Why Do Racists Hate Being Called Racist?
Racists simply can’t stand being called a racist, even though — that’s exactly what they are!
It’s the darndest thing, but there’s nothing racists hate more than being called racist. Try calling a racist a racist and you immediately get an enraged, hair-trigger, red faced, spittle-flying reaction.
“I’m not a racist! You’re a racist! You’re a racist for calling me a racist. Why do you people always make everything about race?”
This does not seem normal.
Conservatives don’t mind being called conservative. Progressives don’t mind being called progressive. Socialists don’t mind being called Socialists, though it’s true Democratic Socialists will get very miffed if you call them a Social Democrat, and vice versa, but that’s not really the same thing.
But to a racist, there is no worse insult than being called a racist. (Maybe, “Your mother is a racist,” would be worse.) Racists simply can’t stand being called a racist, even though — that’s exactly what they are!
Was it always like this? When 20,000 KKK members wearing white hoods marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1926, did they mind if people called them racists? It seems doubtful. Yet, somewhere along the way, racists got very sensitive. Today, even the Proud Boys claim they’re not racists. They’re “pro-European,” or something like that, which is why they marched through the streets of Charlottesville with tikki torches, assaulting Black people while defending a statue of Robert E. Lee. Just don’t call them the R word.
You’d almost think racists are ashamed, even though we know sociopaths can’t feel shame. But if it’s not shame, what is it? Let’s call it consciousness of guilt. The racists of today understand that thanks to the victories and sacrifices of the civil rights movement, blatant, open, segregationist racism is no longer acceptable to most Americans. You might say it’s no longer politically correct.
Since racism is no longer allowed to parade openly, like those Klan members did in 1926, it must be expressed in clumsily disguised, thinly veiled, euphemistic, code words. These are sometimes called dog whistles, but that is inaccurate. The whole point of a dog whistle is that it can only be heard by the intended audience — dogs. Racist dog whistles can clearly be heard by anyone, it’s just that identifying them that way runs the risk of offending — the racists.
Racists find this state of affairs aggravating in the extreme. Imagine, not being able to freely express your racism! It’s an attack on free speech! It’s “Political Correctness.” Never mind that there has always been political correctness. Every society has a list of words and ideas that are or are not allowed in the mainstream. That might even be one definition of a society. The problem for the racists is that since the victories of the civil rights movement, their very name has fallen outside the boundaries of what is acceptable.
Racists By Any Other Name
Not being able to use their own name has made things very difficult for racists. It’s no wonder they feel victimized. Of course, they may also feel victimized because for decades conservative dog whistlers have trained them to feel that way.
Since January 6th, pundits of all platforms have been working themselves into a lather trying to explain why the racist mob has such a well-developed sense of victimization and paranoia, but the answer is simple — that’s what the pundits told them to feel.
Year after year, the white people of America have been told they are the victims of a series of imaginary repressive movements: “political correctness,” or, “cancel culture,” or “wokeness.” They’ve been unfairly maligned by the liberal latte-swilling coastal elites, the leftist, “thought police,” or “feminazis.”
This narrative was invented by conservative think tanks and other professional liars, but editors and tv producers of all stripes love it, it has such a delicious twist to it: the oppressed have now become the oppressors! The forces for democracy have now become the enemies of democracy! What a great story!
Go back a little further and you will find these imaginary oppressive trends are all descendants of another conservative fiction, something called, “reverse discrimination.” This was invented in the 1970’s as conservatives were beginning their concerted attack on equality and civil rights, which included a backlash to the women’s movement (Phyllis Schlafly) and the movement for LGBTQ rights (Anita Bryant).
The lie of “reverse discrimination,” was that the civil rights movement may once have had a few just grievances but it had gone too far. The real victims of oppression were now — white men!
Sound familiar?
In this way, grievance-filled white people were primed to fall in love with the orange-faced tax cheat because, as they will tell any reporter who asks, “He tells it like it is.” By which they mean he says the racist things they have felt constrained from saying by oppressive “political correctness.”
Just don’t call it racism.
Conservatives cultivated and harnessed white grievance as a force to advance their highly unpopular economic agenda. But we weren’t allowed to name that correctly, either. It wasn’t a concerted fifty-year campaign against democratic rights, it was a “culture war.” Doesn’t that sound better? The GOP, we were told, was a coalition of economic conservatives and social conservatives, when in fact it was an alliance of the wealthy and the bigoted. For decades the wealthy thought they could keep the bigots in check, but with the triumph of the imbecile lying king the bigots took charge.
It’s Not the Economy, Stupid
But what about all those, “working class voters?” Aren’t they motivated by economic insecurity? Haven’t they been left behind by the economy as jobs have been shipped overseas? Haven’t they been betrayed by the Democrats and so have turned to the GOP for relief?
Funny thing, there are tens of millions of working class people in this country who are black or brown or Native American or women or immigrants or LGBTQ, some of whom have been left behind by the economy for generations, yet they all vote in large majorities, sometimes overwhelming majorities, for Democrats. But sadly, they don’t count. They’re not real voters, they’re not even real Americans.The only people who seem to count are the legendary white, blue collar, Joe six pack men who spend their days in diners in Ohio waiting to be interviewed by the NY Times.
Even as the Dear Leader’s fanboy was winning the primaries, even after he managed to sneak into the White House, the talking head professional opinionator class insisted his rise was fueled by, “economic populism.” None of the opinionators seemed to notice that the economic populists were all white.
If the issue motivating voters was the economy, then the electorate would divide along class lines, but it does not. It divides along lines of race and gender. Those in the mob are not poorer or more working class than the population as a whole. But they are a lot more white.
And the next time your know-it-all friend smugly says something like, “Those Trump voters, they’re voting against their own interests,” you can even more smugly point out that your friend is a condescending elitist.
“You condescending elitist,” you can say, “don’t you realize that even though some of them might be voting against their economic interests, they have other interests? Despite the efforts of economists on both the right and the left to reduce people to simple economic units, robotic, unfeeling algorithms, human beings are in fact complex creatures, not solely or even primarily motivated by economic concerns.”
Or something like that.
When the sexual assaulter in chief came down the escalator, talking about Mexican rapists, he was promising the racists that he would address their most pressing interest — having a full-throated, public expression of their sense of victimization and well, racism. And that is one promise he delivered on, but good.
This is why you can’t argue your racist uncle out of his support for the idiot insurrectionist. It’s not a matter of rationality, or economics, but of belief. He’s been trained in his racism for years and no amount of logic is going to convince him otherwise. You’re not even allowed to call him a racist.
The events of January 6th seem to have taken some of the steam out the lie of “economic populism.” The words “white nationalism” and even “racism” have found their way onto the pages of newspapers and into the mouths of at least some in the media. But the lies of “cancel culture” and “wokeness” live on.
It’s Not Free Speech, Either
Criticize a racist’s racism and you get accused of “cancel culture.” Your exercise of free speech (calling them racist) is considered a violation of their free speech (being racist).
Remember, these are the same people who in 2004 followed the instructions of right-wing radio and organized rallies to destroy Dixie Chicks CDs after their lead singer had the temerity to say she was ashamed of President Bush. These are the same morons who burnt their sneakers and posted the videos to protest Colin Kaepernick’s deal with Nike.
(The Dixie Chicks recently realized they did not want to be associated with the land of cotton where old times are not forgotten and changed their name to The Chicks. So, they’re halfway there.)
Now, these self-described advocates for free speech are trying to prevent a discussion of systemic racism in schools, with manufactured hysteria about Critical Race Theory, not to mention their open attack on the basic democratic right of voting.
Of course, the racists are perfectly free to tattoo swastikas on the cheeks and walk around chanting, “Jews Shall Not Replace Us!” Just as we are free to use shame and public opinion to drive them back under the rocks from whence they crawled. Calling our free speech, “cancel culture,” is just an attempt to get us to back down and let bigotry and racism flourish. It’s a sleight of hand: “Don’t look at the racism, look at this shiny, imaginary attack on free speech.”
And about that, “cancel culture.” Is it true that young people are sometimes very angry, or extremely self-righteous, or impatient with old people who steadfastly refuse to admit that the way they’ve been doing things their whole lives is obviously wrong? Yes, they are. That’s sort of their job. The movement for equality has still got a long way to go before it has “gone too far.” Don’t worry, I’ll let you know when it has.
Racism kills, bigotry kills, victimization and paranoia kill. No one knows how many hundreds of thousands of Americans are unnecessarily dead from Covid because of the feelings of white grievance and victimization carefully nourished and inflamed over decades by conservative media.
Meanwhile, we will go on calling racists racists no matter how much it hurts their feelings. Not because we’re going to change their minds or talk them out of it but because we must make it unacceptable, that is, politically incorrect, to speak those vile opinions in public. The more they cry about it, the more we know we’re on the right track, the more we know we have to keep calling them racists because … that’s exactly what they are.
