When Racists Called Themselves “Racists”

Today, even the most hardened white supremacists are reluctant to use the term for themselves

Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler (Fox Photos/Getty)

“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.

When Journalists Should Say “Racist”?

Probably the first use of the term came in French. This was in 1892, in an obscure novel called Jean Révolte, by the Parisian writer Gaston Méry. Méry was a member of the French far right and became involved with (and eventually editor-in-chief of) the anti-Semitic newspaper, La Libre Parole, originally founded by Édouard Drumont. But beyond just anti-Semitism, Méry also wanted to draw attention to what he saw as the toxic presence of French southerners — the méridionaux — in the nation’s politics.

The méridionaux were thought to differ racially from the northerners: they were members of the Latin race, unlike northerners who were of the Celtic race. While Jews were after money, Méry thought, the méridionaux were after power and influence. Together, these two groups worked hand-in-hand to wrest control from and…