Last week, Donald Trump attended a convention of Black journalists and was outrageously, undeniably, and horrifically racist, not just to every attendee in the room, but to Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. After arriving late due to a resistance to live fact-checking, Trump repeatedly denigrated the competence and tone of his Black hosts and questioners, referred to “black jobs” (again) as if there is a category of labor that belongs to people of an ethnic background, and suggested that Harris — an American biracial woman of both Black Jamaican and South Asian lineage — was appropriating Black identity for political or personal benefit. It was a grotesque display of white supremacy, disregard for Black people, and just garden variety racism. And knowing Donald Trump, it’s just going to get worse.
It is hard to remember in the thousand years we have all lived since 2016, but Donald Trump only became a viable political candidate because of racism. His name had been mentioned in passing in the late ’90s and early aughts, but it wasn’t until Trump began hawking the absurd conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was a foreign Manchurian candidate and not a natural born citizen of the United States that he got any traction in mainstream politics. The reaction at the time had been to treat Trump as a sideshow, an absurdity. But his ability to tap into the deep well of racist resentment against the first Black man to hold the Presidency proved potent — so much so that now Senator Mitt Romney held a press conference in 2012 touting Trump’s endorsement for his own presidential run. It would culminate with Donald Trump wiping out more than a dozen Republican officeholders and public figures in the 2016 Republican primary, after launching his campaign with the awful, racist, and false assertion that Mexican-Americans are “rapists” and “criminals” (which is a darkly ironic statement from the adjudicated sexual abuser convicted on 34 felony counts). And every step of the way, Trump got a boost from racism.
Over and over again, Trump has gotten rewarded for his resentment-based politics, stoking hate against anyone who deviates from the white patriarchal norm that he preaches and embodies. Worse, the irrationality of racism makes it especially hard to counter. Engaging with it at all, even to mock it, only serves to deepen the anger and frustration that sits at the heart of the violent hierarchy that racism reinforces. But leaving it untouched also allows the resentment to fester and spread, unchecked by shame or repudiation. That same resentment has fueled every step of Trump’s rise and coddled every bad break, scandal, and disaster that would have destroyed another candidate. It is part of the reason that Trump employs racism so easily and without remorse: It will deliver for his voters regardless of anything people try to do to stop it.
Well…almost anything. As demonstrated by the reaction Trump has had to the “weird” label that the Harris campaign has highlighted, isolation, loneliness, and disdain work wonders for pushing back at racism. Point out how aberrant, bizarre, and extreme racism is, and even people who might be sympathetic to the rage created by collapsing privilege will choose the side with a “normal” majority. The more expansive and typical antiracism becomes, the smaller the rewards for racism get, until it’s finally punished as it should be.
Every step of Trump’s political career has been built on resentment and racism. He is going to use it again because it’s who he is and it’s what has worked. His party has always deflected away from it; the media has always minimized or softened it. But this time, in this campaign, we can choose to react differently. Because when Trump gets outrageously racist, we don’t have to pretend that it’s normal.
