Dec 15, 2020
A Case of Black and White
(Well, Really Black, Brown, and White)
Why do Trump supporters remain loyal to him despite the fact that he lies and disrupts democratic norms so blatantly? I believe that a huge part of it is about race dynamics. The black and brown population is growing faster than the white population, and a lot of entitled whites are horrified. The Republican Party, which is now being driven by these scared entitled whites, sees the writing on the wall. It knows that as a matter of pure demographics, whites will be a minority in the US in the not-too-distant future.
So it is trying to hang on as long as it can. Some of the techniques are not new — gerrymandering, voter suppression, stacking the courts. Some are new — aggressive deportation, the war against immigration, and gaining and holding power through disinformation, massive propaganda campaigns, and foreign interference in elections. The race dynamic is one of the biggest factors in the rise of Trump, and it is one of the biggest reasons why so many leaders on the right champion Trump when it is clear he has misbehaved. To them, Trump represents retaining control, and they fear that if he falls, power will be lost to them forever.
The scary thing for me is wondering where it will end. How desperate is white power to stay in power? Sooner or later, voter suppression, gerrymandering, stacking the courts, and even disinformation, propaganda, and foreign interference in our elections will not be enough. Will we then see the total erosion of democratic norms to the point that we no longer have a democracy? Will white power Americans ultimately prefer a dictatorship to a democracy in which they are a minority?
People who value democracy and freedom should think long and hard about the politics of power that have gripped us and pushed us beyond civility. If we want it to stop before it is too late, then we must hold people who are moving us in the wrong direction accountable, and we need to vote out leaders who are not committed to democracy. We must embrace an America in which whites will be a minority, in which we truly celebrate being a melting pot, and in which we glory in diversity and express love, not fear, of people who are a different color than we are.
