Fighting Antiwhite Bigotry Is Both Principled and Politically Smart

The notion that conservatives care about discrimination against whites is merely a “myth,” according to an article published last week by Law & Liberty.

Citing the 2024 American National Election Survey, which asked voters a battery of questions on many topics but included questions like, “How important is being white to your identity?” and gauged their perceptions of discrimination based on whiteness, author George Hawley tries to make the case that the GOP should move on from these concerns and away from the MAGA coalition that won the presidency for Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Hawley notes that in the 2024 survey,

"the percentage of white Republicans who considered race extremely or very important to their sense of identity was only about 23 percent, a sizable drop compared to 2012. The percentage of white Republicans reporting high levels of anti-white discrimination moved scarcely at all—about 12 percent."

These figures leave Hawley wondering why any Republican notable would rise to the defense of Bo French, whom he obviously considers to be a racial bigot appealing to “white identitarians.” According to Hawley, “the only reasonable interpretation of Bo’s post [about the growing number of South Asians at the University of Texas] is that he is perturbed that these students were not white.”

Hawley, for his part, is clearly disturbed that “some conservatives came to French’s defense,” and he attributes this to the radicalization of Republican publicists and operatives caused to some degree by the “unapologetically nationalist and identitarian conservatism” that came in the wake of Trump’s electoral victory in 2024.

Trump, according to Hawley, ran his 2024 campaign on a “nativist platform” and has “energized a new generation of right-wing activists committed to this vision. Perhaps color-blind conservatives really have become colorblind anachronisms.”

Despite my respect for Hawley as a number cruncher, I suspect his argument here is driven more by his own partisan passion for the days of fusionism than calm analysis of the data.

What evidence does he have that Trump is a racialist? I can find absolutely none. In fact, in his presidential campaigns our current head of state campaigned energetically in black neighborhoods and won more black votes in 2024 than any Republican in decades.

Unlike his Democratic opponents, Trump has opposed racially based quotas in the form of DEI for admission to universities and government positions. It is his detractors, not Trump, who reject advancement based on merit rather than race or gender.

Moreover, if Hawley bothered to read our posted commentaries on Bo French, he would find the reasons that conservatives may share French’s concerns without giving French a pass for his clumsy rhetoric.

University positions are going to foreign students often at the expense of American ones; the political and cultural landscape of Texas is being decisively altered by the influx of Third World and Asian populations, and if the culturally radical James Talarico becomes the state’s next senator, those demographic changes will have played a critical role.

Why exactly should right-of-center Republicans be delighted with the transformation that French was at least implicitly deploring?

Even more problematic for me is Hawley’s efforts to show that either there is no woke reconstruction of America taking place, or if perchance one is occurring, then we shouldn’t do anything to disturb it, because the Republican base is not moved by MAGA’s “racial demagoguery.” Even if it is true that only 23 percent of those surveyed in the study cited by Hawley believe that being white is “very important” to their identity, that doesn’t change the fact that the campaign he decries won the election in the same year this survey was taken.

More to the point, unlike Hawley, I’m not sure that information should cause Republicans to stop grousing about unjust leftist policies directed against whites, males, and other groups disfavored by the left.

Hawley infers from this declining number that the Republican base no longer resents the anti-white prejudice being practiced by educational and political institutions.

It’s not clear that’s the case: Whites and particularly white male Christians have been so persistently insulted and made to feel guilty for the failings of blacks that they may be reluctant to admit their feelings in conversation with pollsters. They may fear that divulging confidential information to leftist pollsters could harm them professionally or socially. We know that many Trump voters showed the same hesitancy.

Moreover, if a quarter of Republicans surveyed still indicate that their white identity is important to them, as an electoral matter that concern should not be summarily dismissed. It is doubtful that among Democrats a higher percentage of them wish to allow biological men into women’s sports or favor “gender-affirming surgery” for children. Yet, American Democrats cater to their trans electorate and are “global outliers” even in relation to leftist parties in Europe.

Democrats, who are dependent on cultural radicals, have readily given way on what may be a minority position in their party. Why shouldn’t Republican leaders notice that a quarter of their electorate regard their white identity as something important to them?

The appropriate, non-racist Republican response to this concern would be government directives against antiwhite bigotry, especially against minority set asides that deliberately discriminate against white men. Unfortunately, from Hawley’s remarks we may surmise that he would regard such a measure as potentially expressive of white racism.

Finally, national parties sometimes push positions that are not initially popular but which they support for reasons of principle. Thus, Democrats promoted gay marriage even when it did not command majority support; and for years Republicans took an anti-abortion position that only a minority of the country backed.

I believe Republicans are right to stand emphatically against DEI and to take a hard stand on immigration, including the legal kind, for the good of our country. And I’m taking those stands not as a “white identitarian” but as an American.

I feel stupider for reading this. I don’t know anyone going around obsessing about being white. You either are white or not.

Now, I do know people that are being discriminated because they are white and that is the problem.

They make it sound like white people go around making everything about being white, which is just stupid.

Money quote here:

“Whites and particularly White male Christians...may be reluctant to admit their feelings in conversation with pollsters. They may fear that divulging confidential information to leftist pollsters could harm them professionally or socially.”

Only Whites are punished or shamed for admitting that their own race is important to them. Blacks, Asians, Indians and all other groups do not feel this way about their own respective races.

Discrimination is discrimination no matter which race and it is not OK to pass over Whites for colleges, scholarships, jobs, careers and promotions, as is common with DEI policies.

I don’t know anyone going around obsessing about being white.

Assuming you're white, a whole lot of left-of-center people obsess about your white skin. And hate you for it.

Your saying that you don't think about being white will not give you a pass when they come for you.

Was it because they weren’t white? Or was it because they aren’t native-born Texans and Americans attending a state University (that is at least conceptually, there to serve the citizens of that state...not foreigners)

They make it sound like white people go around making everything about being white

Which is a natural reaction to the fact that blacks go around making everything about being black, as do other racial and ethnic "minorities" to various degrees. Their self-identity is defined in terms of anti-white bigotry. White nationalism is simply the cultural backlash not only against anti-white hatred by non-whites, but by a mass culture and education system that tries to beat self-hatred into white kids (e.g. "check your white privilege", Project 1619, etc).

The only way you can prove you’re not a racist is to send me as much money as you can on a regular basis. My purchase and use of fine automobiles really sticks it to Whitey.
Please help me keep the dream alive.

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