Recently, I recommended a response to Trump’s reelection strategy to the Democratic Party, but now I’d like to cover it in a bit more depth.
The first part of that strategy is to break his attempt to incite racism for power. To do that, we need to make racism toxic for the public. We need to force racists to acknowledge that they don’t hold core American values, like equality and justice.
Democrats need to define racism as un-American. Adopt the following statement to use in all situations where you hear racist comments:
Racism is not an American value.
As noted in The Defeat of Trump:
I’m not saying there are no racists in America, because obviously that isn’t true. What I am doing is driving a stake in the ground and claiming that you cannot be an American and a racist. I am creating a fact.
To the degree we all agree it is a fact that racism* is not an American value, we make it more difficult for racism to exist in the United States. That’s both the right thing to do and an important step in defeating Trump.
It’s confrontational to say that racism is not an American value. It’s controversial. But success creates a real problem for racists. If the public believes racism is un-American, it marginalizes racists. This is exactly what I want to do. I want to take their power away. I want it to be hard for them to make and keep friends. I want to make it hard for them to come out in public. I want people to look down on them because of their racism.
Also, this is a fight we can win. The vast majority of Americans consider racism morally wrong. Even if they feel racist themselves, they know it’s wrong. Making it explicitly outside the mainstream reminds these people it is wrong and can serve to constrain their behavior.
The American people have been confronted at the national level about racism multiple times in the past 200 years. We fought a bloody and costly war over the issue in the 1860s. America won and the racists lost.
A hundred years later we had a national civil rights movement. This culminated in federal law that prohibits various kinds of discrimination on the basis of race. These laws were passed by Congress and signed by the President, representing the will of the American people. The American people codified our opposition to racism in law. Again, America won and the racists lost.
Parenthetically, we also fought an all-out war with the Nazis, actual white supremacists. America won and the racists lost.
People can claim America was founded as a racist country and it’s operated as a racist country. No doubt. But it is not a racist country now. We changed. We learned. We became better people.
This is 2019 and racism is not an American value.
Here is the important thing: We must drive this home. We must take this flag and move it forward in politics. This isn’t a nice-to-have. It isn’t just something we need to do out of fairness to blacks and others who have been systematically oppressed, and are systematically oppressed now, compelling though that is. This is a vital part of winning the next election cycle. It’s a vital part of winning the future. Every person in the country has their skin in the game, so to speak, this time around.
Make the point. Say it. Racism is not an American value. Equality for all is an American value. Equal justice under the law is an American value. That’s what I stand for. I believe that’s what the Democratic Party stands for. I believe that’s what America stands for. I’m asking you to stand for that as well.
[End quote]
Today (Monday 22 July 2019), Tim Wise, who helped wage a successful campaign against David Duke (footnote: racist) appearing on Hardball with Chris Matthews reminded us we need to make this a moral campaign. He made the point that when Trump says people like AOC hate America, we have to say, “No, it’s you and your followers who hate America.” In other words, we need to meet this challenge head on.
To do that, we need to define racism as outside accepted behavior in the U.S.
As a recap, the Trump strategy is:
- Energize racists.
- Make criticism of his actions toxic.
- Attack socialism.
Our response needs to be the defeat of Trump on all those lines of attack. I will label these efforts:
- Racism is not an American value.
- Criticism of our government is an American value.
- Socialism is fairness.
You can read the complete piece here on Daily Kos.
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* By “racism” I mean the conscious and deliberate attempt to define someone by a racial category and use that as a means to do something materially detrimental to them. There can be unconscious tendencies or the classification by racial standard that is intended to help people, rather than harm them. Those are not in scope. I’m attacking overt, conscious, and malicious racism.