Job one for white progressives: Engage other white folks about racism

A recent study exploring the effect of race-based political messages on white subjects showed that a certain subset of whites, "liberals with higher levels of racial resentment," were particularly responsive to both racially explicit and implicit attacks on government social programs. The story, headlined "Why Some White Liberals Will Probably Vote For Donald Trump," ran on the Huffington Post website earlier this month,

Reporter Arthur Delaney noted that the study's authors, sociologists Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer,
"offered a few theories about why [racially coded] welfare rhetoric would move white liberals more than conservatives. One is simply that conservatives are so familiar with welfare-bashing from Republican officeholders that they can't be swayed any further," he wrote.

"Another is that liberals may be uniquely vulnerable to this rhetoric because they are afraid to talk about racial inequality. Watts and Willer noted that 'strong norms of colorblindness in liberal political culture mean negative outcomes among black Americans as a group are rarely discussed.'"

Clearly, it would be rash to reach any number of conclusions based on a  single academic study, which itself cannot be fairly assessed without knowledge of the kind of details that a news report cannot easily include or evaluate. Still, another statement in the article provides a jumping off point for considering where white progressives should focus their activism. "...strong norms of colorblindness in liberal political culture mean [that] negative outcomes among black Americans as a group are rarely discussed," Delaney wrote, quoting Watts and Willer.

That suggests to me that white folks who consider themselves allies of African Americans have a particular responsibility to engage other whites who may have "higher levels of racial resentment" in discussions of the history, the social and cultural impact, and the continuing significance of 400 years of racism in the United States.

This is necessary for a number of reasons. In 2016, Donald Trump won 46 electoral votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that had twice previously been won by Barack Obama. Trump won those three states by less than 90,000 total votes, giving him 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 232. There are all sorts of ways to parse that outcome, including the notion that far lower 2016 turnouts of African American voters in Philadelphia, Detroit, Flint and Milwaukee compared to the two previous Obama campaigns may by themselves account for Hillary Clinton's defeat.

But the combination of white Obama voters who defected to Trump, or who voted Green or Libertarian, or who simply sat out the election because their distaste for Clinton obscured their grasp of the damage a Trump victory would, could, and did do, very likely were also enough to swing the three critical states away from Clinton. Looking ahead to the presidential election in 2020, it seems reasonable to conclude that increasing African American turnout and effectively mobilizing estranged white liberals are key to denying Trump a second-term.

In a country that is increasingly polarized and seems almost ungovernable, addressing the general white refusal to understand the full impact of slavery, of the collapse of reconstruction, of Jim Crow, night riders, lynch mobs, mass incarceration, disinvestment and 400 years of economic exploitation is a central task, now and into the future. Whatever one believes to be the most urgent policy questions facing our country, our government and ourselves, it is clear that our collective political dysfunction stands in the way of effective government action on any number of priorities, including climate change, economic inequality, public education, the right to organize, mass incarceration, abortion rights and so much else.

I would argue that racism and white privilege are the very root of that dysfunction. If that is so, and, if for that particularly critical subset of white liberals who can be moved by racist dogwhistles avoiding discussion of race issues is both bad habit and unfortunate priority, than white progressives who are willing to promote discussions of race with other white folks can play a critical role in the effort to restore functionality to our political life.

African Americans cannot play that role with whites. Nor should they. As a practical matter, African Americans already deal with white racism 24/7. They are isolated by it, defined by it, under attack by it, undermined by it and stereotyped by it. Nevertheless, productivity, inspiration and genius are part of the heritage and the contemporary experience of African Americans individually and in community. Eliminating white obstacles to the dissemination of African American social and cultural influence, and the enhanced quality of life that would follow, ought to provide further motivation for white progressives.

We know, or can guess, how much better life could be in the United States if the obstacles to full creative participation in our culture were eliminated for all. Racism alone has probably wasted more work, more talent, more genius than any other single factor. Had we found a way to continue the work of reconstruction after the Civil War, to restore stolen wealth, to create a world characterized by equal justice and equal opportunity, our current political challenges would almost certainly feel far less urgent. That is the world we could come to live in, but getting there may depend very much on the efforts of white progressives to lead in opening the discussion of racism and white supremacy within our own communities.

This will be hard and will take persistence, human kindness, and an unrelenting focus on the world still to win. But we must keep our eyes on that prize.