Why Shaming Republican Candidates For Their Bigotry Won't Work

The Democrats and media are correct in calling out the unequivocally bigoted campaign rhetoric coming from numerous Republicans, but at this point, it's very moot. Now this is by many of these heads openly taking that shame, and turning it into a badge of honor. Some on the left have every incentive to pin this spike in hateful speech on Donald Trump, but they're thoroughly going after the wrong person.

Trump is the figure who's been blurting the quieter part of the Republican Party's numerous coded and bigoted tropes out loud, which had invariably marked a change in tone. But he's not the cause for all of this, especially not the direct one. That honor falls onto greater figures of yesteryear. These are people such as James Buckley and Robert Welch, both of whom had entirely opposed the ending of segregation and the onset of Civil Rights. Doing so starting right back in 1954 with the ruling of Brown v. Board. 

So for all this bigoted horseshit that Republicans have been saying on the campaign trail, it's a clear sign that the party so taking a chapter out of Trump's playbook. But at the same time, it's also a sign that all these new Dixiecans are picking up from where their Dixiecrat ancestors were stymied in the 1960s and 1970s. Trying to get rid of the Civil Rights laws which outlawed Jim Crow. All with its unremittingly mandated segregation and discrimination.

For Republicans, it's not so much about gaining power as a party, it's about a section of America seeking total revenge for what it determines as encroachment on its rights: the White South, specifically of its elites. Some members of this clique have a thoroughly long history of using such bellicose language whenever they don't get their way. To them, it's about preserving a power structure which can actually only run smoothly upon the suffering of non-Whites, especially Blacks. They and Hispanics/Latinos are overwhelmingly targetted for either their dark skin tones, or for speaking in the wrong language, or both. Bear in mind, this is only a small fraction of this group which we're talking about, not the overwhelming majority.

Dispelling The Myth That Racism Is Respectable

I'll be very clear, there are many people in America who absolutely think that racism and race-baiting is respectable. These people in my opinion need to have their heads examined. If anything, we in America are tired of race-based dog-whistle politics and we're tired of it being used as a distractionary tactic from the thievery that's been happening in Washington. Americans are tired of having these Southernized politics for a clear reason, it's an ugly reminder of how horrid we behaved in the past when it came to race.

It's not respectable to go around making dog-whistle calls, or for that matter, start to shout "White Power!" at political rallies. White supremacy has made an ugly stain on our past, and the best way to overcome it is through understanding the experiences of people on the receiving end of its most violent forms. This is why we need to make our voices heard to the racial demagogues and White supremacists that we soundly reject their calls to reestablish a racial caste system yet again.

Let's make 2016 the year that we reject the old racialized establishment we've inherited from our parents and grandparents.