EVERY ELECTION CYCLE, DEMOCRATS run campaigns against Republicans, accusing them of being racist, of wanting to put blacks in chains (as Vice President Joe Biden so crudely charged during the 2012 election). Nor is it just Democratic politicians who think this way. In arguments with progressives over what might have seemed simple policy disagreements, what conservative has not had the unpleasant experience of being called a racist, sexist, homophobe, xenophobe, or Islamophobe? If you think America should have secure borders and a legal process for immigration, as every other nation does—Mexico in particular—you are immediately in danger of having a progressive label you “anti-immigrant,” “racist,” and “xenophobic” (if they know the word). That is how progressives and Democrats talk, and that is how they think.
In the second debate, Hillary actually called Trump a “racist,” which is probably also unprecedented in presidential debates. “He has really started his political activity,” she said, “based on this racist lie that our first black president was not an American citizen.”1 This was a reference to Trump’s role in pressuring Obama to produce his birth certificate, something Obama had resisted doing two years into his presidency. The issue spoke to his qualifications to be president, since the Constitution stipulates that the president has to be American by birth. Since Obama was notorious for playing fast and loose with the truth, in particular for making up “facts” about his biography, and since his father was a Kenyan national, this was hardly an unreasonable question to pursue.2 Nor would a suggestion that Obama was not an American citizen fall into the category of “lie,” let alone “racist.” Trump continued his pursuit after questions were raised by others about the birth certificate Obama produced. That was unwise, but Trump’s rejoinder to Clinton was to point out that it was she herself who had originated the so-called birther claim in her 2008 primary fight with Obama. Her own campaign strategist in 2016 conceded that this was true and that she had indeed attempted to show that Obama was not an American by birth.3 In other words, the birther claim only became “racist” when raised by a Republican.
It is particularly significant that these charges of racism not only against Trump but against Republicans generally come at a time when America has driven the racists who still exist underground—or at least the white racists. What public figure can reasonably be called an antiblack racist other than the universally condemned David Duke? Far from being racists, Americans are generally the most tolerant people on the planet, certainly in comparison to any other country with large minority communities. William H. Frey of the Brookings Institution points out these statistics: “Sociologists have traditionally viewed multiracial marriage as a benchmark for the ultimate assimilation of a particular group into society. Black-white marriages were still illegal in 16 states until 1967. And a 1958 Gallup poll found that only 4% of Americans approved of black-white marriages. Today that number is 87%. In 1960, of all marriages by blacks, only 1.7% were black-white. Today it’s 12% and rising.”4 Orlando Patterson is a renowned liberal Harvard sociologist with award-winning works on the study of slavery and race. Patterson is also black, but in his judgment, America “is the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protections of minorities than any other society, white or black; [and] offers more opportunities to greater numbers of black persons than any other society, including those of Africa.”5
This is the reality, yet Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama regard America as “systemically racist” and deploy the race card as a political weapon every chance that presents itself. If it is evident that American society is not racist, why are these accusations against Republicans and conservatives so common as to be almost predictable? They are predictable because they are effective in marginalizing and discrediting opponents of the progressive agenda. And they are effective because Republicans, with rare exceptions like Donald Trump, have no effective response—no counterattack—to neutralize them.
The real effect of calling people racists is to drum them out of the company of decent people and to stigmatize them as “extremists,” social outcasts, and unsuitable to participate in any legitimate conversation. It is because America is not a racist society that there is an American consensus that racists—or at least white racists—are hateful. If Democrats call you a racist because you are a conservative or a Republican, that tells you that you are hated because you are a conservative or a Republican; you are irredeemable and belong in the “basket of deplorables.”