When Nate Silver does an analysis comparing the delta between 2012 and 2016 results, it’s quantified by the magnitude of the change, isolated in areas of high or low education/income. He doesn’t have to say, “very significant”, he says, in X number of counties, grouped by income and education levels as measured by Y, the difference in turnout and vote results is Z. That’s quantifying. “very significant” is, vague enough to mean anything.
That’s the rub though - If that’s his focus on pretty much everything, unless everything is related to white supremacism, then it would stand to reason that sometimes that focus is misplaced. If there are 100 reasons for something, 2 of which are related to white supremacism, and 98 of which are because of space lizards, I don’t think that’s the time to be focusing on white supremacism. Coates is telling us the space lizards are fine, no big deal, not the real reason, and that the white supremacists are the root of it all. I’m thinking, yes, you are right the white supremacists have a role to play, but dude, space lizards! (I’m not saying that white supremacism is 2 and everything else is 98)
This begs the question. Coates’s claim is that white supremacism swayed the election and that’s the basis for focusing on it. This is the main point of dispute. I don’t think a single person in this thread has denied that racism and Trump’s seemingly indifferent attitude towards it at best is a problem, or that if a white racist was voting in 2012, they were voting for Trump. But Coate’s claim is much greater than that.
I don’t criticize Coates for lack of solution offering. If he sees a problem, offering a solution is not a necessary condition to identifying a problem. He hasn’t yet supported his idea that white supremacism is the reason Trump got elected, exaulted above all other reasons.
Do you think that white supremacism is something that we’d be better off not letting have any effect on our elections and our society? If 100 different things effect elections, and white supremacism is one of them, is it a waste of time to try to eliminate the effect of that one even if there are still many other things affecting the situation?
It sounds like you are saying its not worth addressing white supremacism unless it can be proven without a doubt statistically that it was the primary thing affecting the last election.
Also, how do you suggest we quantify the effect statistically (as in your Nate Silver example) when white supremacist views are something that virtually nobody will admit to on any poll? Sounds like an impossible task that essentially means we should never address it at all.
And why you think that hyperbole is the way to get people to focus on a problem is beyond me. It’s a good way, maybe, to make you (the generic you) feel better about dealing with your anger, but it just makes most people tune you out.
We do have a serious problem with racism in this country, but claiming that white supremacism put Trump in the white house isn’t helping the conversation, IMO. YMMV, as it obviously does.
The most Nate Silver does in terms of trying to quantify racism is, IIRC, looking at Google search data for racist jokes and slurs. And I’ll look for a cite, but IIRC, the best correlation, by far, for whether some geographic region was a Trump voter, was how often they do Google searches for racist jokes and slurs. [EDIT: here’s the cite: x.com] Or something like that. I’ll look for a cite when I’m able.
But even that’s very far from exact. I don’t think what you’re asking for is achievable when we’re talking about such nebulous concepts as the influence of white supremacism. Can you suggest how this could be measured?
With such a close election, many things probably could be said to have swayed the election (which Coates doesn’t dispute – I’m pretty sure Chris Hayes asked him this and he agreed). Comey’s last minute shenanigans probably swayed the election. So did Clinton’s “deplorables” comment. So did a million other things.
Coates’ point, I think, and mine, is that most of those other things are pretty mundane and normal events in politics (minor-league scandals, economic changes and trends, candidate gaffes, political tactics and money spent, media responses, debate performance, etc.). These are mostly either entirely mundane little human things (i.e. hot mic gaffes) or just how complicated systems work (i.e. economic trends). White supremacism is different. That’s a manufactured system that’s resulted in an incredible amount of suffering in the country, and absolutely nothing good. That’s a thing that we should focus on because it’s so terribly damaging – not just for this election, but for all of America, past, present, and future. This election is just another example of the havoc it can wreak – without it, Trump couldn’t have been elected. Without it, Trump’s birtherism never would have gotten any more traction with the public at large than lizard-people conspiracy theories, and the Republican party would have never been politically motivated to tolerate such views. There’s a lot of other things that we can say “without this, Trump wouldn’t have been elected”. But only white supremacism (or maybe misogyny too) and related concepts are also so terribly damaging to the country and to Americans, and have wrought such incredible suffering in our past and present.
Thus he focuses on that single aspect that has, by far, the most potential for more terrible suffering for Americans.
I’m honestly asking, what hyperbole? Is this just about the term “white supremacism”?
FYI, when I’m discussing this with people in real life, I usually use different language. I make a real effort to try and modulate my tone to be most effective in persuading people. But on the Dope, it’s different – I put that aside and speak as honestly and clearly as I can.
Here’s an article with some of the data I alluded to earlier:
That bolded part (my bolding) is most critical, IMO. Older and less educated people tend to be the most racist, but even when just looking at older and less educated parts of the country, Trump’s support was highest in those areas with the most racist google searches.
I think folks like John Mace take white supremacy to be the kind of top of a pyramid of prejudice, like this:
White Supremacy
Full-on bigot
Casual racism
Implicit bias
Structural racism
In that view, white supremacy refers to people who consciously hold the idea that white people are superior to black people. Or even, that view plus a belief that therefore black people should be treated differently.
That’s a perfectly fine definition, but it is not how the term is used in the kind of historical discourse that Coates is offering in his essay. In this context, white supremacy refers to the ideology, created in the 18th and 19th centuries, that maintains an social order in which white people are privileged. It is distinguished from racism, which refers more generally to bigotry on the basis of race. In that discourse, even things like unconscious stereotypes are considered white supremacy, especially when they match or arise from stereotypes created to maintain social or economic power for the white classes.
I think that probably explains some of the disconnect in this discussion. Or maybe not…!
I don’t want to cut up this whole post into little quote snippets, so I’ll respond all at once. Yes, I think that white supremacism is something we as a society and every single individual would be better off not letting have any effect on our elections and our society. If 100 different things effect elections and white supremacism is one of them, it is absolutely not a waste of time to try and eliminate the effect regardless of the existence of other things.
It is worth trying to address white supremacism even if it can not be proven without a doubt that it was the primary thing affecting the last election. I think it’s valuable to be cognizant of the historical and current impacts and to try to eliminate them, and if that’s not possible, mitigate them.
I do not know how to quantify the effect. I’m not convinced there is no way to quantify it, but I’m not sure it’s necessary to do so. The point I was making is that the term very significant is too vague. The level of specificity need not be down to the tenth of a percent, but something in between. Greater than 50%, greater than 25%, less than 5%, something that gives a sense of proportion that Coates does not. My intent is not to setup a gotcha where a measure is introduced then we bicker of the nature of the measurement, but to put some parameter about the scope of the problem. If we all agree that it’s like, less than 1%, well, nothing above would be different in that I would still believe it’s an important issue, but clearly there would be things more important. If it’s like, greater than 50%, then holy shit we have a serious problem.
Ok thanks, I get what you’re saying. I’d say considering that elections can be very close that my bar would be way lower than 50% for calling it a serious problem, but opinions can certainly vary on that.
The article is quite long. I didn’t take this as his central thesis. Coates in this statement does talk about the possibility that Trump’s success was based on racism, but in other parts of the article Coates says conclusively that this is the reason for his success. His first sentence:
I thought this section was more how I interpreted the central thesis:
I can’t boil it down succinctly, but basically Trump is a white supremacist and that is the main reason he won, because if not for that and the support of other white supremacists, he would have lost. Something like that.
Yes, I agree with the triangle metaphor. This difference in understanding is discussed in the wiki article on white supremacism as well.
Trump is a white supremacist and that fact is a bigger part of why he won than the working-class status of his white supporters, which is the dominant competing narrative.
But if we are to try to interpret Coates correctly, surely we should use the definition he is using, right?
Like, it’s one thing to criticize him for using a word that will be misinterpreted by some people. Fair enough. But it’s another thing to criticize him for failing to prove a thesis he is not offering, based on a misinterpretation of his language.
I think this has merit as well. There’s a spectrum here though. On the one hand it’s important to understand a speaker for what they are trying to say. On the other end, if the speaker is using words in non-standard ways such that the intended audience doesn’t hear or disagrees with the message, then that’s not cool either. I think words have meaning and can be powerful. If what Coates is trying to do is change the common meaning of white supremacist that’s one thing, but if he’s trying to do that while simultaneously leveraging off the rhetorical power of the term that’s another.
I don’t think he gets to redefine what the phrase means, no one gets to do that on their own. Sure, if enough people subscribe to his usage then that would be the meaning. I’m also trying to say, that’s not good and we shouldn’t acquiesce to that. The triangle metaphor (with additional layers) is a better construction, IMO.
I think his usage is the dominant one in the relevant discourse. It may well be in tension with one of the popular definitions, but he didn’t publish in USA Today. He published in The Atlantic. A reasonable reader is on alert to use academic and literary terms appropriately.
As for which is better, meh. They both have their merits. But this goes to much deeper disagreements over the role of race in America generally and race in contemporary America in particular. In my view, understanding America today without understanding and reference to white supremacy (as distinct from racism in general) is like trying to understand Iraq today without understanding Sunni and Shia (as distinct from sectarian differences in general). It is therefore very helpful to have a term that encompasses not only racial hatred and racial stereotypes but also power structures and the actual story of how America got from A to B.
There is no equivalent term in popular lingo. You’d have to use ten words instead of one.
I’ll admit to conflating the terms a few times without realizing it – I’ll try to do better in utilizing “white supremacism” to represent the bias/oppression/discrimination that is systemic and institutional, and “racism” to represent individual instances of racial hatred and mistreatment based on race, in this discussion.
Can we put aside all this definitional wrangling, and address the idea that Trump is somehow uniquely the result of “the system” in a way that, say, GW Bush was not? Let’s just say the “the system” is the power structure as it exists in modern America in all it’s ignominious history, regardless of what we call it. Why is Bush not put in the same box that Coates is putting Trump in?
Sure, Trump is from an entirely different mould, but surely we are not to believe that Black GW Bush would have become a 2-term president in the 21st century. Surely we agree that Black Bush doesn’t have a chance in hell of becoming president in the first place. GW Bush gets all sorts of passes and head-starts because he’s not only a white guy, but from a long line of white men in the power structure of the US for, literally, generations.
But also, Trump isn’t just any old white guy. Before jumping into politics, he was one of the most famous and celebrated people in the country. Virtually everyone knew who he was. He’s a cruder, more vindictive, more unprincipled version of Arnold Schwartzenneger, who became the governor of CA primarily because he was so famous to begin with. Arnold was The Terminator, and Trump was The Dealmaker. People were sick of politics as usual and wanted to put someone in power who knew the ways of the world and didn’t care about politics as usual, and whom they already knew (or thought they knew). Trump is, among other things, the anti-politician. Yeah, he’s white, but so are most Americans. I’m just not seeing him as uniquely white or WHITE or WHIte or whatever category you want to construct. And I don’t think it’s any accident that Sanders was as successful as he was in the same stewing environment that, unfortunately, gave us Trump.
The history of racism and white supremacism tells us all sorts of things about how America came about, and how we ended up with the society we have today. It tells us about the many problems around race that we are still struggling with. But it doesn’t really tell us much about how Trump got elected, as opposed to some other white guy getting elected, just like we saw just a few years ago.
I think folks understand it just fine, but they (consciously or unconsciously) reject it for reasons that have less to do with facts and more to do with discomfort. It’s easier to fight the semantic fight than admit that one’s resistance comes from the icky emotional reactions it provokes.
Ta-Nehisi Coates articulated my own observations and feelings on Trump’s victory to an almost uncanny degree. Like him, it has not escaped me how his win has been repeatedly spun as a product of rural, disaffected poor working whites who’ve been ignored and reviled for entirely too long by Washington politicians blah blah blah…despite there being little factual–let alone logical–basis for this theory. After seeing this idea evoked for the umpteenth time in discussions about the election, it certainly makes one wonder: what exactly makes this narrative so seductive that it keeps continuing, even after data clearly shows that Trump captured the majority (58%) of white voters in this country. 58%! That’s a lot more people than just some high school drop out coal miners and factory workers, but you’d never know that based on the discourse.
Since its not controversial to me at all that this country is under the influence of white supremacist thinking–given our history plus my own lived experience–I struggle to see the controversy in attributing such thinking to Trump’s rise. I have yet to see a more convincing explanation for why so many are willing to excuse, rationalize, and ignore everything about the man that objectively marks him as unfit to serve.
People keep bringing up Obama as if to argue if he was successful in 2008, then why are we so sure that white supremacy was at play with Trump. And to that I say, Obama had to run a damn near perfect campaign–and he himself had to also be perfect–to get elected. And even then, it still wasn’t a slam dunk and this, despite McCain pulling the most bone-headed of moves by selecting Palin as his running mate.
So the fuck what, John? I happen to think Trump is a white supremacist, too. If Trump was caught on tape chumming it up with David Duke and saying the porch apes all need to go back to Africa or whatever, ain’t nobody on this board would be surprised by that. Some might excuse it as some racial form of “locker room talk” but no one would with any sense would think its beyond his character to harbor such views. Because we’ve all seen enough of him to know who is and how he thinks. So I can only laugh at all the pearl clutching “oh noes, Trump a white supremacist? That gives me the vapors, I do declare!” going on. One need not be a card carrying Storm Fronter to believe whites are the supreme race, okay?
For one, Trump is objectively bad in a way that Bush (and all other presidents) was not. Secondly, Trump made his splash into politics by positioning himself as Obama’s arch enemy, and he did this by exploiting Obama’s race. From the outset, he was throwing red meat to a segment of the population just waiting for someone “great” to knock that uppity negro down a peg or two. And why? Why would a millionaire businessman choose to spend effort and time demanding Obama release his college transcripts and passport records and birth certificate? Why did he pick this kind of stunt to gain publicity? The answer is he knew people would reward him for these attacks, not because of political ideology but because racial ideology.
You are 100% correct in saying Bush would have been unelectable as a black man. But that’s not really getting at the crux of the issue. Trump (as a white man) would have been unelectable too…had Obama not made so many voters nostalgic for the days when the White House was actually white and male.
If Trump was only half as unqualified and terrible, perhaps it would be harder to argue that Whiteness put him in office. But on just about every metric we have for assessing good leaders, he fails. GW Bush comes no where close to him on the badness scale, so it really isn’t a fair comparison.
In a race between Hillary and George, I have no doubt she would’ve won.
Let me correct this, because it’s overstatement. Hillary very well could’ve lost to GW Bush because of the same factors that helped Trump, plus run-of-the-mill partisanship. Assuming Bush acted like Bush (and not a rotten mango), establishment Republicans would’ve rallied behind him. That would’ve certainly helped get him voters. Hillary could’ve won against him, but only if she ran a more anti-GOP campaign that borrowed from Obama’s grassroots style.