MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: A strange thing is happening in the GOP. They are denying they are racist

Updated: 9/6/21 to reflect a discussion of critical race theory.

A strange thing is happening in the GOP. Major leaders are planning a public campaign to deny they are racist. The message is a garbled one, denying racism exists in America while supporting laws and policies to suppress gains in civil and voting rights of racial minorities. At a recent conference, some carried the message farther: racism is not a family value.‘America is not racist’ becomes a GOP 2024 mantra - POLITICO It is yet to be seen whether this signifies a serious rift between those appearing to be moderates and those who see value in beating racial drums in the GOP

Among the GOP's recent talking point campaigns has been a cooked-up war against a red herring, "critical race theory", about how the history of slavery and civil rights are taught in schools. Many of us supporting civil rights, including me, had never heard of the term or much less considered or advocated"critical race theory." I am one who believes in fairness as a fundamental value worthy to support.. Both institutions and society reflect and feed each other, are constantly changing, and are shaped by many forces, including experience, custom, and culture. When nearly all people believe they are treated fairly, democracy. and economic and social stability thrive. Full stop.

I looked for a neutral definition of "critical race theory" and found clarity in the Encyclopedia Britannica. .critical race theory | Definition, Principles, & Facts | Britannica" intellectual movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of colour. Critical race theorists hold that the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans."

I find critical race theory simplistic and lopsided. Institutions are not the sole cause of racism, but are reflective of many factors and can contribute to mitigate or exacerbate No doubt my views are shaped by growing up in one of the most racist societies in America, eastern Oklahoma, student days in post-war Berlin, and close family connections to Bosnia, where there was a history of demagogues exploiting existing social and religious hatreds to rise to power, and then to shape the official and unofficial acting out and institutionalizing of their policies.

Those Republicans who resent being called racist are often the same who want to downplay the dark history the African American experience in schools and in the military. Those teaching about affirmative action denied they were teaching the so-called critical race theory or exaggerating this history of America's treatment of racial minorities and see the value in creating a better understanding between the races.,

This newest push in the GOP is after years of their southern strategy to gain staunch political support among the former slave states in the wake of the civil rights movement and the passage of the 1964 civil rights act led by a Democrat, President Johnson. The former Dixiecrat states flipped to Republicans in subsequent elections and the anti-slavery party of Lincoln became the party of voter suppression. and rolling back civil rights gains.

The GOP has dominated southern states since then, reaching its high point with the election of Donald Trump. Trump's campaign rally oratory contained allusions to racist tropes and "dog whistles". He gained his political notoriety as a birther to claim Obama was not a legitimate president because he was born in Kenya (never proved and Obama had to "show us his papers" and proof of Hawaiian birth)... He launched his campaign for president by calling Central American migrants rapists and murderers. While president, he patted white nationalists on the back as "fine people" as they were waving the Confederate flag or its derivatives in Charlottesville. It became an open season to vilify the personal and physical attributes of those they feared or disdained. One of the nastiest I saw depicted a cartoonish, evil-looking Michelle Obama. Others promoting the "big lie" of Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election results base on unproven claims of fraud, depicted photoshopped memes showing only black people looking like they were committing some sort of election fraud and conflating racism and fear of loss of institutional power. Since then, Georgia, and Texas have enacted draconian laws, copycatted by other red-state legislatures, aimed at making it harder for those they saw as opposition voters, mostly African Americans, to make it to the polls, and putting party hacks in charge of counting votes. Some of these even make it possible for GOP party-dominated state legislatures to ignore the popular vote for president when they are on the losing side and send their party representatives to the electoral college instead. The GOP's strategy to turn the Supreme Court into a pro-life, body has been successful so that body has become more culturally conservative. The Court can no longer be counted on to protect gains in both civil and women's rights made in the past 50 years.s. We will soon see if the two issues in the "cultural wars" have similar outcomes as challenges to their constitutionality come before the Supreme Court. ...

There are political implications of this for 2022 and 2024. Some in the GOP attending the conference must have been struck on the road to Damascus that being a supporter of white nationalism is no longer a cool thing or a good election strategy Biden significantly increased support from independent voters over Trump's 2016 record per a recent Pew Center analysis. A meme posted recently tried to turn the tables on history claiming that Obama was the cause of racism in this country because he is the one that divided us. What? For just being African American? I have long thought that the current "culture wars" were a backlash to him personally.

On one hand, I welcome this realization among some Republicans that being racist is not a GOP value, or a family or Christian value, for that matter. At least it is some acknowledgment that being called a racist is also not a good thing. This could bring an element of peace to this land so full of hate if it is just more than changing messaging. On the other hand, let us also watch what Republicans are doing in their legislative bodies and with voter suppression tactics. That they will ever convince those who are the target of racism the GOP has seen the light is doubtful (80% of African Americans self-identified themselves as Democrats in 2020 per a Princeton research publication), but it might lure those who would like to think a vote for the GOP is no longer an indication of the bad character of a racist., Those in the GOP can begin by laying off vicious Facebook posts that photoshop minorities into scary figures doing evil things. Part of this revision should be to condemn what Donald Trump did and to acknowledge that he made the racial divide much worse by hitching his wagon to racism and praising racists and white nationalism to rise to power.

. To be a better country, we need to know what, why, and how to improve and achieve the promises of our country. From the Preamble to the Constitution: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America". Those who were not a party or included at the time of the writing of this in 1787 have become the posterity.

What is Critical Race Theory? A Brief History Explained - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

critical race theory | Definition, Principles, & Facts | Britannica