RUDE: Why I won’t use the word Racist anymore

I was elated when the election results were (finally) in. Donald Trump is gone, from the presidency at least. These last four years have been draining and toxic, for everyone from both sides of the aisle. I was also invigorated, my side had “won” and now we could accomplish so many things. But the thing I most want to accomplish seems out of my reach. I want to reconnect with the people from the other side. People with whom I no longer talk about “those kinds of things”. And that’s a more difficult path than fighting against someone we have labeled evil.

I think it’s human nature to view things in an “I win you lose” mentality. I think that’s one of the things that makes it easy to hate the people who you disagree with. I care about making sure everyone gets a fair shot at life and you just want to oppress people. I care about improving my neighborhood and you just don’t care about anyone’s safety. That’s not true of course. I haven’t met any American (or non-American) who doesn’t care about liberty, prosperity and justice, even when we have different ideas about how to achieve those goals. Deciding that everyone is either with you or against you makes your enemies list grow and your friends shrink.

Racist was a necessary word these last four years. Trump was exceedingly good at getting under people’s skin. He did this by saying things that were so outrageously racist that it drove liberals nuts. How could any republican not see how racist and divisive his rhetoric was? Of course they did. Most republicans you speak to will describe Trump as rude, crass and insulting. They either took the bad with the good. Racism is it’s not objective it’s subjective. It’s about context. It’s how other people view you. When my best friend of another race says something racist to me I know he’s not being racist. That’s the joke. He wouldn’t say it in a job interview or with someone he just met. In that context it would be incredibly racist. But just between us it’s funny. It’s an inside joke between us and the rest of the world. It brings us closer because we know that we aren’t like that.

That’s the joke that conservatives thought they were listening to the last four years. People tend to pretend that elected officials are their friends even though they aren’t. Trump’s not your friend even though he talks to you like a friend at his rallies. You know that, but it feels good because you are all united against your enemies. But to all the rest of us it was a nightmare. If you say racist things to get a rise out of your opponents that is a racist attack. It’s subjective but the ones deciding whether or not it is racist are the ones listening. By laughing along you choose to be viewed as a racist. And Trump had a lot of followers so it felt like there were racist attacks from all sides. It was necessary to clearly communicate this while Trump was in power. If your political leader says things that attack people in a racist manner while enacting policy that hurts them it’s racist.

But of course not all the policies enacted the last four years hurt all black people. No president can be completely evil and do no good. I think that’s why some black and Latino people came over to Trump’s side at the end of the four years. They were tired of us telling them they needed to be offended over this joke.

In How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi says that racism shouldn’t be a pejorative but a descriptive term. But it is pejorative, it’s both. When people hear it they think you are calling them rude. They think you are calling them evil. Even if you try to point out that it’s systemic racism and that they need to be aware of it before you fix it. They don’t understand that they are discouraging people of color’s (and white people’s) prosperity. They don’t understand that their views might be obstructing much needed justice. They don’t understand that liberty for all means acknowledging what some people need to be liberated from. They just hear that they are stupid and evil.

In the book White Fragility by Robin Diangelo she talks about how white people have a visceral response to this. Black people have this visceral response too. Everyone does. Black Trump supporters being told by white liberals that they support racism found it incredibly insulting. And they should be, there’s nothing more paternalistic and insulting than some white person (or black person) telling you how you should think. It is not helpful or convincing to tell a black business owner that everything is “either racist or anti-racist”; therefore they are racist if they support something you have deemed racist? No. People aren’t stupid just because they disagree with you. There are better ways to relate your beliefs. For instance I think tax giveaways to rich corporations hurt communities of color worse than others. This makes them clearly racist in my opinion because they destroy those communities prosperity and liberty. But you can disagree with me and vote for those racist tax giveaways without me labeling you an evil rude racist. I can get my view across without saying something that’s just going to make you stop listening to me. I need you to listen to my words and not think I am just calling you rude.

I’m not sure what term I am going to use. “Not anti-racist” is pretty clunky. Liberty, prosperity and justice are things that both republicans and democrats value, all Americans do, so I will probably be using those terms more to make people understand my views. And I might have to admit that some of Trump’s actions like commuting the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson did advance liberty. But that’s fine, Trump cannot be our boogeyman anymore. We have to fight for things now instead of against things. Fighting for liberty and the friends I lost to divisive rhetoric is the first step for me.