This is the second of a two-part series on the GOP and racism. It's an excerpt from his latest book Why the GOP Became a White Supremacist Party (Middle Passage Press)
Former President Donald Trump knew exactly what he was doing and didn't even bother to hide it with his tweet in July 2019. He baited four Democratic congresswomen with taunts to go back to where they came from. This played hard on the antipathy of many Trump backers to the abhorrence of those of foreign-born ancestry. He then gleefully watched House Democrats pass a resolution branding his taunt as raw, naked, unabashed racism.
The response Trump wanted and got from his opponents paid instant dividends for him. He used it to rev up crowds into delirium at a rally in North Carolina that month. His approval rating nudged up. Polls showed that nearly all Republicans didn't see anything racist about him or his bashes. But even more worrisome was that a lot of others who didn't wear the GOP tag also didn't think he was a racist.
None of this was new. It was tiring old stuff. But it worked. When he race-baited Black reporters in 2017 polls showed then that the great majority of
Trump supporters didn't think there was anything wrong with using the N-word. Nor did they think anyone using the offensive term was a racist.
Nearly all saw nothing racist about the N-word and said they had no problem voting for someone who used the offensive epithet.
Most Democrats were appalled by this crude outburst of bigotry. However, this was less important than its underlying political implications. A lot of people simply didn't have any problem with crude, harmful bigotry.
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