How to combat racism which doesn't admit it's about race?

Some conservatives have found a way to overcome the moral authority of the civil rights movement: Pretend their efforts to center America on white culture aren't about race.

I will admit, I have been intrigued by some conservatives’ reaction to the revelation by POLITICO that several leaders of Young Republicans groups throughout the country engaged in chats on Telegram that featured racist, anti Semitic and pro-rape comments, among others.

According to POLITICO: “They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.”

Several GOP organizations have condemned the messaging. The Kansas GOP decided to suspend its Young Republicans wing and the national organization for the Young Republicans group posted a statement on X/Twitter calling for those involved in the chat to resign.

Which really surprised me. Because so much of the modern MAGA movement’s policies seem rooted in the very attitudes on display in the chat messages.

There’s the conservative dominated Supreme Court considering a case which would strike down elements of the Voting Rights Act which once helped ensure people of color in states across the South might have a snowball’s chance of electing representatives from their cultures. If struck down, the expected gerrymandering by Republicans in 19 different districts could eliminate up to 30 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus.

There’s the baseless accusations that undocumented immigrants bring more crime, use too many federal tax benefits, get free health care and welfare payments and bring disease. None of this is true, but it falls right in line with racist assumptions bigots have made about marginalized groups for hundreds of years.

There’s the targeting of Black and brown officials, especially women, by the Trump administration. There’s the near religious opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, despite little evidence they produce any of the apocalyptic harms MAGA world believes they do. There’s also the attempt to remove public acknowledgements of the evils of slavery and the trauma of segregation from museums, parks and other areas.

An anti-diversity equity and inclusion push that is so devoted to ensuring non-white people don’t get any unfair advantage, sees nothing wrong with members of Trump’s family and his political allies profiting from opportunities mostly due to their loyalty and kinship.

With so many MAGA-led efforts underway to re-marginalize people of color and elevate white culture in America over all others, why are some in the GOP bothering to condemn Telegram chats saying the quiet part in their policies out loud?

I think it’s because MAGA has developed a winning strategy for advancing white supremacy by refusing to directly discuss race. And in so doing, it allows some supporters who would still balk at being called racist, the luxury of pretending they are not helping to advance goals shared by every bigot in America.

I call it racism without admitting race. And it is being used to rewrite everything from employment and education policies to immigration, law enforcement and housing policies.

As I have noted before, it has always seemed that modern conservatives coveted the moral authority enjoyed by the 1960s-era civil rights movement and activists like Martin Luther King Jr.

You see it in attempts to falsely assert that King was a Republican, arguments that Southern Democrats enacted Jim Crow segregation policies (conveniently ignoring how many of those Southern Dems became Republicans after Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson got landmark civil rights legislation passed in the mid-1960s) and attempts by conservative pundits like Glenn Beck to usurp the imagery of King and the March on Washington.

Beck even recently tried to suggest slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk was equal in stature and accomplishments to to King, a Nobel Peace Prize winner considered one of the world’s most reverend civil rights leaders.

At the core of the classic civil rights movement were a couple of ideas: The fight for racial equality in America is a noble one. And such equality is achieved, in part, through public and private initiatives aimed at dismantling the systems which advantaged white people for decades – and even hundreds of years – in America.

I recently saw a clip from the classic film about Jackie Robinson, 42, where the late great Chadwick Boseman played the pioneering Black baseball star. Alan Tudyk offered a typically brilliant performance in a thankless role – as prejudiced, white baseball manager Ben Chapman, who earned infamy in real life for the racial slurs he and his team shouted at Robinson as a player/manager on the Philadelphia Phillies.

As I watched Tudyk recreate Chapman’s horrifically racist tirades – with Boseman’s Robinson backed by none other than American icon Harrison Ford as principled, white Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey – I realized that this is how too many people, especially white folks, are educated to understand racism. It’s individual people, acting overtly, in a way that is obviously unfair.

But, thanks to the successes of the civil rights movement, such displays of open racism have been rightly demonized. So those who seek to re-center white culture as the unequivocally dominant influence in American life must find ways to do so without overtly saying that white American culture is better than all others.

There can’t be a Ben Chapman calling attention to what is really happening.

Which also means, that anyone who lets the mask slip and says the quiet part too directly – except for, perhaps, Donald Trump himself – must be brought in line and/or condemned.

Mary L. Trump, niece to President Trump who has devoted herself to opposing her uncle and his policies, called this dynamic in an essay on her Substack site, “racism without shame.” She noted the recent withdrawal of “Paul Ingrassia, a deeply unqualified 30-year-old whom Donald nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel, [who] was found to have sent racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic texts in private Republican group chats.”

Mary Trump added: “In the messages, Ingrassia called Martin Luther King Jr. the 1960s George Floyd, and said his holiday should be tossed into the seventh circle of hell. In addition to mocking Black holidays, he used numerous racial slurs.”

Noting that only a few Republican Senators withdrew support of Ingrassia once the texts became public, she goes on to predict Trump will find another way to elevate him in the future.

That may be true. But there is a sense that right now, as the Project 2025 crowd works to assert its control over American society, there are still some Trumpkins who might fail by saying the quieter parts a bit too loud.

Which suggests an opening to educate people about what they’re really supporting.

In my journalism ethics class, we have talked about a concept I first saw advanced by journalism educator Jay Rosen, called “verification in reverse.” As Rosen has noted: “Verification is taking something that might be true, and trying to nail it down with facts. In reverse verification you take something that’s been nailed down and try to introduce doubt about it.”

Trump used this tactic by insisting Barack Obama was not born in America – claiming to have loads of investigators working on it – only to later admit it wasn’t true. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. employed the tactic by insisting use of Tylenol by pregnant women can cause autism in their babies, though a great many experts said that was not the case.

And many in MAGA-land have employed this tactic by insisting that diversity, equity and inclusion programs -- which have helped broaden opportunities for people everywhere from the entertainment industry to college admissions, health care and federal employment – are somehow unfair, destructive and to blame for any number of problems in society.

For a good counter argument rooted in facts, check this essay from The Rational League formatted as a letter to white MAGA supporters outlining why systemic discrimination against white people in America is not and never has been a thing.

When I wrote my book Race-Baiter: how the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation, I had placed hope in a concept which sociologists were already beginning to doubt: The idea that, if you pushed people to consider their subtly implicit prejudices by exposing them more explicitly, then people would see and reject the racism itself.

Instead, what’s happened is that MAGA World and conservative-supporting outlets like Fox News Channel have created an environment where only the most overtly racist rhetoric is actually considered racist. Everything else is explained away or diminished, in the name of winning ideological debates at all costs.

What’s resulted, is a reality where the veneer separating explicit and implicit racism has only gotten thinner. This allows some people to fool themselves into thinking they are not supporting white supremacy, even as others cross a line into overt racism that polite society still won’t accept.