Republicans and race

Great stuff from Ron Brownstein, “The Post-racial Republicans: One of the core beliefs that binds the modern GOP coalition is rejection of the idea that minorities and women face structural bias in American society.”

I had a really engaging online conversation with BB recently about the meaning of “racism” and to best use the term.  We didn’t agree, but we damn sure agreed that there’s absolutely an awful and persisting legacy from historical discrimination and that we need to do more to address the problem.  For Republicans, though, they literally reject that belief.  Seems kind of crazy if you have even only a passing knowledge of not even slavery, but Jim Crow, redlining, and how reinforcing poverty can be.  Anyway, Brownstein:

Scott and Haley have leaned into the criticism from Obama, highlighting it to raise their profile in a Republican presidential race where each has attracted just single-digit support in national polls. But in responding to Obama, they have demonstrated how difficult it has become for any GOP leader—especially one who is not white—to challenge the party consensus that the nation has transcended discrimination against minorities and women…

For a Republican coalition that still relies predominantly on white voters, hearing nonwhite GOP candidates dismiss racism offers “acquittal and absolution,” says Robert P. Jones, the founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan group that studies American attitudes toward race and culture. Such comments from figures like Scott and Haley, he told me, provide “permission” for other Republicans “to not even have to ask the questions” about whether systemic discrimination still shapes U.S. society…

One of the core beliefs that binds the modern Republican coalition, particularly since the rise of Donald Trump, is rejection of the idea that racial minorities and women face structural bias in American society.

Studies of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections conducted by the Tufts political scientist Brian Schaffner and his colleagues used the Cooperative Election Study, a large-scale national poll, to determine the factors that predicted which candidate voters supported in those races. Those studies found that in each contest, the single best predictor of who voted for Trump was the belief that systemic racism no longer exists in the U.S.; the second-best predictor was denial that systemic bias exists against women.

Within the GOP, those views command overwhelming support. In an email, Schaffner told me almost nine in 10 Republicans reject the idea that structural discrimination exists against racial minorities; about three-fourths doubt that women face entrenched bias. Fully two-thirds of Republicans say there’s little bias against either minorities or women. Only one in 20 Republicans, Schaffner found, believes that both groups still face systematic discrimination.

I think it would be interesting to have some focus groups, and push a little harder on people who believe that this systemic bias doesn’t exist at all.  I’m sure there’s plenty of readl bigots out there, but, far from all.  I want to say, “if not systemic racism and if you genuinely believe Black people are just as capable as white people, what accounts for the huge gaps in wealth, income, educational achievement, etc.?”  What’s this missing factor?  Because it seems to me, if it’s not systemic, you are implicitly arguing that, there’s just something about Black people that leads to lower achievement.  

Anyway, lots more good stuff in the article:

In PRRI polling, about two-thirds of Republicans agreed that discrimination against white people is now as big a problem as bias against minorities. In a 2022 national survey, PerryUndem, a firm that polls for progressive organizations, found that about seven in 10 Republicans agreed both that “white men are the most attacked group in the country right now” and that “these days society seems to punish men just for acting like men.” 

Similarly, in a national 2021 survey conducted by a UCLA  polling project, Republicans believed there to be more discrimination against white people than against other racial groups, more against men than women, and more against Christians than other religious groups, such as Muslims and Jews. “Republicans see a racial order in which historically privileged groups, like white Americans, are now the real victims,” the political scientists John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck wrote in their book The Bitter End, which cited the UCLA research.

It’s really hard to achieve anything with a party which is in such fabulous denial of the actual reality of America than to think that white people and Christians are the people suffering the most discrimination in America.