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Hannah-Jones traces the half-century since the Supreme Court’s 1978 decision as this objection has grown in force. University of California Regents vs. Bakke to current political rhetoric. Or, really, how this debate is a continuation of an eternal tension in the United States.
Occasionally, often after “violent upheaval,” “enough white people in power realize that racial subordination is anti-democratic, and so the United States has adopted forced racial neutrality or colorblindness.” “Instead, they accepted the idea that the legacy of racial caste must be countered by drastic measures,” she writes. Race-specific laws and policies to achieve equality for Black people. But any attempt to create equality in the same way, meaning that this society has created inequality, faces fierce and powerful resistance. ”
So it’s worth asking. Besides the fact that there has been a concerted effort for decades to ease programs aimed at addressing historical discrimination, why is it only now that Hannah-Jones identified Was a trap set?
Hannah-Jones’ presentation depends on readers accepting the existence of deep-seated patterns that have disadvantaged black Americans, and more specifically, those whose ancestors were enslaved, for centuries. That is the existence of systemic racism. She explains how direct efforts to combat racism survived during the civil rights era.
“The system built and enforced for centuries to subjugate enslaved people and their descendants on the basis of race no longer requires race-based laws to maintain them. ” Hannah-Jones wrote. “Racial caste was so deeply entrenched and so intertwined with the American system that it would inevitably reproduce itself in the absence of race-based countermeasures.”
Here we see one reason why issues addressing historical discrimination are so hotly contested today. Acceptance of this idea is currently polarized along party lines.
Since the 1970s, the General Social Survey (GSS) has asked Americans whether they believe the difference in economic status between black and white Americans is primarily due to discrimination. Before 2000, when the GSS employed a broader method of recording race, white Democrats were slightly more likely than white Republicans to attribute differences to discrimination. (Both groups were less likely to believe that than Black Americans.) Then, starting in 2014, the idea that social differences are due to discrimination surged, especially among white Democrats. .
why? That’s almost certainly because of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has brought huge attention to the issue of systemic racism.However, the movement itself quickly became polarized along partisan lines. — It did not have a similar observable effect on white Republicans. In fact, they are less likely than they were in the 1980s to say they believe black Americans are disadvantaged primarily due to discrimination.
This, of course, is the central issue with affirmative action programs. Hannah-Jones points out that the purpose of these programs was to address long-standing discriminatory practices. Her essay includes a famous quote from Lyndon B. Johnson: She’s in competition with all the other people,” she says, even though she justifiably believes she was completely fair. ” But because race has long been a useful proxy for those disadvantages, those efforts have been reframed as centered around race rather than historical disadvantages. .
While writing the 2023 book, I looked at historical Census Bureau data on race and summarized the evolution of the U.S. nonwhite population as follows:
“In 1960, before immigration laws were relaxed, more than 94 percent of nonwhite U.S. residents were black, and this was before Hispanic ethnicity was separated from the overall white category. In 1970, two out of three nonwhites (a group that now includes Hispanics) were black (including black Hispanics). But by 2010, when Obama was president, , only about one-third of non-white residents were black. By 2020, that density had fallen to less than three-tenths.”
This is why GSS has changed the way it records race. The old process of classifying races as white/black/other was no longer sufficient.
This evolution of America’s demographics is a central aspect of the movement Hannah-Jones describes. Part of the reason, she says, is that “institutions have treated affirmative action programs as a means to an end.” visual “Diversity,” he emphasized. Programs often moved from focusing on addressing discrimination and injustice to focusing more broadly on representation. Downstream disadvantages of enslavement were buried. Experiences of discrimination have lost some of their differentiation.
But demographic evolution is also a central factor. Because it echoes a strong sense among white Americans that this country is moving away from them. Young people in this country are becoming more diverse at a faster rate. Older white Americans, who are more likely than the rest of the population to be Republican, read about demographic changes and are literally seeing the country change. “Make America Great Again” is, in part, a nuanced response to that change.
So we can see that Republicans (the majority of whom are white) generally agree with racism against black Americans. Already used That’s a problem, but now more and more people are against racism. White Americans are the problem.
Many Republicans believe that racism against white people is more of a problem than racism against blacks, Latinos, or Asian Americans.
This is a manifestation of the success of the movement that Hannah-Jones is talking about.White Republicans believe the system is geared against them. they Not for historically disadvantaged groups. Black Lives Matter’s efforts to heighten systemic racism have heightened rather than alleviated this malaise, largely by using BLM as a political foil for Republican leaders.
Ten years ago, the Republican Party reached a crossroads. President Barack Obama’s election in 2008, and his reelection four years later, seemed to usher in a new and diverse Democratic coalition. The party compiled a recommendation report as it examines how Republicans failed to take back the White House in 2012. That includes better reaching out to Black, Hispanic and Asian voters. Following the party’s unexpectedly poor performance in the 2022 midterm elections, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel c convened an advisory committee to impose the same desired outcome, among other things.
But that was just one path. Donald Trump chose a different path, heightening white dissatisfaction and concern over “reverse racism,” a more rhetorically sharp version of the “colorblind” argument. White people’s feeling of being left behind was a better predictor of primary support for President Trump in 2016 than economic anxiety. And President Trump’s approach continues. The party recently ramped up minority assistance programs after he sparked McDaniel’s ouster. In recent years, there seems to be an argument that Republicans have an advantage with black and Hispanic voters.
Hannah-Jones quotes Professor Ian Haney Lopez of the University of California, Berkeley.
“This rhetoric is a massive fraud, because while it claims to be racially colorblind, it is actually designed to stimulate white racial hyper-consciousness,” Haney-Lopez said. he said. “The strategy worked.”
Trump’s rise seems clear evidence of that effect. Indeed, his rise is inseparable from the patterns Hannah-Jones points out, such as the backlash against programs aimed at addressing historical injustices and demographic shifts. As she writes, this trend existed even before her 2016. But it is no coincidence that both he and the reactionaries are successful at the same time.
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