Trumpism, Conservatism, and the Republican Party (III)

This is the third post in which I seek to understand the modern Republican party of the United States in the context of Donald Trump's surprising candidacy. The thesis of this series of posts is that we should not have been surprised by his candidacy; Donald Trump's combination of ignorance and overt racial and cultural animus is a reflection of where the majority of the Republican Party finds itself in the twenty-first century. The first post--in which I identify Trumpism as a manifestation of white ethnic nationalism--can be found here. In my second post on the subject I discussed the modern conception of small-government conservatism, and show that it is a very recent phenomenon (n.b., I will have another post up in the coming days examining whether or not small government conservatism is a governing philosophy or just a load of nonsense used to justify tax cuts for the wealthy. Can you guess in advance what I think?) In this post I will seek to provide some historical context for this idea of white ethnic nationalism that--in contrast to small-government conservatism--so strongly animates the modern Republican party

In my second post on this subject (and indeed, on this incarnation of my blog) I spoke of how Thomas Jefferson and the antebellum Democratic party viewed a weak United States government as crucial to the maintenance and even extension of slavery. To understand the modern Republican party (and indeed, modern politics in this country) you must grapple with this country's ugly history with regards to race. That the Republican party of the twenty-first century consists overwhelmingly of white men is not a coincidence; the white ethnic nationalism motivating the Republican party is merely the latest manifestation of this country's ugly history of racism.

The topic of race relations in the United States is beyond the scope of a single blog post. Indeed, it's beyond the scope of a single book; entire academic careers could be built on the subject. I have previously mentioned Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom; this book is required reading for anyone who wants an understanding of U.S. history and U.S. politics. In that work, Morgan details the origins of the slave economy that came to dominate the southern half of the nation for two centuries, as well as the origins of American racism and bigotry toward blacks. Put simply: racism did not happen naturally or organically; ideas about the inferiority of blacks were created. They were created not just to justify the enslavement of those people and the plunder of their labor, but also to separate enslaved blacks from poor whites, whose living conditions were not all that much better than those of slaves. Socially, what the nascent aristocracy did was to create a class below that of the white underclass, and then used class- and race-based resentment to secure their own superior position in society. As bad as life was for a poor white person in the early days of those colonies, it could always be worse. You could be black.

Racism and the halo of associated social ills remained a enduring feature in American society through the mid nineteenth century. So powerful was slavery as an issue that the country fought the bloodiest war in its history over the subject. And while the Emancipation Proclamation and the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution settled the question of slavery, the racial animus developed over two centuries endured.

It's worth digressing here for a bit of basic sociology. Race is a social construct; racial differences were created by society. They were created to justify and perpetuate imbalances between different groups. In the case of black Americans, the purpose initially to separate the interests of poor whites and black slaves in order to protect the status of the planter aristocracy. Racism is a system, it exists within society and like many social systems it creates winners and losers. The winners from racism were almost always white people, the losers were black people. Racism is often (but not always) accompanied by bigotry, which is an emotion felt by and a set of beliefs held by individuals. It is possible to exist within a racist system and even perpetuate that system without being a bigot. Such is the insidious nature of racism.

Newly-freed black slaves enjoyed only a brief respite from the brutal control over their lives that was slavery. As the North lost interest in their fate, Reconstruction came to an end and Jim Crow laws were put into place. These laws kept black citizens in the south in a subservient social position, clearly below even the lowest-class white citizens. Of course the system did not last; cracks began appearing in the 1950s and by the mid 1960s Jim Crow was being rapidly relegated to the dustbin of history. But racism endured. In her masterful book The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander documents how Jim Crow was replaced by a new system of social control over black Americans: mass incarceration.

Of course today that system is beginning to weaken. The Black Lives Matter movement has brought attention to the disparate impact of police violence against African American communities. Michelle Alexander's book along with the work of thousands of tireless activists has raised awareness of the problems inherent in our criminal justice system and how these problems disproportionately affect black people. And of course there is the demographic fact that America is changing. As of last year, the majority of babies born in the United States is not white. It is only a matter of time until whites lose their majority status; they will soon be just one minority amongst many. And some of them are really pissed off about that.

So what does this have to do with Republican politics? Racism is not just a powerful social force; it has been a powerful political force. In the wake of the Civil War, the parties became sorted geographically. The Party of Lincoln was toxic to the states of the Confederacy; whereas the Democratic party--widely associated amongst loyal Unionists with secession and the bloody war--was out of favor in the north. This geographical sorting of the parties might seem a strange thing to us; today our parties are sorted by ideology. But during the century or so from the end of Reconstruction through the 1960s there was quite a bit of ideological overlap between the parties. In my previous post I talked about small-government conservatism as an animating political philosophy of the modern Republican party; during the century from 1865 to 1965 support for this philosophy was at its nadir. Conflict between Democrats and Republicans was not an abstract conflict about the scope of the federal government and the reach of its policies; by and large it was a conflict over patronage. To wit: whichever party controlled Congress and especially the Presidency would be able to grant coveted government jobs to its supporters.

The geographical sorting of the parties meant that there were liberal and conservative Republicans, as well as liberal and conservative Democrats. Conservative Democrats were an especially important part of the equation; most of them hailed from the south and as such they had extremely regressive views on race. Indeed, questions of race and the continued ability to oppress black citizens were at the top of their list of priorities. During the New Deal, FDR was able to pass social security legislation with the support of these Democrats; as originally written Social Security was structured to avoid providing benefits to African Americans.

So why do I make the claim that the Republican party is now the standard bearer of this regressive racial legacy? United States politics underwent a realignment in the 1960's. As President Johnson passed Civil Rights legislation through Congress, he lost the support of the south. Many conservative southern Democrats defected to the Republican party. Others died off or retired, and were replaced by Republicans. This process took decades; it wasn't completed until the 1994 Gingrich Revolution swept the last of the southern Democrats out of Congress.

The Republican party deliberately cultivated bigoted voters. In my first post on this subject I mentioned Lee Atwater's famous interview on the subject. I also mentioned Ronald Reagan's calculated speech on states' rights (which in the south is code for the right to discriminate against black people). The Republican electoral playbook in the 1980s and 1990s was to exploit racial resentment in order to justify gutting the social safety net and lowering taxes. Welfare benefits had to be cut because welfare was going to those people, where those people were inevitably black. It worked.

Of course the Republican party no longer stands for overt racism, or at least it no longer claims to. This is belied by the fact that a host of its policies achieve overtly racist ends, from the gutting of the social safety net to its historical support for mass incarceration to the more modern phenomenon of voting restrictions which are usually targeted to reduce minority turnout (the recent example in North Carolina is particularly flagrant and repulsive). I believe it indisputable that the Republican party--like the rest of the country--has been slowly (if reluctantly) been moving in the right direction on questions of race and racism. Which is why I identify the Trump movement as one of white ethnic nationalism, not of white racism. As I mentioned previously, the racial hierarchy created back in the early decades of the Virginia colony created winners and losers; it created a system in which all whites--regardless of their place in society--enjoyed a privileged position relative to blacks. That system is steadily breaking down, which necessarily means a loss of privilege. Furthermore, as I again previously mentioned, whites will soon be a minority in this country. For the first time in nearly four hundred years, white people across the nation face the prospect of not occupying the dominant position in our society. This creates a perhaps understandable sense of unease, even resentment. And it is this sense of unease and resentment that I call white ethnic nationalism.

Let me be clear: I do not claim that a majority or even a significant minority of the Republican party are bigots. I claim only that a majority of the Republican party has benefited and continues to benefit from racism; because of the racialized structure of our society they occupy a superior position than they might otherwise. They probably do not see their superior position in society in these terms, which is an understandable defense mechanism. But that does not make it true. And these people are now facing the steady erosion of their superior position. This leads to the anxiety and animus that animates white ethnic nationalism.

In manipulating the politics of racial animus and then white ethnic nationalism for electoral gain, the Republican party gathered the forces that Donald Trump has unleashed. For nearly forty years they directed these forces towards conservative ends: dismantling the social safety net, and passing tax cuts for the wealthiest members of our society. Of course there is one more element of Trumpism I haven't yet mentioned: a sort of cultivated ignorance, a deliberate and even delighted-in know-nothingism that manifests in a rejection of all things considered to be "elite," whether it be scientists or political experts. In my next post on this subject I will describe how the cultivation of white ethnic nationalism combined with a decades-long diet of know-nothingism served up by the likes of Fox News lead inevitably to The Donald being the Republican nominee in 2016.

edit: I was just reminded of a fantastic book on the subject of how race and Republicans' tax-cutting fanaticism interacted: Thomas and Mary Edsall's Chain Reaction. It's a bit older, but still a fantastic read.