Recently the New York Times ran Gordon Davis’ op-ed What Woodrow Wilson Cost My Grandfather. That said, it would be a mistake to focus only on the negative. Now is the time to start contingency planning for intensified resistance to mass deportations of immigrants, atrocities against Muslims and extreme danger to African Americans. Once upon a time I foolishly thought that there was no way that Ronald Reagan could get elected president.
To the contrary, given the possibility that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson or one of their ilk might become president, white supremacist ideology seems to be digging in harder than ever. Beneath the sound and fury generated by GOP presidential candidates, Fox News, website trolls, police unions and others, white people are becoming aware as never before of past and present racism.Īdmittedly, this encouraging development is hardly the dominant view. And just as some whites played a part in ending slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow segregation, and South African apartheid, there is surely a role whites can play in restraining other whites in this era. The time for replacing white supremacy with new values is now.
