Page 20 - Time Magazine, Sep. 17, 2018

Essay

I denounce—that provides many Americans with
a familiar experience: the moral comfort of hav-
ing someone else to blame for our nation’s racial
struggles. If only we, the non-racists, could kick
her out, or lock her up.
It is relatively easy to blame our current strug-
gles on these loud racists who have been embold-
In a recent viral video, ened by the election of Donald Trump. But this is
an unidentified white woman in typical American racial melodrama. We need eas-
ily marked villains and happy endings. Yet this
line at a grocery store in Oregon, recital of condemnation all too often hides the
dressed in a floral romper and messiness of our own moral lives: that we aren’t
absolved of our complicity simply by the politi-
black knee-high boots, overheard a cians we support, especially since the American

black woman’s phone conversation. public so rarely pushes for policies that enact our
supposed commitment to racial equality.
She believed this black woman was The fact is that Americans have grown com-
trying to sell food stamps illegally. fortable with racism resting just beneath the
surface of our politics—to be activated when-
The exchange became heated, ever a politician or a community needed it, or
some racist incident exhumed it only for us to
and the white woman was told, bury it once again. What has resulted is an il-
in no uncertain terms, to mind her lusion that blinds us to what was actually hap-
pening right in front of our noses and in our
business. “Oh, it is my business,” heads—we believed that our country had be-
the white woman responded. come less racist, because we were not as brazen
as we once were.
“Because I pay my taxes.” Trump has shattered that illusion. He rode

She then said something that, race, the third rail of American politics, straight
to the White House. He challenged Obama’s
quite frankly, stunned me: citizenship, called Mexicans rapists and crimi-
nals, proposed to ban all Muslims from entering
“We’re going to build this wall.” the country, insisted on the need for “law and
order,” argued that immigration was changing
the “character” of the United States and openly
This was not an oddly timed statement about her views on immi- courted white supremacists. He dog-whistled
gration; it was a declaration of her whiteness and, by extension, her in a way that let no one feign deafness. Trump
view of who belonged in this country. She might as well have called promised to dismantle Obamacare and provide
the black woman a nigger. She didn’t. She called the police instead. a “beautiful” alternative, to make Mexico pay for
But no, this wasn’t a video of police violence or another exam- “the wall” and to restore America’s manufactur-
ple of some white person hurling racial epithets. In so many ways, ing greatness—jobs and tax relief included. His
the argument between these two women captured the soft bigotry pledges spoke directly to the forgotten Ameri-
that has, from beneath the surface, enabled American public policy can’s sense of victimhood: that he had been left
and individual behavior for decades. This woman, years after the behind during the Obama years and that his way
departure of what Newt Gingrich called in 2011 “the most success- of life was under threat.
ful food-stamp President in American history,” saw a member of Trump exists in a sweet spot between the soft
Mitt Romney’s “47% ... who are dependent upon government ... bigotry of self-contradictory American liberals
who pay no income tax.” This white woman witnessed Ronald Rea- and the loud racism of those who shout “nigger”
gan’s welfare queen. Now she had not just a new phrase—build this and demand that Latino people go back to Mex-
wall—but also the confidence that the President would support her ico, all stuck in an economic system that cannot
in her indignation, and that the problem would soon be resolved. reconcile the startling gap between the top 1%
America would be great again. and those busting their behinds to make ends
It is this type of outburst, though—blaring and easy to meet. Trump sits right there, amid the mess and
false promises, with a smirk on his face.
But Trump isn’t some nefarious character
Glaude, the William S. Tod professor of religion and African-Amer- unlike anything we have seen before. He em-
ican studies at Princeton University, is the author of Democracy in bodies the hatreds and fears that have been part
Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul of America’s politics since its founding and that
4222
4 4 TIME September 17, 2018TITIMEME Se Septeptembember 1r 17, 7, 20120188