Race merchants think ‘whiteness’ explains their beatdown at the polls
Judging by the analysis on cable news since the election, Democrats seem determined to lose every presidential race for years to come.
The party should be reflecting deeply after Kamala Harris spent more than $1 billion and secured endorsements from celebrities and billionaires, only to lose to Donald Trump. Democrats should be asking how a man they’ve called a fascist, racist Nazi sympathizer managed to win support from such a diverse group of voters.
If progressives had any sense, they would learn to listen to what people say instead of projecting their own biases onto millions of Americans they do not know and do not understand.
Instead of addressing their mistakes, Democrats and their cable news allies continue to focus on the identity politics that voters rejected. Several analysts have claimed they know why Trump won, but their explanation ignores issues like economics, inflation, crime, or immigration.
No, they say the reason comes down to one word: whiteness.
MSNBC contributor Eddie Glaude made this claim during a recent election postmortem. With intense passion and conviction, the Princeton professor insisted he could not see any other explanation. Though he never defined “whiteness,” he was certain it’s what motivated the masses.
I shared his video on social media, telling him he sounded more like a religious cleric than a political analyst. He’s not alone in this rhetoric. While progressives have become more secular over the past few decades, they still exhibit religious impulses. Their discourse on “whiteness” reflects their view of original sin. They have major and minor “prophets” of race and are eager to evangelize unbelievers on topics like “white privilege,” “systemic racism,” and “white supremacy.” They view dissenters with contempt, as seen in their criticism of Latino voters who hopped on the Trump train.
They see nonbelievers not as people to persuade but as sinners to redeem.
This fixation on “whiteness” is not only simplistic but also fuels racial conflict that the left is ill-equipped to handle. A year ago, a black Christian woman sparked controversy in the evangelical community when she told a room full of white women that they must “divest from whiteness,” which she described as rooted in plunder, theft, slavery, and genocide. I’m no minister, but I know my Bible well enough to understand that no group — regardless of race, ethnicity, or nationality — holds a monopoly on sin.
I remember thinking then, as I do now, that the public would have a fit if a white commentator blamed “blackness” for voters’ choices in this election. Conservatives who claimed “blackness” is rooted in self-destruction and broken families would be shunned and shamed, not celebrated as prophetic truth-tellers.
This is why impartiality is a crucial ingredient for healthy discourse in the public square. An honest person should apply the same standards to friends and opponents alike. Moreover, the way we speak about other groups is how we should expect others to speak about us.
This principle is nonpartisan and non-ideological. If you need an extra therapy session because a white conservative criticizes a black liberal on legitimate grounds, you shouldn’t write headlines labeling angry white men as the most frightening people in America.
People pushing identity politics are a cancerous tumor on our body politic. Not only do they reduce Americans to their immutable traits, but they also create the perfect breeding ground for extremist views. Put simply, when you “sow” Robin DiAngelo, you will “reap” David Duke.
This is not unique to white people. Rejection of moderation almost always leads to radicalism.
Imagine a 17-year-old black kid in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1964 watching his parents going out to a civil rights march to protest segregation. Having learned about the First Amendment in school, he assumes law enforcement officials will respect his parents and that their grievances will be heard by their elected officials.
But when he turns on TV that night, he sees them being sprayed with water hoses, attacked by dogs, and beaten over the head with clubs by police. When that teen sees how the white people in power treated his parents — Christians dressed in their Sunday best — no one should be surprised if he is drawn to the more militant posture of the Black Panthers.
The same principle applies today. Young white men have been told that they are the cause of all the country’s problems and are constantly painted as racists only concerned about maintaining power. They see how every white conservative, from George W. Bush to Mitt Romney, is called racist or compared to a Nazi at some point.
They see how perfectly mediocre academics get rich by pushing seminars on “white fragility” and “white rage.” Most are not nearly as race-obsessed as the liberals on television, but some are ripe for the picking by white identitarians who will affirm both their race and sex and won’t attack them for how they were born.
The left does not want to hear that analysis, but that doesn’t make it any less true. When you open the door to the demons of identity, you have no idea what’s coming through that portal. If progressives had any sense, they would learn to listen to what people say instead of projecting their own biases onto millions of Americans they do not know, have never met, and do not understand.
Democrats have a choice. They can either accept the fact that their radicalism on race, sex, and identity has driven away voters or continue to blame “whiteness” and bigotry for their defeat.
This may be one of the last elections in which their silly theories will be taken seriously. Donald Trump earned about 55% of the Latino male vote, roughly 20 percentage points more than in 2020. While he didn’t make significant gains with black men nationwide, there were regional differences in the support he received. For example, about 25% of black men in Pennsylvania voted for Trump. If Democrats don’t do some honest self-reflection, the “white supremacists” they criticize on the right will be more diverse than their own party.
