Ahead of the election, racial tension and violence is increasing. And it’s not both sides. It’s one. The Republican Party has used racist dog whistles for decades to motivate a portion of their base. Now, since the rise of Trump, they’re more like referees’ whistles, loud and obnoxious.
Here in North Carolina, the vice-Chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, Michele Nix, posted a blatantly racist meme to Instagram. The image showed a white hand is making the “ok” symbol, a symbol adopted by white supremacists, with a GOP elephant on its wrist and the word “Jobs” above it. Next to it is a raised African-American fist with a Democratic donkey on its wrist and the words “Not mobs.”
Nix defended the meme saying the raised fist is “a #COMMUNIST symbol now adopted by the #Democrats.” That’s not true. It’s the Black Power symbol originating in the sixties and the only people who thought it was communist were the racists trying to discredit the Civil Rights Movement. As for the white supremacist sign, maybe Nix didn’t know the symbol had been co-opted but if she didn’t, she certainly does now and she should have apologized.
Republican Party Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse took the Trump policy of never admitting error or backing down. When Democratic Minority Leader Darren Jackson criticized the image as “disgusting,” Woodhouse accused him of race-baiting, saying, “Maybe she does not see race in EVERYTHING. YOU DO!”
You don’t have to see race in everything to see the racial overtones of that meme, but if you can’t see them, then you’re you’re almost certainly a racist, whether you know it or not. That’s the problem with racists, they don’t know they’re bigots because they lack the ability to see other people’s perspectives, especially those different from them. So yeah, that meme is racist and the people defending should take a hard look at themselves.
You know what else is racist, or at least bigoted? Sending mailers accusing native North Carolinians of having “New York values” and being “Not one of us;” saying there are people of Middle Eastern origin in the caravan of Central Americans moving through Mexico; saying white supremacists are “good people”; accusing Hispanic people of being rapists and murders; running ads that have white hands and a narrator that says “You needed that job but it went to a minority”; Willie Horton; “welfare queens” and on and on.
That’s not both sides. That’s one side—the GOP. Former KKK Grand Dragon David Duke supports Donald Trump. The New York GOP hosted the racist thugs who call themselves the “Proud Boys.” As Andrew Gillum said of his opponent last night, “I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.” Gillum summed up the whole Republican Party.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
0 Comments