Wanting to post something meant for a now-closed Trump thread. I really, really don't like the narrative that everybody who voted for Trump is an open bigot who can never be converted.
Not really interested in pandering to white nationalism.
Writing off nearly 60 million voters as a bunch of irretrievable white supremacists is arrogant, childish, and incredibly dangerous. Trump won 33% of the Hispanic vote. Many of his supporters elected a black man eight years ago.
We need to recognizie that racism is (1) not an immutable aspect of identity and (2) not necessarily the driving factor behind a vote. There is no dichotomy between racists and non-racists. Essentially all people have some racial prejudice. We can engage with racists just as easily as we can engage with people with other odious views, like Johnson voters who hate welfare or religious bigots who believe gay adoption will lead to more rape. The centrist liberal attitude of viewing racism as an unchangeable blight on one's moral character both ignores why racism exists and offers no solution to change these bigoted views. Moreover, we can't assume that racism is the biggest factor behind a Trump vote. Trump won not because he's a racist but because enough moderate whites looked past his racism. Had Hillary given more specific attention to these casually racist voters, she wouldn't have lost the safe states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
We don't need to pander to people with racist views but we need to speak to them and prevent them from supporting the demagogues who approach them. If we don't do this, they'll never change and the Right will win.
Conscious whites have a particular burden to fight race-baiting candidates and challenge the prejudices of their friends and relatives. In 2016, these people didn't do this. Instead, they shared smug New Yorker articles on Facebook and hoped blue collar Boomers in economically depressed areas would just magically come to their senses.
