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How did it come to this? A racial reckoning. An antiracist revolution. My cover essay for the Sept. issue @TheAtlantic argues America is ending its denial. No president has caused more Americans to stop denying the existence of racism than Donald Trump. 1/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/the-end-of-denial/614194/
As Trump’s horrific presidency hopefully nears its end, Americans should be thankful to him in only one respect. He has shown Americans what Americans did not want to see. 2/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/the-end-of-denial/614194/
He has held up a mirror to American society, and it has reflected back a grotesque image that too many people had until now refused to see: an image not just of the racism still coursing through the country, but also of the reflex to deny that reality. 3/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/the-end-of-denial/614194/
Big shifts in views of race were already under way before the COVID-19 disparities became clear and these latest examples of police violence. What we are seeing is the culmination of a longer process that tracks closely with Trump’s political career. 4/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/the-end-of-denial/614194/
The America that denied its racism through the Obama years has struggled to deny its racism through the Trump years. The high levels of Americans denying racism during the Obama era started to decline rapidly in 2015 with Trump's political arrival. 5/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/the-end-of-denial/614194/
Trump has forced White Americans especially to reckon with their nation’s racism, and perhaps their own. Trump’s denials after he’s clearly been racist—that he’s the least racist person—has compelled a reckoning w/ the sound of denial, “I’m not racist.” 6/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/the-end-of-denial/614194/
Just as the march of slaveholders in the 1850s helped pave the way for the revolution against slavery in the 1860s, Trump’s presidency has paved the way for a revolution against racism.
But will Americans walk the antiracist way of systemic change? 7/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/the-end-of-denial/614194/
But will Americans walk the antiracist way of systemic change? 7/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/the-end-of-denial/614194/
