With the recent death of George Floyd and President Trump’s rebuttal of the subsequent protests has led many to claim that Trump and conservatives in general are racist. So are conservatives racist?
As always many of these conservatives have defended themselves, claiming that they are not racist. This has further led them to being called racist. Today we will truly find out whether or not they are racist.
Many have even claimed that this will jeopardize President Trump’s re-election and that Joe Biden will win a landslide because of it.
What is Racism?
“Racism” is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. Almost everything can be seen as racist in some context or another by one group of people or another.
Funny story, I was once called a racist because I described a backpack as being “black”. That is to say, I was telling my wife that a bag she wanted was black, not red as she’d thought. A teenage girl called me a racist for telling my wife a backpack was black, not red!
Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as the following:
A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
Reasons Conservatives are Racist
There are several reasons why people earnestly believe that people who follow the tenants of conservatism are thought to have racist tendencies.
Support of Racism Abroad
Margaret Thatcher is perhaps one of the most famous Conservative Prime Ministers to have ever lived. However, one of the things that you probably didn’t now about her was that she “supported” Apartheid in South Africa.
Apartheid was the violent and forceful racial segregation of blacks and whites in South Africa during the 1948 to the early 1990’s.
Whilst she was at the helm of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher refused to put sanctions on South Africa was under Apartheid. Thatcher also didn’t allow fellow party member Geoffrey Howe from condemning it publicly too.
Several other members of the Conservative Party have made comments that she secretly wanted a white-only South Africa. Despite this, Nelson Mandella said that she was instrumental in getting South Africa out of Apartheid.
Refusal to Disown Racism
Donald Trump is perhaps the most influential conservative in the world at this point in time. His run for presidency was well documented with several racially-charged comments.
One of the most remembered comments that Trump said, was when he actually shied away from answering a question. This was done when former leader of the KKK, David Duke, told his followers to vote for Trump.
When asked if he’d disavow their votes and the KKK in general. Instead of disavowing the votes, Trump avoided answering the question. The result was that the media went insane over it.
Headlines for the whole news cycle talked about how Trump was a racist.
“Save Themselves” Philosophy
Conservatism is very laissez-faire in most regards. When they do implement policies, they have a philosophy that only helps the majority of their voters.
The majority of people who vote for the various conservative parties of the world tend to be from more affluent and white. As such, their philosophies and policies tend to help people from more affluent and majority-white communities.
Many of these policies have resulted in the disenfranchisement of black and minority communities. The result has been that many from these affected communities have seen those policies as racially-charged, even when that might not have been the primary motivator.
The Media
The media loves racial tension. Whenever someone says anything remotely racist, the media latches on to it and reports about it veraciously. For several weeks, there are news, analysis and opinion articles on it.
Perhaps the current situation with George Floyd is the best example of this. Almost every major news outlet is condemning Trump as a being a bigot. Conservatarians, liberals and conservatives are all writing op-eds about it.
As such, when they report on it, they go full force on it. This gives the idea, whether right or wrong that all (or at least the vast majority) of conservatives are racist.
Support of Racism
Conservative politicians have a history of “supporting” racism. There have been several occasions when conservative politicians and commentators have openly criticized anti-racist policies.
There have even been several occasions when conservative politicians have supported things such as racial segregation or police brutality. They often hide behind things such as “public safety”.
They are especially pro-police brutality, something that overwhelmingly affects minorities rather than whites. When asked if these increased police brutality measures will also be used on whites, conservative politicians are notoriously tight-lipped on this issue.
Reasons Conservatives aren’t Racist
There are also several reasons why people earnestly believe that people who follow the tenants of conservatism aren’t racist.
The Minority
Yes, a few conservatives probably do have racist beliefs, just as a few liberals have antisemitic beliefs. As such, when they do make racist comments, everyone goes insane about it.
And because they’re a minority, they don’t count for all conservatives. It’s often said that it only takes one sour apple to spoil the barrel, and this is what is happening to conservatism.
A few “Bad apples who are racist are the ones who are giving conservatives in general a bad rap.
They’re Older
No matter what type of conservative you are, you are probably older than your liberal and leftist counterparts. Age may not seem like it is a big factor, yet it is.
Because conservatives tend to be older, they have different “generational acceptance”. That is to say, what was racially acceptable when the much older conservatives were younger is far different to what it is today.
Think about it this way, almost every family has an elderly family member who is unapologetically racist. He or she has very strong opinions on race, religion and immigration, opinions that are considered to be extremely racist.
Because of this, many people believe all or most conservatives share these racist world views.
Difference Between Conservatives and Far-Right
The far-right is undoubtedly and is unforgiving in their racist views. These are the people who attend rallies with Nazi insignia on them. These are people like Richard Spencer who are members of the alt-right.
Whilst these people may claim to be “conservatives”, they have views that are nothing like mainstream conservatives. These are the people who are the true racists.
As such, regular conservatives do not hold these same views, most notably on racism.
The Media
As I said earlier, the media loves to devour stories about racially-charged issues. However, all is not as it seems. When you look at the political media bias of most news outlets, they lean to left more than the right.
As such, they often report more critically on conservatives and right-leaning parties. The result of this is that when those few conservatives make racist comments, the media reports on it in a more negative light.
Just think about it, they have a vested interest in making it look bad. If those journalists have left-leaning views, they probably want left-leaning parties to win elections, as such they’ll want to make right-leaning parties look worse.
The Left
Just as with the media, the left goes nuts over the right and racism. Left-leaning and liberal commentators are always the first to call out something as “racist”, whether that is a conservative politician or commentator or whatever.
Obviously, as they believe in liberal and left-leaning causes, they are opposed to conservatism. As such, they have a vested interest in making conservatives look bad.
And how better to do this than making conservatism look as though it supports an antiquated system that demonizes a large minority of people?
Summary
Despite all of this, conservatives are not racist. As a group of people, we can’t say that ever conservative on the planet is a racist. Just as we can’t say that all liberals are anti-semites.
Yes, there are indeed a few conservatives who support racism and hold deep rooted racist views. These racist conservatives have certainly found an avenue to express that hatred in the form of the internet, whether that be with blogs and the internet or social media.
It’s simply unfortunate that these people are the ones who get the most media attention- both from the mainstream media and so-called “new media”.
There are also several vehemently racist “conservative” organizations, most notoriously the KKK. These organizations claim to be conservative and claim to support conservative policies- even going as far to vote for conservative candidates.
However, as a conservative myself, I would not consider these people to be conservatives. Just as how I’m sure that many people on the left would agree that antisemites are not liberals either.
As for racism itself, racism will never truly go away, not in the sense that we think it will. One day, humanity won’t wake and say “We’ve stopped being racist”.
Sadly it will probably always be a factor of life, one I hope diminishes over time. However, history will have to prove me wrong.
What do you think? Are conservatives racist? Tell me in the comments!