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I want to piggyback on this insightful thread to dig into one dimension of the contemporary conservative "culture war" around racism. To a great extent, conservative political culture in the US has been a form of white identity politics that does not call itself that. https://twitter.com/NicholasGuyatt/status/1276084621017481218
Claire Malone does an excellent job here of tracing the 50+ year history of GOP choices to become the party of white people in a demographically diversifying America. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-republican-choice/
Racism functions as a historical wind. If you were born into a body that's perceived as white, that historical wind is blowing at your back. If you were born into a body that's not perceived as white, then that wind is often in your face.
When you're walking and the wind is blowing gently at your back, it's easy not to notice it. You might even think "I'm in good shape, I'm not tiring at all!" When you're out for a walk and there's a 10 mile breeze in your face, you notice it. You can't help but feel it.
To get more specific here. When a black person encounters a police officer, they can't help but feel the weight of history pressing down upon that encounter. They would be foolish NOT to be mindful of that history, just for the sake of their own personal safety.
When a white person gets pulled over, there is not the same historical weight inflecting that encounter. They have the luxury of experiencing that encounter as an individual who may or may not have broken the law and who can expect to be treated justly.
Every student who goes to college faces challenges. White kids who walk on to historically white campuses (which most universities in the US are) walk with the historical winds behind their backs. Students who are not white face headwinds of various sorts.
A huge dividing line between self-described "conservatives" and others in the US comes down to how one answers the question: "do you believe such historical winds exist? And if so, do you believe we are obliged to do anything to mitigate them?"
Because if you're white, and you don't believe that there are winds of racism blowing out of history that have shaped the life you lead as a white person and the way you understand the world, then you simply do not understand a crucial element of the society in which you live.
Conservatives will read this and think "but what about personal responsibility? What about my black friend who is successful?" That's why I used the metaphor of wind. When you're walking in the wind, you're still using your own muscle power. Your effort and skill matters.
But if two people walk 5 miles in 100 minutes, and one has had a 10 mile per hour wind at their back while the other had a 10 mile per hour wind in their face...the latter person will have expended far more energy to travel the same distance. It's understandable if they're tired.
The US conservative is often the sort of person who's had the wind at their back, and then glances at their compatriot who's faced the headwind and asks "gosh, why are you so tired? You really need to eat better. Here's the card of my nutritionist."
And when the person facing the headwind begins to point out that discrepancy, their interlocutor immediately says "oh stop whining, it's always someone else's fault isn't it? What is it with you people?"
"It's not *my fault* you had the wind in your face! Why are you blaming me? It's so unfair, people are always blaming *me* for things I didn't do!" This is what they call "totally missing the point."
Because it is indeed not necessarily the white person's *fault* that they have the wind at their back, just as much as it's not the person of color's fault that they were born into a world that greets them with a headwind.
White conservatives hear the word "racism" and think they are personally being blamed for something specific they have done to another person. Frequently racism does manifest as such a willful, individual act. But that's just one, small facet of how racism works.
Racism is a historical force that blows through four centuries of American history. That was the point of the 1619 Project. And that's largely why conservatives hated it so much. It's why white kids across America are being told not to read it, lest it "poison" their minds.
Of course, when the winds of history are at your back there are strong imperatives not to reckon with that honestly...to instead take personal credit for the portion of the work that wind has done. Like the kid who's a millionaire by age 5 and then becomes rich and powerful.
Conservatives often claim to love history, but the history they love is often a self-affirming fairy tale invented to make them feel good about themselves and the constructed categories of identity that they embrace as "us."
Any time someone points to an undeniable facet of history that continues to shape the present--like slavery or the dispossession of Native American nations--conservatives frequently revert to "but that's in the past, it's just history, not my fault."
But when those same people look at a statue to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or Robert E Lee, they think "there's my history of which I'm proud," even though they usually have no genealogical or other sort of connection to those historical figures.
Anyway. History is infinitely complicated, and it always, inevitably inflects our present in ways that we're only ever slightly aware of in the moment. But to be a decent human, IMHO, means to try to come to honest terms with how history has shaped us and the world we inhabit.
That's all the BLM activists and other progressive activists are calling for. For folks to lick their fingers, put them in the air, become aware of those winds of history, and commit to creating a world in which those winds of injustice no longer carry such force.
