When Racists Called Themselves “Racists”
Today, even the most hardened white supremacists are reluctant to use the term for themselves
“I am not a racist. I’m the least racist person you have ever interviewed.”
So declared Donald Trump in response to one of his many controversial statements about race — in this case, his query in 2018 as to why so many people from “shithole countries” were coming to the United States.
Leaving aside the question of whether Trump actually is a racist, it is clear that today virtually no one, not right-wing politicians like Trump, and not even the most hardened white supremacist, wants to call themselves a racist.
This has not always been the case.
The word “racist” has been around for a little more than a hundred years and, for most of its history, it has been applied in a negative way to someone else, particularly after World War II and the term’s association with the Nazis. Nazis helped to make racism — the word as well as the thing — unfashionable.
But, in the early days of the term, some people proudly used “racist” with reference to their own views.
