Racism Should Not Be Political

Yet, for some reason, it is.

I am constantly…let’s go with “amused”…whenever someone refers to racism (or bigotry, sexism, homophobia, or whatever -ism) being a political thing. Generally, it’s in response to “wokeness,” whatever that term has come to mean to one side or the other, and it is generally used as a means to shut down whatever the conversation is about racism.

Like, when people talk about policing and how it is a racist institution that feeds and enforces systemic racism in America, all of a sudden you hear things like “don’t get political,” usually from the right. Or, whenever you talk about how America was built on a foundation of exploiting BIPOC through slavery and oppression, suddenly it’s “getting too political.”

I have never understood this because generally, the people bringing up these subjects are on the left, and the people calling it “political” are on the right. In fact, because people on the right are constantly trying to shut down any talk of reforming racist institutions and getting rid of racist policies by calling it “political,” I can only draw one conclusion.

Racism is political: it is a key component of the political right-wing’s agenda.

I mean, it’s fairly obvious to any outside observer. When the right consists of a bunch of people who call themselves “western chauvinists,” “white supremacists,” and “neo-Nazis,” how can you not assume that the political right is the party of racism? When their presidential candidate says a bunch of implicitly racist stuff but they excuse it away with it because he didn’t say it explicitly, how can you say that racism isn’t a core component of their platform?

When the right burns books that dare suggest that there is a legitimate family unit other than two white parents with kids, or that slavery happened, or that queer folx exist, what else can you say? When they demonize things like wokeism — something used to describe being aware of and fighting against racism and other -isms — and rail against Critical Race Theory — which they use as a dog whistle without knowing what it actually is — how can you assume anything else?

But, you might say, the Republican party is the party of Lincoln, who freed the slaves! How can they be racist?

Yeah, there was an ideological flip-flop that began around the time of the New Deal and resulted in the Democrats becoming the party of civil rights and the Republicans becoming the party of segregation. The Civil Rights movement cemented this shift, and the Democratic Party became the party of black rights and integration.

One of the things that we often forget is that, of the Little Rock Nine, the nine black students who were selected to integrate schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, eight of them are still alive. What this also means is that many of the students who famously bullied them and threatened them with violence — and whose parents railed against the integration — are also still alive. Quite a few of them are probably still just as full of hate as ever, they have passed that hatred onto their kids (and probably become Republicans).

Yes, racism is political — it is a political tool of the right. They use it in their gerrymandering to divide and isolate black communities. They use it to turn nonwhite people into “others,” who will wreck your communities and bring crime. They use it to divide white America from black America (and everyone else), and they use it with incredible effectiveness. They are a monolith of hate and bigotry, and they will do anything to stay in power to continue spreading that hatred.

Racism should not be political. Racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, and all the other -isms should be things that we ostracize from society in general. There is no place in politics for any of those things.

And yet, the political right has embraced racism as one of the rotten planks in its rotten platform, and they have been clinging to that platform of hatred, bigotry, and white supremacy for far too long. Racism is entrenched in Republican politics in every conceivable way, and because they are a bunch of cheating con-men and women, they have rigged the system to keep themselves in power.

Are all Republicans racist? No, of course not. But they continue to elect racist representatives to political office, and until that stops, racism will continue to be a primary tenet of right-wing politics.

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