How to Know if You’re a Racist (and What to Do About It)

Unfortunate truth: If you vote for this president, either you are a racist or racism in your political candidates is not a deal-breaker for you.

Let’s start with one fact: Donald Trump is a racist.

No serious observer of this president’s life, especially over the past four years, can say otherwise.

The howls of rage, broadcast to the universe in high dudgeon: “How can you say that? He says he’s not racist. I don’t think he’s racist. Therefore, he’s ipso facto not racist.”

Logic flaw number one: Whether or not Donald Trump believes he’s a racist, he certainly claims not to be. However, he also claims to believe that Covid-19 isn’t particularly serious, but we know from Donald Trump himself just how “(Covid-19) rips you apart.” Bob Woodward has audiotape of Trump admitting that “it is the plague.”

Conclusion: Just because Donald Trump says he believes something, doesn’t actually mean he believes it.

Logic flaw number two: Whether or not you believe Donald Trump is a racist is beside the point. Your assertion of the claim that he isn’t racist because you don’t think he’s racist because that’s not what you believe is neither germane nor particularly interesting. There are people alive today who remain convinced, despite the crushing weight of history, that Richard Nixon got a raw deal (see, Roger Stone), that the earth is flat, that the moon landing was faked, and that there exists "a sinister cabal of Democrats and celebrities who abuse children.”

Conclusion: People believe all kinds of stupid stuff that isn’t true. Just because you believe Donald Trump isn’t a racist has no bearing on his, you know, actual racism.

Most telling point: People affected by racism (i.e., those who presumably know more about racism because they’ve lived their lives with it as reality) almost unanimously characterize Donald Trump as racist (see this January 2020 polling, showing that 83% of Black people believe Donald Trump is a racist, a percentage which has almost certainly risen since the racial unrest that began in late May). This is no more controversial than claiming that someone who’s never left Bangor, Maine obviously knows less about what it’s like to live in Oxford, Mississippi than someone who’s never left Oxford, Mississippi. (In the academy this point is often made about the difference between the disciplines of “Theology” and “Religious Studies”—“Insider” perspective vs. “Outsider” perspective. Insiders, because of experience, know things that Outsiders can never know.)

Second most telling point: Whatever anyone else believes about Donald Trump’s racism, racists believe he’s a racist. (Hell, in 2016, the KKK endorsed his candidacy!)

Takeaway: If both the people most affected by racism and the people most committed to racism think Donald Trump is a racist, it doesn’t feel like conclusion-jumping to argue that he’s a racist—regardless of what his most devoted supplicants believe.

So, if it’s clear Donald Trump is a racist and you’re still willing to vote for him, you have to come to terms with the fact that either you too are a racist or that you’re willing to abide racism to get/keep something more important to you—tax cuts, a chance to feel some satisfaction at the distress of liberals, louder rhetoric inveighing against abortion and gay wedding cakes. And if that is your deal, then at least have the courage to own the fact that you care more about something more than the life and dignity of people who are different from you.

If you find that you're continually defending yourself against charges of racism ... I don't know, maybe don’t be a racist?