Trump has a tendency to say overtly racist things, but Republican policies have been racist long before the orange tangerine ever stepped into the oval office. It’s scary to insist on anything otherwise. Normalizing “good” Republicans is not the right way to defeat Trumpism. All it does is normalize Republican policies that have long disadvantaged certain minorities but may not have been explicitly promoted with Trump’s signature racism. Instead, Republican policies have historically been promoted with a smile (reduce taxes! make people independent!), but have been racist in execution. Anyone who finds themselves on the left does a huge disservice on insisting anything otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong, Democrats have also implemented their fair share of racist policies. We need to deal with those issues within our party (*cough* Bill Clinton's crime bill, Obama’s deportations *cough*). For right now, though, I want to focus on how Republicans have had a history of systematically racist policies. I think it’s necessary. Apparently, some liberals seem to believe that there was an imaginary period of time where racists were gone from our government before Trump’s election.
Shall we start with the financial crisis (The Great Recession)? It’s one of the best examples in the country of how systematic racism has held down people of color.
Deregulating the banks, subprime mortgages, the financial crisis itself — it hurt people of color far more disproportionately than whites. Thanks to conservative policies favoring deregulation, banks had no checks. Before the housing crisis, the median net worth for a black family was $63,000. In 2010, following the crash, the median net worth for a black family was $4,900, less than 8 percent of what it was before. No joke. Many white families lost wealth as well, but there was no comparison between the two figures. The conservative policies, when implemented, kept people of color down at a time when they were quickly growing in wealth. In 2016, years after the economy had “recovered,” the median net worth for black families had only recovered to $16,600.
Or should we talk about the minimum wage? Donald Trump famously said that wages are too high, but the Republican Party has a long history of fighting minimum wage increases. The greatest impact of a low wage hits people of color. Remember, although many presume that only young people work on minimum wage, about half of minimum wage workers are over the age of 25 in reality. Many have families. Without good wages, people don’t have economic mobility and neither do their kids.
Minorities are far more likely to have a low-paying job. While 36 percent of white workers make less than $15 an hour (a figure that’s still far too high, in my opinion), the rate for African Americans is 54 percent and 59 percent for Latinos. With such a stark difference, Republican policies are systematically holding minorities behind whites, many of which are born into families with more wealth and income than their counterparts of other races.
Finally, let’s talk about the right to choose. African American women have rates of abortion three times higher than white women. Other women of color also have significantly higher rates than do white women. But, since people of color are more likely to be living in poverty or holding down a low-wage job, the prospect of an unwanted pregnancy presents a huge financial burden to women of color. The average cost of raising a child is over $230,000, and there’s nothing more likely to keep you in poverty than an unexpected expense that large.
The freedom of choice is not only matter of privacy for women, but also a right of economic independence. Abortion is a difficult decision, but for many women, it might be the difference between a life of poverty and the middle class. Laws intended to prohibit women the right to their own body are far more likely to affect people of color, systematically binding them to an increased chance of poverty as a result. At almost every route that a person in poverty might take to reach the middle class, the Republican party has set up barriers to ensure the path is more difficult. Unfortunately, these barriers far more often stand in the way of people of color than whites.
These are just a few examples of overtly racist effects as a result of not so overtly-racist policy. There are a ton more and I might highlight those examples in the future. Don’t get me wrong, many whites also have poor economic conditions as a result of these laws. But looking at the numbers, the policies have been, almost to a surgical precision in many cases, disadvantaging people of color as opposed to whites.
These policies did not arrive with Trump, but have been conservative Republican staples since at least the Nixon years. Sure, Republicans haven’t been keen to use overtly racist rhetoric until now, but their nice words have disguised racist policies that have codified systematic racism in our country. It is good for liberals to remember that. After all, at one point Republicans are probably going to get their shit together and stop saying overtly racist stuff. There might be a “nice guy” like John Kasich running for office. Look at the results of their legislation, though. They are just a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
P.S. Obviously, criminal justice is another area where we see racist laws. I feel like this is discussed often and a lot of people are familiar with what’s wrong with our system, but here’s a quick summary. African Americans are 8 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana, even though they use marijuana at the same rate as whites. The War on Drugs was mostly pursued to arrest minorities, not because it was good policy. They also get longer sentences for the same crimes. Private prisons incentivize arrests, but not rehabilitation. African Americans are more likely to be arrested again. And, since African Americans are incarcerated at far higher rates, they are far more likely to be used for low-cost prison labor like firefighting, which is pretty much modern day slavery.