Tell Me Again Why Its Ok to Hate White People

A few days agone, I came beyond this rather striking finding from a recent public stance survey by the Public Faith Inquiry Plant:

It is striking for a couple of reasons. For one matter, the question is not most illegal immigrants, or even immigrants at all; it'due south not near criminal offense, or welfare, or jobs ... it's just well-nigh racial diversity equally such. And more Republicans are confronting it than for it! (So much for "economic feet.")

But the question is also notable for its unstated premise: that the growing presence of people other than whites in the Usa (what else could "increased racial diversity" hateful in a bulk-white state?) is a subject of active political contend. It is not taken for granted as constitutive of a multiethnic democracy but treated every bit a kind of add-on, an extra feature. "Is it working? Maybe nosotros should roll information technology back. Let's discuss."

I tried to imagine how that question might strike, oh, someone whose grandparents immigrated from Uganda. That person is merely as much a citizen every bit any other American. She did not cull to exist black and cannot choose to exist some other race. Simply now she hears that it is, at the very least, an open question whether her mere presence — and her choice to have children, to farther diversify America — is detrimental to her country. Is information technology bad to accept her around at all because she'southward black? Let's discuss.

It must be alienating to feel like one is on probation in one's own state, that one'south presence is subject area to the approval of white people. And it must be a familiar feeling, peculiarly these days, for everyone who is not white (and male).

It occurred to me that white people rarely if ever experience questions like this, about their very legitimacy. Do they belong? Is having more than of them effectually proficient for America?

One thing white people have never experienced is a poll on whether their presence in their own country is intrinsically detrimental.

— David Roberts (@drvox) July 24, 2018

In fact, I idea, I bet asking the question at all — not answering it either fashion, only request it — would brand a lot of white people flip out. Imagine if they saw that on a poll!

So, as a bit of goofy provocation, I made just such a poll:

Practise white people take a positive or negative effect on America?

— David Roberts (@drvox) July 24, 2018

I should have said "impact," not "effect," to mirror the original poll question. (Twitter actually needs some kind of edit characteristic.) It was not the all-time zinger ever, and probably not a very constructive style to make a signal, but any, it was only a tweet. I went and walked my dog.

As yous've likely predicted, a lot of white people flipped out.

By the fourth dimension I got home, the poll had spread into Trump land, the thread was flooded with MAGA tweeters, and white people were being decisively vindicated in the poll. By Wednesday morning, I was the outrage of the twenty-four hour period on the entertainment site TheWrap and on a couple of right-wing news sites.

For reasons that remain somewhat mysterious to me, the MAGA brigade seems to view their victory in my poll — equally of closing, 82 per centum deem white people'due south net impact as positive, then congrats to my young man white people! — every bit a 1000 self-ain on my part. Presumably because I cared well-nigh this poll, wanted white people to lose, and assumed my followers would send them down to defeat.

Those erroneous assumptions and many more are reflected in the Twitter thread beneath the poll, which I recommend to anyone with a masochistic streak. The words "cuck" and "soy boy" come up a lot, also as a wide variety of colorful anatomical suggestions.

The funny thing is, I never said a disparaging word about white people. I only said that while other groups are accustomed to being discussed and polled and judged, white people aren't, and they would freak out if they saw a question like the one in the PRRI poll about themselves.

And then they saw one, completely missed the context, and freaked out, right on cue, thus proving my point in existent time. Simply they won my Twitter poll, so ... burn, I approximate?

It's all pretty silly. In 24 hours, everyone involved will take moved on to being outraged well-nigh something else. The only lesson I feel certain about: Twitter is terrible, and no one should e'er tweet again, even though we all know nosotros're going to.

But maybe there's a little insight to be gleaned. I practise call up the reaction illuminates a larger point.

"You're the real racist, and white people rule"

I kept up with the start few hundred responses (there are more than 1,000 now), and it'south interesting to come across what they shared and where they differed.

Substantively (if you tin call information technology that), there were two bones reactions. One is to say that I'yard a racist, or liberals are the real racists, because they go along calling attention to race and dividing people upwards by race, while conservatives are just trying to be individuals and judge people by the content of their character. It's the "No boob! You're the puppet!" of racism.

The other kind of response was, to paraphrase: Of course white people are good for America, white people are America, and America, like every other shithole nation white people conquered, would however be a shithole if not for white people.

(I'm not going to pluck out private tweets and embed them here considering I don't want to drag individuals on Twitter into a public dispute like this; y'all can read the thread to see if I'k characterizing it accurately.)

These are mutually contradictory points, of class. "You're the real racist, and white people rule." Just they are both very familiar in bourgeois rhetoric and both delivered behind the same artful, using the same keywords, in the same jumbled tone of fury and contempt.

I didn't answer the question I asked, only asking it was enough to trigger notwithstanding outrage. Why is that?

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Racial "priming" happens well before racial decline

On his podcast, Vocalization's Ezra Klein recently interviewed Yale psychologist Jennifer Richeson, noting she "has done pioneering work on the way perceptions of demographic threat and change affect people's political opinions, voting behavior, and ideas about themselves."

One of Richeson's cardinal insights is that reminders of coming demographic turn down — the notion that America will soon become a "majority minority" land, with people of color outnumbering whites — not merely crusade increased hostility toward other racial groups (which might be expected) just also push white people in a conservative direction on seemingly unrelated policy questions similar taxation rates and oil drilling.

She also makes the point that the bulk-minority narrative is bogus. By the time it is forecast to happen, who-knows-what demographic changes volition have taken identify, including changes in who gets coded as "white." Since the idea is incorrect and it freaks people out, she reasons, we should probably stop uncritically repeating it.

Still, what recent political evidence seems to show — and my Twitter brouhaha reflects in some small way — is that the effects Richeson establish kick in well before news of any demographic apocalypse arrives (if yous consider being a plurality rather than a majority apocalyptic).

Indeed, every bit research on "priming" shows, simply discussing race at all kicks up those effects among the racially ascendant group. Or to put information technology more frankly, in the US context: White people really don't like being called white people. They don't similar beingness reminded that they are white people, function of a group with discernible boundaries, shared interests, and shared responsibilities.

Later all, one of the benefits of being in the ascendant demographic and cultural group is that you are immune to simply exist a person, a blank slate upon which y'all can write your own individual story. You have no luggage but what you choose.

In most situations in the US, a adult female is a female person. Someone part of a racial minority is a black person or a Latino person, etc. Gay people. Trans people. Immigrant people. All these groups are [describing word] people, people with an asterisk, while a white, heterosexual male is merely a person, equally generic every bit he chooses. His presence is taken for granted; it rarely occurs to anyone to question it. A white man in khakis and a polo shirt can walk into almost any milieu in the US and, even if he'south greeted with hostility, be taken seriously. His legitimacy is assumed.

The power and privilege that come along with that — being the base model, a person with no asterisk — are invisible to many white men. Simply calling them "white people," much less questioning the beliefs or behavior of white people, drags that power and privilege into the open.

Some white men take even been known to ascension higher up their level of competence.

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Identity politics is something merely white men have been allowed to avoid

"Identity politics" — dragging effectually the baggage of one's identity, constantly being forced to reckon with it, to work around the stereotypes and bigotry it attracts, to speak for information technology, to represent it — is something that is forced on other groups, non something they choose. Do yous think a young black man likes walking into a store knowing he'south already carrying the weight of a million suspicions and expectations, that he has to bear perfectly lest he invoke them? He'd probably like to be thinking most taxation policy too, if he didn't have to worry virtually getting shot past the cops on his way dwelling house. But that worry comes with his identity.

White men bridle at the notion of existence part of a tribe or engaging in identity politics. (Ahem.) Lonely among social groups, they are allowed the illusion that they have merely their own bespoke identity, that they are pure freethinkers, citizens, unburdened and uninfluenced by collective luggage (unique and precious "snowflakes," if you will).

No 1 else is allowed to retrieve that — at least not for long, before they are reminded once again that they are, in the eyes of their state, little more than their identity, their asterisk. No one else gets to pretend their politics are free of identity.

White people do. But only saying the words "white people" is a direct attack on that illusion. It identifies, i.e., creates (or rather, exposes) an identity, a group with shared characteristics and interests. Information technology raises questions (and doubts) virtually the grouping'southward standing and power relative to other groups. It illuminates all that hidden baggage. Lots of white people actually hate that.

In politics, we talk about groups all the time — minorities, immigrants, criminals, what accept you — and by and large, no ane blinks. The simply time I become blowback is when I generalize almost men or white people (okay, or babe boomers). Suddenly, "lumping people together" becomes a sin. Even amid white liberal friends, I've noticed that merely maxim the words "white people" causes a frisson of discomfort.

In fact, information technology's hard to think of a US setting in which the words "white people" are received neutrally. The term is always charged somehow, freighted with meaning and potential conflict, vaguely destructive. White people. White people. White people.

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A shrinking group cannot avoid being reminded it is a group

What primes white people is merely the reminder that they are white people — that they are, and will increasingly be, one group of Americans amongst others, with particular interests, settling differences via democracy.

Correct now, the white maleocracy is clinging to power, with disproportionate wealth and representation in Congress relative to its size. And all the while, its leaders decry identity politics. They are used to being the default setting, people with no asterisks, no baggage, and they are extremely loath to give that up.

In fact, they want their America, the America where white say-so is so ubiquitous as to be unremarkable, back. They keep saying so.

As many have pointed out and this political era has made painfully articulate, to a ascendant demographic, the loss of privilege feels like persecution. Existence just 1 group amid many feels like losing. After all, what adept is being white in the U.s.a., peculiarly among poor whites, if some third-generation Ugandan immigrant has just every bit much control over their fate as they have over hers? If a poll asks whether they're any good for her, rather than the other way around?

For the dominant group, beingness judged and asked to justify itself, as so many subaltern groups are judged and asked to justify themselves, feels similar an insult. If you doubt that, go read this Twitter thread.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/26/17613844/racial-diversity-poll-twitter-white-people

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