Not Everyone Who Voted For Trump is Racist

There’s a coffee shop in downtown Columbus I like to frequent with my partner and my friends. This particular coffee shop is known in town for being an LGBTQ-friendly hub of leftist political and economic thought. Every day, you can visit this coffee shop and run into socialists, communists, anarcho-communists, and every other flavor of the far-left-wing.

I love it there. I love the people I meet there, the time I spend there, and the book recommendations I get there. But this coffee shop is pretty woke, and one of the woke things I hear people say frequently is “Every Trump voter is racist” — or, more inclusively, “Every white person is racist,” and it exhausts me every time I hear it.

I know about postmodern theory. I know the new definition of racism is that of structural oppression, power structures, and microaggressions, not only hate crimes and open bigotry as it was in decades past. I love that we’re bringing attention to power structures and microaggressions and centering minority voices — but I think we’re losing sight of something in the process.

I’m a former Republican, a former Republican journalist, and a former campaigner for Mitt Romney, so unlike most leftists, I have some personal experience with being a Republican. I speak from experience when I say I never considered myself a racist because Republicans have a different definition of racist.

Specifically, the old definition of racism, which is that a racist is someone who believes people of other races were either different or lesser than white people. Racists said things like “They should stick to their side of town” and “I wouldn't want my daughter dating someone like that.” I will refer to these kinds of racists as Classic Racists. I left the Republican party not because I was concerned about power structures or microaggressions, or even economic and political theory, but because I realized Classic Racists were secretly running the party.

Sometimes I go to my coffee shop in town and try to talk about my experiences in the Republican party. I say “I know everyone says and does racist stuff because we’re raised in a racist culture, but there are like, real racists in the Republican party.”

And they’ll come back with something like “Everyone is a real racist. We’re raised that way.”

And I sigh, and I say “Yeah, I get that, but we don’t want racism. We do our best to educate ourselves and do better. These people don’t. They legitimately believe other races are inferior. They have racism in their hearts.”

And they’ll come back with “Every white person has racism in their hearts.”

I’m sorry, but any philosophy that equates me — a person who says and does racist things sometimes out of ignorance but who accepts correction and does my best to educate myself and tries to surround myself with a multicultural group of intelligent companions — with David fucking Duke — is a bad philosophy.

Because that’s what people in the center and on the right hear when leftists say “All Trump voters/white people are racist.” They hear “You are the same as David Duke,” which is obviously not true. I don’t blame them for being defensive and hostile. I, too, feel defensive and hostile when people try to tell me I’m the same kind of person as Klan members.

Some leftists will stop here and try to tell me that the vast majority of Republicans are Classic Racists. I’m sorry, but this just isn’t true. In all my years of being a Republican, having Republican friends, and having Republican jobs, I never once met someone who openly said anything bigoted or hateful until the day I decided to quit being a Republican. We said a lot of microaggressions because we were ignorant, but ignorance is not malice.

Most Republicans are not Classic Racists. Many of them stand staunchly against racism as they understand it. They say things like “Wait a moment, I have black friends” not to ‘justify their racism’ but because Classic Racists like David Duke do not have black friends, and understandably, they’re resisting being lumped together with David Duke.

My partner and I see a couples counselor. I’m also in a type of therapy called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. In both of these clinical settings, the therapists teach us to avoid phrases that are:

1. Judgmental: Issuing a judgment instead — adjectives like “stupid,” “childish,” or “racist” are often judgments in the psychological sense
2. About Them: Saying “you” or “you are”, for instance

Instead, we are supposed to use phrases that are:

1. Descriptive: Describing actions, like “That didn’t work” or “That policy has racist outcomes.”
2. About Us: Describing oneself, one’s feelings, or one’s experiences. “This upsets me” or “I feel anxious when you do that.”

For instance, if my partner promises to do the dishes and then fails, I shouldn’t say “You’re so lazy” or “You did this to piss me off,” I should say “I feel disappointed that you didn’t do the dishes.”

The reason we’re taught these skills (called Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills) is that when we use them, interpersonal interactions are more likely to go our way. If I talk to my partner about the dishes using interpersonal effectiveness skills, it’s more likely that he’ll empathize with my complaint and it’s more likely that he’ll make it up to me. Which is no surprise, really, because who wants to help their partner out after being castigated or insulted?

Interpersonal effectiveness skills are useful when talking about politics, too. A Republican is more likely to listen to you and reconsider their views when you say “I‘m angry you support this policy with racist implications” than when you say “I can’t believe you’re a fucking racist.”

Speaking as a former Republican, if someone said the former to me, I would ask “What racist implications?” If someone said the latter to me, I would disengage and think to myself Wow, all these liberals can do to debate with me is call me names? They aren’t able to actually talk about the issues? Pathetic.

I genuinely think that if the left started approaching Republicans by saying “Everyone who voted for Donald Trump supported racism” instead of the more aggressive “Everyone who voted for Trump is racist,” a lot more center and center-right people would be attracted to the platform of the left. It’s a lot easier to convince someone you’re correct when you’re not insulting them.

The other thing we lose with this hyper-woke everything-is-racist narrative is the knowledge that behind the curtains lurks the evil of True Racism, a blight more pernicious than any microaggression you could come up with.

Racist policies are not thought up by rank-and-file Republicans. They are thought up by Classic Racists, people who are truly on a long-term mission to cleanse the US of minorities. They are thought up by party leaders in Congress who are happy to knowingly, intentionally disenfranchise black people if it means they’ll win another term. These are the racists we are fighting against, not your mom’s friend who still supports voter ID laws.

When all white people become racists, we forget who’s spearheading the true evil. All Republicans and all white people blur into one conglomerate we can enjoy throwing popcorn at while real forces of evil lurk at the corners of Reddit and recruit young depressed white male after young depressed white male. When the left says things like “all white people are racist,” these young white men only become more susceptible to the predatory ideologies of bigotry.

I think if the left spent more time understanding and exposing the machinations of the people who drive the modern racism ideology, instead of demonizing everyone who’s ever fallen prey to their insidiously clever indoctrination schemes, more people would open their eyes to the way white nationalism has duped them and more people would join us on the left.¹

This is ordinarily the point where people step in and say “It’s white people’s job to end racism, not minorities. They shouldn’t have to explain to us/debate with us about it. They don’t owe us anything.”

That’s true. Oppressed populations don’t owe their oppressors a god-damned thing. But we don’t live in a fairytale. Oppressors will not just wake up one day and realize what a naughty, naughty thing they’ve done. That’s like expecting a drug addict to just wake up one day and kick the habit without any kind of intervention, or indeed, without even knowing why drug addiction is dangerous in the first place.

The sad fact of the matter is that if we want anything to change, we have to do something to change it. We have to reach out to people and explain things to them, even if they’re people we don’t like and we simply don’t fathom how they could possibly believe what they believe. We have to be willing to see the human in them, even if it seems like they aren’t willing to see the human in us. I know intimately how much it hurts to do this, but it is the only way forward. We are one race.

If we expect them to believe it, we better start acting like it.

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1: I really can’t understate how clever modern white nationalists are. After all, I’m a former Republican, and the white nationalists cleverly convinced me to support a few of their positions by tricking me into thinking I was the nonracist one — while totally obfuscating their involvement (because obviously, if I knew white supremacy sponsored policies I supported, I would have dumped those policies immediately).