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A Reply to Ricochet Readers on the GOP & White Identity Politics
I’m grateful that so many Ricochet readers have engaged the substance of my interview with Zack Beauchamp of Vox.com, and the subsequent Ricochet interview with @roblong, @peterrobinson and @jameslileks, in which I raised concerns about the centrality of white identity politics and white nationalism within the GOP. I appreciate that most Ricochet readers disagree with my assessment, and that some were even profoundly offended by it. But some of the responses by Ricochet members suffer from one or both of the following flaws: (1) they disagree with things I never said; and/or (2) they reinforce my point by the manner of their disagreement.
First, let me be clear about what I didn’t say.
I didn’t say that the conservative movement was racist, nor that the GOP was. I didn’t dismiss the concern that poor white communities are coming apart. I didn’t say that the way for conservatives to address the problem of our racial homogeneity was to move left on policy. I didn’t say that the way for conservatives to bring minorities into our coalition was to ignore common sense or embrace political correctness. I didn’t say that the left doesn’t practice identity politics, or that the left’s accusations of racism aren’t usually false.
I did say that the Goldwater election was a total disaster for conservatism, because it branded the GOP as the party opposed to civil rights. I did say that the Republican electorate is more animated by nationalism than it is by conservatism, and I did say that conservatism did not deserve to govern the entire country if it reduced itself to a white interest group. I did say that the conservative movement must commit itself to advancing the interests of all Americans, by directly and equally engaging Americans of all races and creeds, and finding common ground.
That’s not what conservatives and Republicans do today. Conservatives and Republicans spend little to no time seriously investing in bringing their ideas to non-white communities.
The ‘minorities want free stuff’ trope
A big part of the problem with the GOP and with conservatism is that so many of its constituents have little to no social contact with minorities, and therefore ascribe unfairly malignant motivations to them.
In the podcast with Rob, Peter, and James, I mentioned several examples of this problem. One is the casual insult that the racially homogenous parts of America are the “real America,” while the diverse, urban parts of America are not. Do you really expect urban and suburban voters of any race to support your policies if your view of them is that they aren’t “real Americans?”
Another is the claim of many conservatives that minorities only vote for Democrats because they want “free stuff.” I pointed out that arguing that non-white voters vote based on fiscal bribes, while white voters vote on principle, is in effect an argument that white voters are morally superior to non-white voters: something that, at the very least, is unlikely to endear non-white voters to your cause, even if they actually agree with your policies. I would go further, and call the belief that white voters are more principled than non-white voters at best an ignorant, and at worst a racially prejudiced, view.
Take the comment of @kylez, who was annoyed by “the idea that it is somehow wrong to say minorities vote Democrat because they want government aid, which is paid for by mostly white working Americans.”
Actually, the vast plurality of entitlement and welfare spending is directed toward whites. The recipients of Medicare and Social Security—the capstones of the Great Society and New Deal respectively—are over 80 percent white.
You could argue, as white identity politicians often do, that Medicare and Social Security aren’t really welfare, because enrollees fully paid for those benefits via payroll taxes. You’d be wrong, especially when it comes to Medicare. Retirees today receive $3 in Medicare benefits for every $1 they’ve paid into the program.
The tax code is littered with loopholes large and small whose beneficiaries are overwhelmingly white: most notably the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance and the mortgage interest deduction. And don’t get me started on the corporate tax code.
You might say, “I pay taxes! I fully deserve the entitlements and tax breaks coming my way. Tell me about straight-up welfare for the poor.” I don’t agree, but ok.
In 2013, 40 percent of food stamp participants were white, 26 percent were black, 10 percent were Hispanic, and 2 percent were Asians. In 2011, Medicaid enrollees were 40 percent white, 22 percent black, 25 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian.
Certainly a higher proportion of Hispanics and blacks are on welfare, because on average they’re poorer than whites (while Asians on average earn more than whites). But perhaps that’s a reason to work harder to lift blacks and Hispanics out of poverty, and not just the white working class!
Are there Americans who want free stuff? Absolutely. But the silver-haired Tea Partier shouting “hands off my Medicare,” and the golf-addicted real estate broker shouting “hands off my mortgage interest deduction,” are just as often guilty of that as the single black mother on Medicaid.
It’s a strange coincidence that conservatives so rarely see it that way.
Here’s another way to think about it. About 55 percent of black Americans are on welfare (i.e., means-tested anti-poverty spending). But over 92 percent of black Americans vote Democratic. Are the extra 37 percent of Democratic-voting, non-welfare-receiving blacks also addicted to “free stuff”?
Let me put it frankly. If you believe that 92 percent of blacks vote Democratic because they’re all addicted to free stuff, you might be someone who lacks the capacity to listen to, or relate to, African-Americans. You might even be what the left thinks you are.
The ‘Obama is a Kenyan Muslim’ trope
Notable in the comments to the Ricochet podcast: almost nobody commented on the remarkable fact that a substantial proportion of Republican voters doubt that Obama was born in the United States, and a substantial proportion believe he is a Muslim. I completely understand why readers wouldn’t want to respond to this point, because it is deeply incriminating of our movement.
Here’s a summer 2016 poll from NBC News, which asked voters if they agreed with the statement that “Barack Obama was born in the United States.” Among those who were registered Republicans, 41 percent disagreed with the statement that Obama was born in the U.S., while only 27 percent agreed. 32 percent were unsure. In other words, 73 percent of Republicans are either unsure or certain that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.
Among Republicans who exhibited a high amount of political knowledge, the results were pretty much the same: 40 percent believed Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., and 30 percent were unsure.
If Obama had been born in Hawaii to an Irish father instead of a Kenyan one, would so many Republicans be questioning his citizenship? I think we all know the answer, even if we don’t want to admit it in public.
Is the GOP’s homogeneity a problem that conservatives want to solve?
Obviously, we conservatives are not going to attract minorities to our cause if we have have no interest in attracting them. And there are a number of Ricochet readers who plainly view minority outreach as futile and/or undesirable.
Representative of the “futility” camp was commenter @rebark, who agrees with me that many members of minority groups agree with us on policy, but that “no amount of supplication on our part, no amount of desperate virtue signalling to prove that we are not racist will win these votes back, because there will always be one offhanded remark that can be construed as indicative of some evil ulterior motive.”
Representative of the “undesirable” camp was commenter @Douglas, whose avatar is the logo of the Confederate Navy, and wrote that “I wish we had written them off [urban and minority voters], simply so those precious resources could have gone to wooing people who could be swayed.”
My conviction is that we have to sacrifice none of our core principles in order to attract minorities to our cause. We simply have to treat them with the same respect and affection with which we treat whites. We have to go into communities where we’re less comfortable, and build relationships with people who don’t look like us or worship like us.
To those who say this is impossible: it’s not. As commenter @ToryWarWriter tried to explain, with little apparent success, the Conservative Party of Canada has done it. Jason Kenney, one of Stephen Harper’s key deputies in the last Conservative government, spent an enormous amount of time traveling to immigrant communities in Canada and building relationships with them. He found that the simple acts of showing up and listening did wonders for Conservatives’ prestige in those communities.
That we haven’t taken Kenney’s playbook and run with it says a lot about where we are today, and why we deserve our status as a failing and losing movement.
In my view, the lack of appeal of our ideas among minorities is the most urgent moral and political problem facing our cause. I hope to persuade at least some of you to join me in doing something about it.
Published in General
Also, while I freely admit that discussions on this site can be something of a time suck, however enjoyable, I would encourage Mr. Roy to wade into the comment section with the rest of us so that he need not go to the trouble of writing up a whole post in response to the thoughts expressed here.
I don’t think it matters how the racists voted. I think what matters is how people perceived the party after that election. Goldwater, followed by Nixon’s southern strategy, may well be what got the party tagged as racist, deservedly or not. Hard for me to say as it has carried that stigma my whole life.
Avik I am with you. I am sorry to see your words mostly met with defensiveness, as this is the sort of posturing on our side that makes communication difficult. I already know blacks and now many hispanics have simply stopped listening, and believe conservatives are racists and liars. They do not trust us, and do not think they need us. If a bridge is to be built, it must come from us, and it will take a long, long time to do it.
I’m reluctant to go an extra mile to build a bridge to anyone who so blatantly mischaracterizes the conservative movement. I suppose some would see that attitude as part of the “problem.” I see it as refusing to pander to anyone whose misapprehensions are essentially on them.
I agree entirely that we are in a marketing campaign for conservatism, and losing badly, especially to to “the average American.”
I also agree that Trump has made it much, much harder for principled conservatism to even get a hearing.
There are wedge issues that resonate with all groups and need to be pushed as hard as possible: school choice, for example.
It would be much easier if we did not have “wonks” like Avik Roy complicating matters with ever-more-complex proposals for government solutions. Truly conservative solutions will revolve around the simple concept of freedom: Republicans should pass laws that allow any two consenting parties to engage in any contract they like, free of any regulatory or other government oversight.
I should be able to pay my retired doctor neighbor for medical services, or buy or sell any good or service to anyone who agrees to nothing more than what is in the contract.
This last proposal would end up destroying all the government regulation and bureaucracy from within as Americans slowly rediscover how great it is to make their own decisions. Someone wants to work for less than minimum wage? Let them. Someone wants to offer homecooked meals for sale? Not the government’s business. A retired doctor wants to consult on the side without any paperwork? If the customer agrees, why not? etc.
Marketing conservatism as freedom can work for minorities. If they want their regulatory nanny-state, they can keep it, and all of its protections. And if they want to make their own choices like adults, then Republicans should be the party that make that possible.
This article is very good at saying things we may not wish to believe. This year has proved that it is impossible for ‘smart’ Republicans to ignore the racism that is a larger part of our ranks than we wish.
It’s probably more incriminating of Obama’s statements, policies, and actions.
I’m also rather unclear why we need to cherry pick an issue (issues) that are “deeply incriminating to our movement.” (italics mine). Is it deeply incriminating to Democrats that a substantial portion believed that 9-11 was an inside job? Is it deeply incriminating when a substantial portion of minorities think the crack epidemic was a CIA plot? One really doesn’t have to travel too far to find errors of fact across different segments of the populace. Somehow, I suppose, this is supposed to be noteworthy.
Note:
Regarding the last paragraph, it strikes us as... odd to complain that a contributor would use a post to respond to members' comments, citing them specifically. Also, Avik jumps in on this thread at #85.I have yet to hear a coherent plan for moving conservatism forward. Thus far, the wonks have given us failure after failure to move the ball down the field. There is not one, not one domestic conservative victory that is lasting.
You mention the 80% of welfare going to whites? As a conservative I want to see Medicaid, Medicare and Social Sec eliminated, not just reformed. And I am white. Does that count as enough right think for you?
You glace over it, but you attack Nationalism. I get that people like you are itching to put the word “White” in front of it. However, I am an American Nationalist. That is to say, I believe that my nation is the best in the world, and whatever is best for America in the world should always come first. I believe that there are cultural norms in this nation that have made it great, and I resent elites trying to change that into something else. Usually, the left wants to call me “racist” for that. You do imply it above, saying that maybe we are what the left thinks we are. For someone who just denied he was calling people racist, that belies that denial.
You big brains have yet to give us any lasting victory against the left. They control the culture, they have made a mockery of federalism, they have made a mockery of limited and enumerated powers. They have made a mockery of the rule of law.
Conservatives like yourself, who have far more influence than people like me, have done nothing to reverse these trends. Wonks like you spawned Cap and Trade and RomenyCare. You can castigate whites in the Tea Party for liking Medicare all you want. I don’t see how that is any better at moving the ball than those same whites complaining about welfare for minorities.
Finally, you might actually drop into conversations, instead of posting a long article that attacks members and then running. We are a community here, and you are welcome to do more than hit and runs. Join in.
Are racism and lust for “free stuff” the only explanations available for why minorities vote democrat? I would argue that neither are true but both are part of social convention, the “truths” accepted without examination which distort thinking on both the left and the right. We have a cultural problem, not a political one, and political solutions cannot address it.
Thank you for the time that you put into this defense of what you intended to say and what you didn’t intend to say. I didn’t see any explanation of why you went to Vox though.
I do observe a vast amount of a need to clarify what you intended to say and what you didn’t. It is almost Donald Trump-like. Perhaps, just perhaps, the reaction that you received was due more to this need for explanation and clarification than “reinforc[ing] my point by the manner of their disagreement.” Just sayin’.
This alleged “racism” of the GOP has been a partisan democrat tactic for generations. It is a passionate issue because it is an unjust slander that we’ve fought for a long time from the democrats. So it is deeply offensive when a fellow Republican suggests these false accusations are true.
And for the record, the “conspiracy theories” about Barack 0bama’s birth, heritage, religion, etc. have more to do with BHO than GOP racism. He locked down all of his records. Compare and contrast the media investigation of BHO with what they did to Sarah Palin. This was and is wrong. Oh, and he signed off on this bio to be published and distributed for his speaking engagements ….
This is not racism and I resent your slanderous inference on the people within an entire political party. The only ones who continue to make race a part of the political process are the democrats.
Mr. Roy, thank you for responding directly and in substance. I am probably one of those most in error, in your estimation, and vocal about it, by general consent.
Just the same, thanks for coming by. More later.
The voters aren’t “blatantly mischaracterizing”, they have been misled and “we” have allowed that to happen.
Avik,
You should have led with this rather than attacks on conservatives/Republicans. The next two sentences are a bit of a passive-aggressive attack.
Many conservatives/Republicans have been doing so and have been stabbed in the back by “moderates” who, contrary to your first sentence tell us we must sacrifice our core principles. You should then have addressed the practicalities: the difficulties and how to overcome them, particularly how Trump can do so.
So as I understand Roy’s position. The GOP needs to stop helping everybody because anything that effects everybody helps whites more than minorities (whites are the majority), which is bad. But should instead abandon the majority of voters because they are white and pander to just minority voters by giving them only entitlements and tax breaks. Meanwhile the GOP should work at removing tax deduction “loop holes” and entitlements from whites when ever possible since these are racist.
So that the home mortgage deduction is bad because it helps whites more than minorities. Despite the fact anybody with a mortgage can get it despite their ethnic status) But a home mortgage deduction that was modified to only apply to minorities would be good since no whites would be helped and the government can get more money from whites to pander to minorities.
Sound great to me.
This smells like leftist demagoguery. I note you never say “This is factually erroneous and here’s why…”
If it is true, that clearly influences how we must address the situation.
It’s theoretically possible to get out of a hole by digging but you have to at least stop digging further down.
The trouble with our friend Avik Roy is not that he’s ignorant; it’s just that he knows so much that isn’t so.
Shhh, Aaron. The man was trying to steal a march there. Pointing it out is rude or something.
We have Obama’s word that he’s a Christian. And if you like your healthcare plan you can keep your healthcare plan. And if you like your doctor …
Do you think that the Honkey Outreach showed up at my door one day, taught me the secret handshake, and promised wealth if I would vote for them?
I learned it from my parents who taught me to behave while other kids ran about the restaurant, open-mouthed, snot-nosed, and dirty shirted.
Conservatism is remarkably unsuited to door-knock agitation and marches in the street. The Democrat “outreach” has been to destroy the black family, and is now making inroads on everybody else. If Republicans want to reach out to various communities, it’s not going to happen by hosting seminars, and it won’t happen by politely refuting the endless supply of meaningless diversionary claims of the left. They argue not to convince, but to distract and delay. Expose these hell-sent charlatans and destroyers for the MLM schemes they peddle — loudly, and in rude terms.
The race-obsessed democrats (and their enablers in the demographic-slicing Republican intelligentsia) have a lot of nerve saying that conservatives operate on the politics of fear. Their carrot is a world in which somebody provides for you, and their stick is “whitey gonna get you.”
Mike, you and Avik proceed from the assumption that white conservatives suffer a lack of affection, do not see minorities as “in the same boat”, etc.
To turn your sin around at you: Mike, why can you not see people simply for who they are? Why must you segregate and separate us by race? Need we make different arguments to different races? We should operate on the soundness of our ideas, and assume colorblind harmony.
I really don’t understand the hostility to equality.
This. It’s not like all the racists suddenly died out. I’m sort of sick of hearing about how Republicans are the Party of Lincoln and the Democrats the party of Civil Rights Era racism when it’s pretty obvious the Republicans would not be able to win those states without becoming appealing to the same voters the Democrats use to represent in the South.
Yeah. Kind of how libertarians are the party of eugenics and genocide. Because logic.
Damn hillbilly southerners, with their buckteeth and strawhats and marrying their sisters.
Had to make her an honest woman. We are conservatives after all
Wow, you guys need to stop identifying so strongly with certain groups. Saying that there are bad people amongst a group does not mean even a majority of people in that group are that way.
If you want to know where the racists went, just study the percentage of blacks who voted for the white guy in the last two Presidential elections.
Truth is necessary. If Republicans and conservatives want to make inroads into communities of poor blacks and hispanics, then they must be willing to call out racial hucksters and agitators for what they are. The GOP cannot coordinate with vile groups like the NAACP and simultaneously promote race-agnostic philosophies.
Republicans must be willing to boldly discuss how Democrat policies harm the poor communities they claim to help and what Democrats are simply lying about. If you want their trust, you must break their trust in the people telling them to hate you. If Republicans talk like lawyers, accountants, or PC sissies who don’t want to say anything risible, the GOP will continue to be dismissed as the weak horse.
And it’s easier to trust someone who doesn’t pander. If a politician is open about disagreements with a community he’s visiting, they will be more apt to believe he’s being honest about values he claims to share with that community.
Amen.
Yeah, people tend to take it personally when you insult their friends and neighbors – which is what you’re doing when you say:
Georgia didn’t have a Republican governor until 2002.
Mississippi didn’t have a Republican governor until 1991.
South Carolina didn’t have a Republican governor until 1979.
North Carolina didn’t have a Republican governor until 1973.
Alabama didn’t have a Republican governor until 1987.
Louisiana didn’t have a Republican governor until 1988 (he switched parties during his turn – first governor elected as a Republican? 1995)
Texas didn’t have a Republican governor until 1979 (a Democrat was elected in 1983).
Florida didn’t have a Republican governor until 1987.
The facts don’t tend to support your narrative about the Republican Party embracing racism, unless it was a secret plot by Ronald Reagan.
He was a lot smarter than his enemies gave him credit for after all.
Now that’s how you win over new people.