Personal Take: Progressives must address racism to enact their agenda

Currently, there are many policy proposals which are important to Democrats. Among these are healthcare reform, housing reform, raising the minimum wage, and voting reform. As a result, there has been a lot of strategic talk among policy analysts, and political operatives about how Democrats can convince independents and even conservatives that reform on many of these issues will be good for them. In general, this involves weighing so-called economic arguments vs. race-based arguments as a strategy. I take particular issue with this type of trade off argument for a variety of reasons.

Let’s take the example of healthcare. A race-based argument for expanded health care is that not only is universal healthcare the right thing to do but it is racially just because Black people are disproportionately affected by the current healthcare system and are disproportionately unlikely to have healthcare due to systemic inequality. An economic argument for healthcare is that the cost of healthcare is unchecked and continues to rise and be incredibly expensive for all Americans and not only is it the right thing to do but it is also a way to actually make healthcare affordable for all people. 

In general, people are more responsive to the economic arguments than they are the race-based arguments. This is not a surprise to anyone who understands at a visceral level that racism exists in various ways. What progressive policy analysts and politicians do is then advocate for forwarding economic arguments in order to avoid activating racial animus.

This strategy is naïve and perhaps tacitly racist. It incorporates an approach of acknowledging that racist sentiment exists and attempting to trick people who are prejudiced to vote against their racist interests in service of their economic interest. One would think this is actually a sensible bet to make given that people generally prize their economic interest above and beyond anything else.

However, this minimizes the pervasiveness of racism as a social construct at least in America. Racism is and has been trumping economic self-interest in America for a very long time. In addition, the arguments surrounding all the aforementioned issues have been ongoing for several decades. In general, a cursory look into any of these issues reveals racist sentiment at the root of a high proportion of income inequality. More directly, almost everything on the progressive agenda would disproportionately help minorities. This is because American society wasn’t historically split by class alone. Rather, it designated particular races to particular classes. Insofar as there are a large number of poor white people, the social construct confers upon them advantages that are solely attributable to race. 

Therefore, when Progressives proffer an economic argument on something like healthcare, Conservatives stand ready to roll out a wide variety of dog whistle arguments which highlight the disproportionate assistance minorities would receive and the issue becomes racially polarized. Extending healthcare is cast as helping illegal immigrants get free healthcare. Housing reform is cast as allowing poor Black people to “destroy the suburbs,” raising the minimum wage is cast as giving raises to the undeserving, voter reform is cast as helping Black churches commit voter fraud. 

When Progressives talk about avoiding race-based arguments, they minimize the pervasiveness of institutional racism, overlook the cumulative effects of implicit bias, and downplay the effect of zero sum thinking. Ever since they adopted the southern strategy, Conservatives have become professionals at taking seemingly benign policy issues and adding a racial subtext to them. That is and has been essentially the political tradecraft of the Republican Party.

Progressives must face the truth. The only way to truly enact their agenda is to take racism head on, because all of their agenda is inextricably tied to racial equity. This means they can’t simply choose a strategy of economic argument while diminishing or ignoring the racial arguments. Success for Progressives will mean that when they advocate for changes in policy based on racial equality the majority of people will be receptive. This means they must engage in a wholesale assault on racial inequality in order to change the hearts and minds of people. Only then will they be able to fully implement a Progressive platform.