Hard White

Abstract

Abstract This book analyzes data from a variety of sources to understand the mainstreaming of racism today, putting this research in a historical context. With issues of globalization, immigration, and demographic diversification achieving greater public salience, racism is now more likely to manifest itself in the form of a generalized ethnocentrism that expresses “outgroup hostility” toward a diverse set of groups, including Latinos and Muslims as well as African Americans. Changes in both structure and agency have facilitated the mainstreaming of racism today. Changes in the “political opportunity structure,” as witnessed by the rise of the Tea Party Movement, enabled the mainstreaming of white extremists into the Republican Party and established the basis for an electoral politics focused on giving voice to white people more generally acting on their outgroup hostility. Changes in the political opportunity structure were matched by the appearance of a charismatic leader in the person of Donald Trump, who made great use of a transformed media landscape to stoke white people’s outgroup hostility. Trump won the presidency by strategically deploying his demagoguery to mobilize white nonvoters in swing states, with the end result greatly accelerating the mainstreaming of racism and placing it at the center of policymaking in the White House. Providing extensive empirical evidence, this book documents how the mainstreaming of racism today began before Trump started to run for the presidency but then increased under his leadership and that it is likely to be a troubling presence in U.S. politics for some time to come. The findings provided create the basis for suggestions on how to push racism back to the margins of American politics.