Atrios comments today on racism and the toleration of racism within the Republican Party:
I do think one of the political journalist beliefs is that Republicans are too gentlemanly to go full racist (and similar), but they always CAN and if they do the Dems are totally screwed.
....The Republican extended universe is actually quite weird. Because of the way political journalism is, it all sounds "normal" but actually these people are the weirdos! Enough people are like "what the fucking fuck" when you claim kids are shitting in litterboxes in schools because of pronouns.
I think there are more nuances here than you might think at first glance. True, some Republicans (and some Democrats!) are just plainly racist. They'd love it if Donald Trump and his acolytes were even more open about it.
But then, as Atrios says, there are the normie Republicans. These folks don't care much for the bizarro memes or the straight up racism, but many of them nonetheless have related fears of anti-racism. They're afraid of saying not quite the right word and being publicly called out for it. They don't like the whole pronoun thing. They're afraid of being falsely accused of sexual harassment. They want to rein in illegal immigration and don't want to be accused of racism for it. Ditto for fear of crime.
You may well wonder if this collection of fears means these people are just plain racist even though they'd deny it. That's a tricky question, and I'm not sure I'm ready to take a side on it. Politically, though, what it means is that there are lots of fairly conventional Republicans who aren't actively racist in the sense of not wanting a Black couple to move next door, but are, let's say, anti-anti-racist because modern liberal anti-racism makes them afraid of falling afoul of norms they think have gone too far. And of course they also like all the usual Republicans positions on taxes and regulations and policing and so forth. So they keep voting Republican even if they're contemptuous of Donald Trump.
I don't know what, if anything, Democrats should try to do about this. But there are things they could do if they wanted. They could take illegal immigration more seriously—especially since loose borders don't even appeal all that strongly to lots of Hispanics these days. They could loosen up on the wokeness and stop being afraid of crossing the most progressive folks in the room. They could give up on the pronouns since they're confusing and hard to remember and, let's face it, sound kind of silly most of the time.
This is mostly "lead by example" stuff, not major legislation. And maybe it's a bad idea. I'm genuinely on the fence about much of it, although I'm pretty sure we've screwed up badly on immigration by pandering too much instead of adopting some serious policies like E-Verify and a massive change in how our courts deal with asylum claims.
On the other kinds of things, I'm pretty sure that being a little less doctrinaire would help Democrats considerably and probably wouldn't do much harm to people of color. But maybe I'm wrong.
CBP set a record last year for "encounters" (their term) with suspected illegal immigrants. They are on pace to break that record this year. This says to me that the Biden administration is putting more effort into border control and dealing with illegal immigration than any previous administration.
Anyone who thinks this administration is not taking immigration seriously is simply not paying attention.
Everybody is racist, it just a matter of degree.
Re Kevin's: "They could take illegal immigration more seriously—especially since it doesn't even appeal all that strongly to lots of Hispanics these days."
If illegal immigration appeals to Hispanics, we should take it less seriously? Masking and vaccination doesn't appeal to many. Should we therefore lessen promotion of those policies?
The problem isn't anti-racism per se.
The problem is that Democrats are the party of identity politics. We celebrate Ketani Jackson because of her sex and race, not because of anything she's actually written. We're the party that talks about intersectionality, slicing and dicing the American people into smaller and smaller subgroups.
We're the party that removed due process notions from Title IX investigations on college campuses, because women never lie or misremember anything.
This is our brand -- the party that rates people based on sex and race.
You're a moron. We celebrate Ketani Jackson because of what she has written and because a collection of smart people with diverse backgrounds produce better results than a collection of smart people with homogenous backgrounds.
serious policies like E-Verify and a massive change in how our courts deal with asylum claims.
Democrats should not be blamed for policies Republicans refuse to even consider.
Immigration deals have always been on the table and the Republicans have always refused to sit down because a silly faction of their party believes in walls.
Voting for an openly racist person to be president is racist. If "normie" Republicans don't want to appear to be racist, calling out blatant racisim in their party would be a good start. Until then, they are racist. And claiming they aren't racist reinforces the normalization of racism.