesse. In our times, the "Koch" revolution is about getting rid of social programs done by the government, that have to help everyone, and rather relying on the Ayn Rand ideal of the wealthy dispensing largesse to those who deserved it, which is classic aristrocratic thought.
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@Ron Bartlett You confuse equality of opportunity -- which his part of our history ,with equality of result, which is what communism claimed (falsely) to offer.
Rhetoric, ideological bias and emotional preferences are weak substitute for fact.
I hope Mr. Douthat will also consider some of NYTMag's 1619 Project, specifically the piece about the brutality of American capitalism, when defending Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich, Bush, et al. It seems to me that his interpretation of post-Nixon GOP assumes the innocence/neutrality of capitalism as practiced by the US at large (and the more classically liberal business practices stemming from that era), but racism might have nudged some of those policies and/or politicians into bad corners of policy. The 1619 project gives me a lot of reason to doubt Mr. Douthat's opinion here.
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Can the right escape racism? Yes, but the GOP cannot.
Individual politicians and specific policies within the GOP may be anti-racist, but without continually relying upon some variant of Nixon's southern strategy the GOP as a national organization would no longer exist.
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"Can the Right Escape Racism?" Can the left? With all the problems we could be addressing in this campaign season (long, way too long campaign season), and as the loyal opposition in this administration, we've chosen race first and foremost. This is also true of the academy. Compare "Diversity and Inclusion" to any other budget tranche on any campus these days and you'll wonder how other research, teaching, and student issues survive on the crumbs leftover. Race is an important issue, but race has become an obsession with all the reasons obsessions are illnesses, not virtues.
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@TJ
The fact that you can claim such a thing, that everything is about race, tells to why the GOP will never absolve itself of the racism they have thrived on. I can tell you have never been anywhere near a college or university and your education comes from Fox News, but racial studies and gender studies are tiny parts of any university. At the big state schools the sports programs across the board dwarf all the social-science programs combined, and traditional academics, in STEM especially, also dwarf those programs. Yes, universities outside the religious conservative schools have made efforts to be more inclusive and diverse and not promote the idea that straight, white people are the only real americans (and some of what they do is ridiculous even to me), but the claim that racism is in the eye of the left only fails on so many grounds, when you have a president who cheers white supremacists, when people feel emboldened to say things that were about as polite in social settings as farting or smoking around other people, it tells to the truth. The left might make racism a blame for too much, but compare that to the right that use racial hatred to stay in power while denying racism exists.
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@TJ false equivalence and anecdotal feeling about what you think is going on in University Courses.
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I'm a dean at an R1 university in the east. I wasn't talking only about faculty/department budgets. Look through student life budgets. Read through the on campus rhetoric. We've lost our way.
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The point the article makes about religion and social attitudes based on religious beliefs such as homophobia, acceptance of same sex couples, primacy of the male and subservience of the female not only in the domestic sphere but also in the public sphere is very valid.
Blacks and Latinos are not the only ones. Asians too are more conservative on social issues.
The new Margaret Atwood novel points towards how religion could be the cohesive force to shape American future to the detriment of non Christian religious adherents, women, minorities, LGBTQ people.
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@Meenal Mamdani
While blacks traditionally, thanks to the strength of the black church which is generally of the fire and brimstone type, haven't always been the greatest with things like LGBT rights (think of Obama on the subject of same sex marriage when he was elected), that has changed as blacks have recognized that the same people oppressing LGBT people are also the ones oppressing them, and black churches in many cases are a lot more liberal (when you see black preachers condemning LGBT people, it is ironically often the same preachers that were behind the civil rights push in the 60's, despite the fact that MLK and other leaders were supportive of gay rights). Hispanics are diverse as well, and while there are still a lot of Catholic and Evangelical hispanics who are not LGBT friendly, when you get to the younger set that isn't true, besides the fact that hispanics have LGBT members, they also understand about rights for lGBT people being tied to everyone's rights.
The comments are as interesting as the column. I can't do as well but I point out a few things. First, there is no monolith of Dem/Progressive and GOP/Conservatism, because somewhere we have become tribes. Different views are good not bad, then you vote, so our polity is broken. Second, conservatism should not be defined anti-progressive and GOP should not be either nor the enemy of Dems. Republicans, Robert LaFollett and Theodore Roosevelt were progressives before Dems were progressive. Third, the Republican party of Center-Right is essential for the proper running of our nation, as long as the Center-Left can safely propose their ideas and there is inherent Trust. (locking up Clinton, firing McCabe and Comey, etc. is abuse of power)
Fourth, the Republican party today is more than 50% Religious and Racist. The conservatism you try to explain, well I would say, is not the enemy of the people. But the other half of the Republican party is not really conservatism, it has become populism, therefore, since they derive power through distrust of liberals and Dems, they will either poison our polity more or become irrelevant. And you can't argue that away.
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@William Trainor Gosh William, I think it's nice that the Times posted your comment. I wish I could figure it out.
Mr. Douthat,
I think you undercut your argument by oversimplifying the progressive arguments about race and racism. By saying "...the current progressive definition (from reparations to substantial immigration increases to single-payer health care)" you leave out a wide swath of what is being sought. Real equal opportunity, in education, housing, voting, policing, and health care.
I do applaud you though for admitting that the vast majority of unreconstructed racism does exist in the Republican party.
Thanks for that.
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The important subtext of Levitz's comments are that the existence of the current Republican party as a successful national organization is founded on the realignment of southern voters after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The desegregation of schools and public accommodations in the south was a forced cultural change, and the south has never really come to turns with it. The backlash of this has been an electoral boon for the Republicans. I think it is the origin of the anti federal government memes that have driven much of modern politics as well; the feds come in and require change from an unreconstructed south. I say this as a southerner who lived through this period, was in school during the early phases of desegration, watched the rise of Jesse Helms on exactly these issues, and ultimately have come to see essentially all of modern politics in America. Regardless of what Republican pundits say, Americans don't care much about who controls the means of production in our society, but they certainly don't want the government to provide any assistance to black people. I fear that this echo from our dark past can account for much of modern American politics.
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@HM Quite accurate. You might want to look at this Politico article about 1960's GOP right-wing moneyman Roger Milliken and his (somewhat reluctant) vote-seeking outreach to Southern racists to build the modern Southern GOP. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/roger-milliken-republican-party-history-213212
2
Conservatives have become doctrinaire instead of pragmatic. They need to put people first instead of economics, and stop liberal bashing to show they are willing to work with others to put people first, rather than ideology.
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@Roger A. Sawtelle
The GOP appears ideological & rigid, but the ideology is a facade. The real purpose is greed: their own individually and that of the people who bribe them. Of course many people believe sincerely in the trickle-down ideology. Many have a religious faith in markets. But if they find their way to higher position in the media, or in government / lobbying, the ideology wraps itself around the pursuit of their own profit.
33
The easiest way for Republicans to be able to broaden their appeal without resorting to fanning racist sentiments is to let Democrats run things for a while and expect it to go poorly after the unintended consequences and cultural effects cause obvious damage that disproportionately hurt minorities. They seem likely to follow this strategy whether they want to or not.
But there is something very problematic, and possibly ruinous, about a two party system where one party is the angry white people and the other party is the guilty white people and almost everyone who is not white. Anything that is seen as political will almost always be seen as racial, and sometimes the reverse. This can make compromise or even reasoned debate nearly impossible.
14
@Alan
The problem is expecting things to go poorly after Democrats take charge, the GOP has this idea that GOP run governments always do well, and that isn't true. The Crash of 2007 didn't occur under a GOP government, the GOP had the white house and both houses since 2004 and it led to one of the worst depressions in US history. I have heard the tea party nitwits tell me how Obama "crashed" the economy, but when he took office unemployment was already almost 10%, the Dow was at 6500, the economy was in a recession since October,2007 and the banks were ready to collapse. When Bill Clinton took office in 1992 the economy was in a recession, under his administration it grew steadily. Jimmy Carter was not a success, but the inflation in his administration and the economic stagnation were already raging when he took office, so you can't claim he made it worse. This statement shows the idea that GOP=Good and Dems=Bad, and it isn't true. And for all the claims of the GOP, same sex marriage has become law under the Democrats, and God hasn't struck us dead, we haven't seen anything different with families or whatnot, so where is the disaster based on Democratic social policies?
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@Alan They already did that. The 8 years of Obama virtue signaling created the Trump presidency. Without Obama there would be no Trump. People in glass houses should not throw stones.
1
Mr. Douthat's read of history conveniently omits the institutionalized racism overtly practiced by the Republican party after the 2010 census. In state after state, deliberately racist gerrymandering was enacted.
We saw it in Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and other states. When these racist maps were ruled for what they were, in both Federal Courts and the Supreme Court, denial of the Republican Party's core racist practice, one it tried to enact throughout the nation, became impossible.
The Republican Party has had many a chance to renounce such practices, but their leaders and elected officials remain silent to this day, and Mr. Douthat's convenient sweeping of such institutionalized practices under the rug enables them still. No, Mr. Douthat, the "relatively optimistic view of race relations" did not persist until Barack Obama's second term. Not in the good ole' GOP.
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@Glenn
When Democrat controlled State Houses draw maps that form safe districts for minorities isn't that also racism. Dems are very silent when they are drawing gerrymandering maps when they have had many chances to renounce such practices, but their leaders and elected officials remain silent to this day.
3
@philly
The charges of gerrymandering are laughable. If democrats were serious about gerrymandering, they would opposed it everywhere.
Democrats never bring these cases in areas that are gerrymandered to their advantage. Because it's not about gerrymandering but political control. Democrats want it and are using "racism" to gain it.
@philly, Gerrymandering from either party is wrong but Republicans are the ones who are practicing it now. That and partisan gerrymandering as in my state.
6
“Many G.O.P. donors prefer a party of white-identity politics and tax cuts to the more economically populist and ethnically diverse alternative. ”
Follow the money Ross. I accept that many people within the Republican Party (writ large) are not racist, but the thing that you and others miss, every single time, is that most R’s with influence will put their own economic grifting above everything. Sure, they don’t overtly believe in racist principles, but if acting on those non racist beliefs entails surrendering some coin, they are almost always walking away.
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I'd like to add a last requirement Mr. Douthat... Voters would actually have to notice the substantial diminishment of racial polarization in the organs of conservatism broadly.
I live in a bright red area of a true blue New England state. My neighbors are so entirely disconnected from any information outside of their self-perpetuating, sealed thought silo that their political group think has become impenetrable. I fear that a rational, heartfelt renewal of racial consciousness in the conservative national mind won't even be noticed by my neighbors. Sad...
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"My neighbors are so entirely disconnected from any information outside of their self-perpetuating, sealed thought silo that their political group think has become impenetrable."
In my observation, this also describes the urban, progressive left, a group that might have found like-minded company in the Puritans of another age. Their common cause would not have been the particulars of sexual conduct so much as the impulse toward self-righteous shaming (cancel culture being a latter-day version of the stocks), and the will to power to control the lives of others to their own satisfaction.
The Puritans and progressives alike seem preternaturally unable to mind their own business, an ability which is essential to a free, peaceful, and just society.
4
I live there too but in NJ...
@D I Shaw
I totally agree @D I Shaw! I guess a big heaping of empathy and humility would be in order for all of these "dogmatist" folks. And I really, really mind my own business...
1
The equation is simple.
Conservative economic policy (low taxes, limited government) historically favor the already wealthy.
The Clinton years featured economic growth for many, therefore diminishing racism because when you have a job and prosperity you have less resentment.
The byproduct of policies that historically favor the wealthy build the resentment that fuels the racism, which Republicans utilize to their advantage.
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@Robert Immerman
More people of color have jobs today than ever before. Whatever are you talking about. You can thank the "right" for that.
4
@DJ
Thank the right for what?
“The unemployment rate is 15.8% in Newark, N.J. It’s an alarming 17.4% in Detroit. And in Flint, Mich. more than a quarter of the population is unemployed. If these numbers referred to the white unemployment rate, our leaders would be doing everything possible to improve it. But these rates represent black unemployment, and no one is sounding the alarm.”
"Black workers are being left behind by full employment" (June 26, 2019)
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/06/26/black-workers-are-being-left-behind-by-full-employment/
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@DJ, you mean the continuation of the Obama economy? The economy has remained good ever since Obama put it to rights after 2008. It has continued to rise but if Trump doesn't stop his "tariff reform" and other jolts to the economy it won't be good much longer. More people of all races have jobs now, although they aren't necessarily paying enough to keep people out of poverty.
15
What does Mr Douthat see as the problem to be solved? Is it racism, or is it the PR problem posed by racism for those strands of conservative thought that he appreciates?
It seems the latter; he doesn’t want to end racism or its effects so much as disentangle it from a conservative movement, to make conservatives “less racialized”, but not a positive force on race.
I’m not sure how that differs from the Atwater era of the dog whistle but I am sure it’s not good enough for our common American principles.
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@Yeah
Yes, Ross thinks it's sufficient to merely "mute" the racism on the right. As if the systematic disenfranchisement and oppression of entire groups of people is equivalent to some annoying ad on TV about cholesterol medicine...
9
@Yeah I suspect that if Mr. Douthat could wave a magic wand and make racism disappear he would. And this applies to any number of other conservatives. But that is never going to happen, since it's baked into our DNA, no doubt as some form of survival instinct. (Defend your own group, and if you encounter someone different, assume that person is dangerous until proven otherwise.) If everyone looks more or less the same, people will find some other characteristic upon which to focus (In Europe, it was traditionally Jews and Gypsies, and now that animosity has expanded to Muslims). The good news is that, as humans, we have to ability to use logic and reason to override what our instincts are telling us. And, of course, for every conservative who'd love to end racism, you can probably find 1-2 more who, even though they aren't particularly bigoted themselves, are nevertheless quite cynically content to leverage racial resentment to win elections and keep their tax breaks.
5
@Yeah
Is there any way to "end" racism? And if so, why aren't progressives, who are more paranoid about racism than any other group in history, able to tell us how?
Unless the activist white left learns to tolerate the fact that some measure of racism, ageism, sexism, classism, etc-ism, is natural, universal, and not indicative of a malevolent or antisocial personality or force, then "racism" will always be a badge that the left uses to dehumanize its ideological opponents.
Which is, of course, precisely why they won't learn it.
I don't believe that the GOP can eradicate racism from its fundamental policies. I don't believe that the GOP is conservative; it is more a group that, having power, plans to hold it in a death grip regardless of consequences.
If they wanted to erase racism from immigration policy, they could welcome the dreamers, put the financial and moral onus of managing illegal labor on people who hire it and profit by it, and improve the speed and conditions for processing, accepting or deporting people at the border. For instance, we'd never separate families as a method of discouragement.
If we wanted to remove racism from policy, we'd walk away from voter ID, of provide the process of gathering the documentation and proving the ID for free, in convenient locations, over convenient hours.
If we wanted to eliminate racism from policy, we would not be overturning the civil rights era voting rights. We'd not gerrymander people of color into discrete districts.
We'd champion consumer protection laws that protect poor people - working poor included - from predatory practices in loans, bail, civil ticket policies, lawsuits from healthcare providers.
We'd champion job creation and education in under-served areas.
Until policy shows us to consider poor people, people of color to be a real constituency, the GOP can be accused of racism. As as long as they are centered on taking from the poor to give to the rich, and killing the middle class, they cannot be called conservative.
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@Cathy - You say, “I don't believe that the GOP is conservative”. You’re quite correct that modern American Conservatism is reactionary. However, Corey Robin, in “The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump”, looks at the history of Conservatism and makes an excellent case that Conservatism has never been conservative, it’s always been reactionary. Liberalism has always been about granting full citizenship rights to those that don’t have them, and Conservatism has always been about resisting that. It really is Cleek’s Law, “Todays conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.”
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@Cathy Bureaucratic paternalism? How loathsome.
@Andrew Lohr, nope. Just reasoned rules to keep the wealth class from loading the dice in their own favor. That's just right.
6
Conservatives (at least most of them) don't seem to want theocracy; I wouldn't argue that. Conservatives (at least most of them) don't seem to want complete white supremacy; I wouldn't argue that either.
What conservatives want is what they have, and what they had more of in the past: a country with a strong white hegemony and Christian culture. Calling it outright theocracy or white supremacy is painting the goal in an extreme light, like most everyone does to liberal goals just as a matter of course. Speaking of liberal goals, I think the great tragedy of the 20th century is that white Americans started out fighting for economic justice, which is what they're best at, and ended up dropping that fight so they could fight against racial justice. Then the economic goals backslid fearfully and was used as kindling to ignite more racial conflict. Sad.
Also, while California is great, even the most hopeful liberal knows that it doesn't serve as a political bellwether federally. There are too many states remaining with 80+% white populations for them to ever be irrelevant at the federal level. Just as the Founders, if not intended, were willing to accept in compromise with slaver-owners.
13
@Roarke . As a white liberal, I am extremely frustrated by this perception that we somehow turned away from economic liberalism. What do you think the Affordable Care Act was? The single biggest fight of the Obama administration was about expanding health access for the sickest and poorest Americans. Environmental protection is also a form of economic justice; rising sea waters will destroy the poor while the wealthy comfortably move inland.
It would help this perception if the zeitgeist didn’t insist on a story of Democratic indifference to the heartlands. Hillary Clinton’s comment on miners losing work was somehow reported as though she were celebrating instead of calling for a program to help unemployed miners.
It doesn’t help that the zeitgeist keeps insisting that Democrats
57
To answer the question in the headline, sure conservatism can escape racism, but it would be maybe 10% of the population that would remain. And Douthat has supported that inhumanity for decades, even as he apparently recognized its destructiveness to the fabric of the US.
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@sleeve
Ah, so Sleeve imagines that only 10% of White Americans remain racist . A low number that defies the reality that White Americans prefer their schools , their neighborhoods , their workplace , their social activities , and even their religious worship remain all or almost all white .
If it were only 10% then that 10% most be supported by the 90% .
@sleeve
The popularity of Sleeve's comment is indicative of White Racism and or their denial of it . Just like always the victims of racism appear to be the only ones aware of it while the benefactors and perpetrators deny its existence .
@sleeve Dehumanisation? Liberals wanting to run our lives for us.