The Heartbeat of Racism Is Denial
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/opinion/sunday/heartbeat-of-racism-denial.html
When our reality is too ugly, we deny reality. It is too painful to look at. Reality is too hard to accept.
Mental health experts routinely say that denial is among the most common defense mechanisms. Denial is how the person defends his superior sense of self, her racially unequal society.
Mr. Trump appears to be unifying America ? unifying Americans in their denial. The more racist Mr. Trump sounds, the more Trump country denies his racism, and the more his opponents look away from their own racism to brand Trump country as racist. Through it all, America remains a unified country of denial.
Fifty years ago, Richard Nixon transformed this historic heartbeat of denial into an intoxicating political philosophy. His presidential candidacy appealed to George Wallace-type segregationists while also attracting Americans who refused to live near ?dangerous? black residents, obstructed the desegregation of schools, resisted affirmative action policies, framed black mothers on welfare as undeserving, called the black family pathological and denigrated black culture ? all those racists who refused to believe they were racist in 1968.
Nixon designed his campaign, one of his advisers explained, to allow a potential supporter to ?avoid admitting to himself that he was attracted by? the ?racist appeal.?
A new vocabulary emerged, allowing users to evade admissions of racism. It still holds fast after all these years. The vocabulary list includes these: law and order. War on drugs. Model minority. Reverse discrimination. Race-neutral. Welfare queen. Handout. Tough on crime. Personal responsibility. Black-on-black crime. Achievement gap. No excuses. Race card. Colorblind. Post-racial. Illegal immigrant. Obamacare. War on Cops. Blue Lives Matter. All Lives Matter. Entitlements. Voter fraud. Economic anxiety.
The denials using these phrases come from both conservatives and white liberals who think people of color are stuck in cycles of unstable families and criminal cultures, and that the deprivations of poverty and discrimination spin out bad people.
When someone identifies the obvious, Mr. Trump resounds the beat of denial as he did before he was president: ?I?m the least racist person that you?ve ever met,? that ?you?ve ever seen,? that ?you?ve ever encountered.?
Those denials echo the same ones that frustrated Dr. King in 1963 as he sat in a Birmingham jail cell and wrote, ?Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.?
Mr. Trump, I suspect, will go to his grave with his heart beating in denial of the ill will of racism. Many others will as well.
Because we naturally want to look away from our ugliness. We paint over racist reality to make a beautiful delusion of self, of society. We defend this beautiful self and society from our racist reality with the weapons of denial.
Denial is fueled by the stigma associated with being a racist. Feeding the stigma is how ?racist? is considered almost like an identity, a brand.
