Since the election, white people have been struggling with the question, “Why did more black people vote for Trump this time, according to exit polls?” This is equivalent to asking: why are there coons, Uncle Toms, race traitors, etc?
When white people internalize racism, it tells them that they’re superior, so they struggle to understand what internalization is like for others. Since slavery times, it’s been important for white people to see the slaves looking happy. They reward their black friends for making them feel not-racist, or feel like the good niggers agree with them. There’s a secret pleasure for them in seeing the self-degradation of it.
In the case of Biden vs. Trump, notice that the Republican talking points for black people were, essentially, true statements about Biden’s record, and true statements that he took black support for granted. You could therefore “rebel against the Democratic plantation” and vote Republican, if you don’t have the imagination to stay home or vote third party. Spite motivates people.
See? It’s not hard to understand at all. Two groups of people want to obfuscate it: white people, who want to disavow their role in creating the spectacle, and race traitors, who need to preserve their self-image. John McWhorter is such a person.
I’ve written about him before, when he used his token blackness to crap on White Fragility in The Atlantic, this summer when it was making white people uncomfortable. He makes white liberals feel better, and he’s rewarded for it with high-profile column space.
Today, he purports to shed light on nonwhite Trump voters. Not that he is one, but he understands…
However, I don’t find it baffling in the least that Black and Latino people might deem President Donald Trump worthy of their vote, despite the fact that I was most certainly not one of them. The non-white segment of Trump’s support demonstrates a gulf between how the “woke” left processes racism and how many people in the real world do. The former assumes that racism is a wedge issue, and the most cardinal of human sins; the latter are far less doctrinaire.
Yes, to the left, racism is morally unacceptable. This creates conflict with white liberals, who personally know some racists who were kind to them, which is more important than the impact racism has on Others. Therefore, it’s important to maintain “civility” and “work together” and generally let Republicans get their way. This is currently a major point of contention within the Democratic Party, and the problem of white moderates was named as long ago as MLK. McWhorter’s goal is to marginalize the left, because this is The Atlantic, the most centrist of publications. He’s checking the buttons: use “woke” pejoratively (“woke” is the new “nigger”), call us out of touch, etc.
I think it’s extremely interesting that very next paragraph is about watching movies:
I, for example, am a great fan of old movies. I am quite aware that the world they were situated in was an implacably racist one. I may lust after Ginger Rogers and Jeanne Crain and Gene Tierney (as well as Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge!), and have a particular thing for the grand old comedian Marie Dressler. I am also quite aware that these white women would have seen me as less than human or, if nothing quite that stark, would have blanched at the thought of dating me and furthermore felt the same way about their children dating a Black person. Dressler spent some of her career happily singing “coon songs,” the nature of which the reader can likely imagine without illustration.
But I don’t need these performers, in a deep past I never experienced, to have—if they had met me (note how abstract this gets)—seen me as whole. What I value them for is the entertainment they provide me as a spectator. My self-image is unaffected by how they would have felt about me personally. It is driven instead by my real-life experiences, actions, and relationships. For me to turn my nose up at Top Hat or Dinner at Eight because the people in those confections wouldn’t have liked me much would constitute a gesture, and an odd one—me slapping back at people, or an era, that can never know I am doing it. I won’t choose this path if it means I don’t get to enjoy the abstract glory of the “Never Gonna Dance” number between Fred and Ginger in Swing Time. Ginger wouldn’t have swung with me—but I can pretend that I’m Fred for a few minutes and then engage in my real life where I can swing with living people, and that does me fine.
He “lusts after” white women, and identifies with Fred Astaire. I had to look up what he was talking about:
Compare this passage from Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks:
On the basis of Lacan’s concept of the mirror stage it would be certainly worthwhile investigating to what extent the imago that the young white boy constructs of his fellow man undergoes an imaginary aggression with the appearance of the black man. Once we have understood the process described by Lacan, there is no longer any doubt that the true “Other” for the white man is and remains the black man, and vice verse. For the white man, however, “the Other” is perceived as a bodily image, absolutely as the non ego, i.e., the unidentifiable, the unassimilable. For the black man we have demonstrated that the historical and economic realities must be taken into account…
Every time there is delusional conviction there is a reproduction of self. It is above all in the period of anxiety and suspicion described by Dide and Giraud that “the Other” intervenes. So it is not surprising to find the black man in the guise of a satyr or murderer…
Furthermore, for those who are interested in these findings, we recommend reading the French compositions by ten- to fourteen-year-old Antilleans. On the subject “impressions before going on vacation” they reply like genuine little Parisians and time and again the following phrase is repeated: “I like going on vacation as I can run through the fields, breathe in the fresh air, and come home with pink cheeks.” It is obvious we are hardly mistaken when we say that the Antillean cannot recognize the fact of being black…
It might be argued that if the white man elaborates an imago of his fellow man, the same should be the case for the Antillean, since it is based on a visual perception. But we would be forgetting that in the Antilles perception always occurs at the level of the imagination…Let us say it one more time: it is in reference to the essence of the white man that every Antillean is destined to be perceived by his fellows. In the Antilles as well as in France we encounter the same stories. In Paris, they say he is black but very intelligent. In Martinique, they say the same.
McWhorter has described exactly the same identification with whiteness. He says that his self-image is unaffected by movies, but not a paragraph later he talks about imagining himself as a white man. As a Lacanian, of course I reject this distinction between “real life” and artistic influences: both are Imaginary :-).
It’s completely possible to forget you’re black in academic environments, which is where McWhorter comes from.
I guess part of sexual fantasy for me is the idea that the other person likes me, so racism kills the fun a bit. Why should I want, like, Tomi Lahren to feel good? Is there no one else to fantasize about, without that complication?
McWhorter is saying that racism bothers him less than other people, which…yeah.
In the same way, Black people today may hear Trump claim, bizarrely, that he has done more for African Americans than any previous president, read about the segregationist practices of his and his father’s real-estate properties back in the day, and note that Trump is especially given to calling Black public figures “unintelligent”—and yet still decide that his agenda otherwise appeals enough that they will vote for him even if he wouldn’t quite respect them as individuals. A Latino person can know that Trump referred to immigrants from Mexico as “rapists” but still feel that Trump’s jobs record is more important than his racist sentiments. Unfond memories of life under leftist or socialist leaders such as Fidel Castro may, as it were, trump Trump’s racism in their eyes. After all, before the pandemic, the economy really was humming along in a way that materially affected American lives, for the better.
Or, with both Latinos and Black people, they may simply like the man’s charisma. Legions of voters go for charisma rather than what concerns the readers of The New Yorker or Vox, and it has always been thus.
Could McWhorter explain Trump’s “agenda” beyond racism? Trump himself couldn’t. The Republican Party literally didn’t have a platform this year! As we all know, the economy is currently shit. This is just saying, “some black people will believe Trump’s stupid talking points.” I’m not sure that’s a very deep explanation, because it’s not like white people believe Trump’s talking points.
He’s letting the word “charisma” do a lot of work. Is Donald Trump charismatic? Or does he just bully in a way that appeals to a certain kind of person?
Similarly, to the Black people who helped get Joe Biden through the primaries, his position on busing decades ago and his support for anti-crime legislation that turned out badly for Black communities made him not the devil, but imperfect—and yet a more viable choice as a presidential candidate than quite a few others. These voters weighed, they compared, they addressed ambiguity, and they made a pragmatic selection.
The chattering classes may be surprised that for more than a few Black and Latino people, someone being a racist is often classified as tacky and then some, but hardly marks them as moral perverts unworthy of anything so dignifying as a vote.
I think that’s an absurd way to characterize what happened in South Carolina, where the official narrative is that black people judged America too racist to elect anyone else. He’s trying to say the present is different than the past, which is false:
This point of view is perhaps easier to understand if we recall that back when racism was more prevalent and more overt, Black voters did not even have the choice of restricting their vote to the candidate who disavowed racism and yet were quite intellectually coherent in their choices. In 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois espoused voting for none other than the nakedly racist Woodrow Wilson, fully aware that Wilson did not “admire,” as he put it, Black people but seeing his policies as better for Black people than Theodore Roosevelt’s—despite the fact that Roosevelt had performed the gesture of having Booker T. Washington dine at the White House. Even as racial enlightenment dawned among whites after 1960, no Black person hanging John F. Kennedy’s picture in their kitchen—and there were a great many—was under any impression that JFK would have countenanced one of his kids dating a Black person, much less consorted with one himself.
Literally everyone except centrist Democrats understands that this is how Democratic voters felt about Joe Biden, just this month. Not over 100 years ago. The Atlantic’s core readership wants this stuff to be ancient history, but it’s not.
He tries to smear people who object to racism as mentally sick, anti-intellectual:
Progressives may suppose that, now that the country has come so far in recognizing the backwardness of racism, Americans can afford to be more exacting. And racism is indeed a gruesome reality that an enlightened America must get past as much as possible. However, there is a difference between embracing this goal as one among many and treating it as a religiously tinged mic-drop concern. Black or Latino Trump voters may know quite well that racism exists, or that Trump is racist, yet not prioritize it to the degree that the woke consensus assumes any sensible person would. To psychologically healthy individuals, the fact that Trump wouldn’t want to be their friend may seem an abstraction, as they will never meet him, have fulfilling lives that have nothing to do with him, and are quite sure that they are as good as him anyway. To these people, Trump’s policies, or even just some of them, or even just the cut of his jib, may seem more important than what Trump would say about them in private—or public.
This outlook arguably represents a more sophisticated sensibility than the pitchfork attitude of many on racism. Think of those who since the 1980s have rejected the Great Books canon because the authors were white and almost always racist. Ahead of the curve? Maybe. Or one could see this condemnation of people for being unable to see beyond their time as simplistic and even anti-intellectual. Many, in fact, do.
Again, this is what white liberal America wants to believe: racism, which mostly hurts other people, isn’t important compared to whatever they care about. Quoting Saint MLK himself:
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
That’s exactly the sentiment McWhorter wants to call “sophisticated.” He’s suggesting that all the real, substantive harm Trump’s racism does is merely a matter of hurt feelings, low self-esteem, wanting Trump’s approval.
There comes a time when this kind of “pragmatism” isn’t even pragmatism. It’s just craven. Nobody should vote for someone who goes out of his way to hurt children, support the Klan, etc. Full stop. Nazism is unacceptable. That should be as true for white people as for black people, and shame on anyone it’s not true for.
Liberals like McWhorter want this to be “complex”, when the morality at stake couldn’t be simpler. If you’re ok with racist oppression of others to help your stock portfolio, that’s just as racist as declaring hatred of black people. This is obviously true. Liberals just don’t want it to be.
McWhorter has no place for anti-colonial ideas like Aime Cesaire’s. Questioning the Western Canon is simply “anti-intellectual”:
People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.
Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa.
Meanwhile, McWhorter literally compares having a racism litmus test to believing the Sun revolves around the Earth. It’s insult, substituted for analysis.
The idea that once anti-racism has acquired real purchase in our consciousness that it must be the measure of everything in how we evaluate those among us, in the fashion that Galileo’s detractors assumed Christianity must determine scientific inquiry, is not truth incarnate. It is a modern fashion, one that perplexes as many as it attracts. The notion that we are not whole until we are seen as perfect equals by all citizens is creative at best, but utopian at worst. Life as an individual is too rich for that vision to compel more than a subset of the population.
Universal recognition of our personhood, and indeed our manhood, has traditionally been a goal of black people. Still, it’s ridiculous to say that the goals of Black Lives Matter primarily have to do with racist people’s opinion of us. It’s an objection to systemic racism, and McWhorter is, no doubt deliberately, being obtuse and thinking of racism in liberal terms: it’s when Bad Whites think bad thoughts about black people, and not the action of white people as they affect black people.
What he’s trying to say, like the black Trump supporters he’s speaking for, is that he isn’t a little bitch. He’s not a snowflake. Feelings are for pussies, etc. Except that, actually yeah, feelings do matter and it’s not ok that we go through life with white people chronically disrespecting us. There’s a real, physical cost to that, and trying to look tough for your white friends doesn’t change that fact.
The lesson here is that the identitarian left must not labor under the impression that all Black and brown people share their sense of racism as an ultimate deal breaker. Coalition building of the kind that will win future elections will require them to hold their noses and understand that to many perfectly sane people of color, policy matters more than rhetorical virtue on race and racism. They must also understand that few of such people will be amenable to schooling on the matter. Talk to them as prodigals who need to be taken out back and instructed in the gospel and you will only drive them to the next charismatic, incurious megalomaniac that rises from the Republican swamp.
This is sleight-of-hand. How does he know that Uncle Tom Trump voters vote on policy? He suggested himself that they don’t (“charisma”).
His last point isn’t even wrong. Someone like himself is pretty far gone. I don’t think saving the minority of black Republicans from themselves is especially worth the bother. Just like white people, if you just voted for Trump, there’s no reasoning with you. We don’t share moral principles.
Of course white people want black people to hear that the era of nose-holding and low expectations must continue forever, even if we were instrumental in winning the election and reasonably expect something to show for it. White people hate uppity, and it’s so much nicer when black people do the work of discouraging it.