Chuck Thompson, in his controversial best-seller “Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto For Southern Secession,” quotes a southern analyst as saying: “Racism in the south is alive and well, but it is not the slack-jawed, tobacco-chewing stereotype of old. The new practitioners [of racism] are young, hip, and completely convinced they don’t have a prejudiced bone in their body. The greatest offenders in America today are the self-conscious and consciously anti-racial white liberals.”
I’ve often thought the same thing as I take walks through leafy Piedmont and see all those “Black Lives Matter” signs in the windows of $4 million mansions. These same homeowners would call 9-1-1 in two seconds if they saw Black people roaming their neighborhood. At the same time, most of them probably voted for Pamela Price because she promised “equity and justice” for Black people, and the wealthy White gentry of Piedmont stand for nothing if not equity and justice for “marginalized” populations.
This is the sad irony of progressive-wokeism today. In Oakland, Carroll Fife never could have been elected were it not for White liberals who convinced themselves that, by voting for a racist with a dubious record, they could expunge their own anti-Black feelings. It’s a sort of twist on the “Christ died for me” theme: By voting for Carroll Fife, I can cleanse my conscience of all guilt, and tell myself (and everybody else) what a moral person I am.
There’s a question that commonly pops up in our politics: Why do conservative White working-class people vote for Republicans, whose politics are so inimical to their own interests? Republicans don’t like the minimum wage, or labor unions, or clean air and water. They don’t like any sort of government-sponsored relief, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and they will never vote to make childcare affordable for working moms. And yet, poor White conservatives flock in droves to the Republican cause. Why?
We can flip the question around and ask, Why do liberal, educated White people flock to progressive candidates, like Price and Fife? It’s easy to point out that by voting for such radicals, these liberal people are acting against their own interests. Their communities become dirtier and less safe. As with the case of Oakland, their cities deteriorate, as the middle class and businesses flee. Everything becomes more run-down and dangerous. This affects wealthier people in the hills as much as it impacts the flatlands, although hill dwellers may feel a little safer because they don’t have to walk International Boulevard at night. So again, why is it that people vote against their own interests?
Behavioral economists point out that voting is not always the rational act most people assume it to be. The individual voter herself may believe she votes for candidate “x” because of x’s positions on the issues. At the same time, deeper, less conscious psychological forces actually influence the way people vote. Among these forces are inherent biases. In the case of MAGA Republicans, these biases may be race-based, or consist of resentment toward so-called “elites,” immigrants and LGBTQ people. Republican politicians skillfully manipulate these biases, through coded messages and wink-wink signals.
In the case of Democratic liberal voters, biases may be against Black people, crime, danger and falling home prices. They may be against homeless encampments and the drug-addled zombies that roam BART and the streets. But in all these cases, liberal Democrats have told themselves they’re consciously anti-racist, pro-homeless, in favor of the underdog. This self-identification is central to their ego structure: without it, self-identity collapses. But there’s an inherent contradiction here. White liberals can’t afford ego collapse, which would throw their entire moral system into chaos. Voting for “progressive” candidates is their get-out-of-jail-free card. They don’t have to deal with their inherent biases, or even admit them. Instead, through the symbolic act of voting for Fife and Price, they can tell themselves that a real racist would never vote for a progressive Black woman. By doing so, they present to the world, and to themselves, as truly anti-racist. All is well in this alternative reality, except for two tragic consequences: their real biases remain unacknowledged, and their communities disintegrate.
This is a somewhat subtle argument, one which you probably could never convince a White liberal to accept. Such is the power of self-deception. It’s also true, as the speaker I quoted said, that “the greatest offenders [of racism] are anti-racial white liberals.” White liberals may not realize it, or be able to admit it, but by keeping true racists, like Price and Fife, in power, they do more to undermine social justice and cohesion, and to keep Black people down, than a thousand conservative Republicans ever could.
Steve Heimoff