By Sam Motley
On January 6th, 2021, the typically uneventful count of the votes of the Electoral College was interrupted by a violent mob of Trump supporters attempting to usurp the democratic process. Despite the eventual routing of the mob and the successful counting of the votes, the event will live on in infamy. The insurrection attempt has sparked discussion about the state of democracy within the United States. A wide contingent of Republican figures have portrayed the riot as an isolated tragedy, or even defended the rioters, blaming the violence on a combination of legitimate grievances and the opportunistic actions of a few bad actors. Among the wider population, opinions on the riot fall along party lines. For many, the insurrection was the predictable end result of the proliferation of racist conspiracy theories and the resurgence of white supremacist groups.
After witnessing President Trump’s use of racist rhetoric, the blatantly white supremacist paraphernalia carried by some rioters, and the ominous gallows and noose erected in front of the Capitol, many pundits and academics have underscored the racial dynamics of the insurrection. However, much of this important discussion has centered narrowly on the most extreme examples of racialized rhetoric and domestic terrorism. The January 6th insurrection and similar attacks are both emblematic and symptomatic of a much more widespread, underdiscussed problem: the growth of white identity politics. White Americans are increasingly embracing a racial identity that includes a sense of “commonality, attachment, and solidarity” that is highly motivated by perceived threats from other racial groups. Studies have linked this group consciousness to antidemocratic sentiments, suggesting that the rise of white identity politics poses a direct threat to American democracy.
To understand how the concept of identity politics is relevant to the January 6th insurrection, the much-abused term requires dissection. The concept began to develop in 1977, when the Combahee River Collective (CRC), a Black feminist group, published “The Combahee River Collective Statement.” In the influential pamphlet, the CRC defined the tenets of Black feminism and confronted the exclusion of Black women from the Civil Rights Movement and leftist groups. The group coined identity politics as a framework for understanding the interlocking axes of oppression against Black women, and believed “the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity.”
This precise definition has expanded exponentially, generally referring to political beliefs and activities focused around a specific constituency’s distinctive identity and issues. The expansion both complicates understanding and permits further analysis. There are two major problems in the basic understanding of white identity politics. In its broad form, identity politics faces a kind of mass “semantic satiation,” or a loss of meaning through repetition. In right-wing media in particular, the term “identity politics” has joined a menagerie of buzzwords such as “woke,” “cancel culture,” and “political correctness,” and chronic overuse has rendered each term essentially meaningless within the popular lexicon. In reality, the concept of identity politics has serious meaning as a measure of group consciousness with political consequences.
This overuse precipitates the second, more specific obstacle to understanding white identity politics. With rare deviation, popular conversation around identity politics presupposes that socially advantaged groups are nonpractitioners, allowing for the white racial attitude to be construed as a default, invisible state. In the 1980s, Black writers such as Toni Morrison and James Baldwin began to explicitly explore whiteness as an identity with political consequences, and political scientists and sociologists in the mid-1990s began to study white identity with both abstract theory and empirical data. However, the global rise of ethnonationalist and populist authoritarianism has led to more widespread discussion of the movements’ underlying racial dynamics.
Amid the concerning rise of antidemocratic populism, Dr. Ashley Jardina’s research and analysis in White Identity Politics provide the most sweeping account of the characteristics and consequences of white identity in America. Her research suggests that the development of white identity is reactionary in nature, responding to perceived threats to the status of whites within society. Strong white identifiers tend to view increasing racial diversity and equality as in inherent conflict with the group interests of whites and “circle the wagons” in response. This inward turn is marked by increased in-group favoritism and may accompany outward racial animus. Again, one only needs to reference right-wing media to witness the extraordinary fear of whites becoming a powerless, terrorized underclass within an increasingly diverse nation. To strong white identifiers, diversification and equality pose harrowing threats to their status, safety, and way of life. Discerning politicians have weaponized this fear. Notably, former President Trump pushed the white genocide conspiracy theory, repeatedly portrayed Mexican immigrants as murderers, rapists, and drug dealers, and promoted the false narrative that the vast majority of killings of white people were committed by Blacks.
Beyond irrational paranoia, whites are given a strategic reason to preserve the racial status quo. Whiteness has a cash value in the United States, and some whites might recognize the pecuniary advantages of shutting other groups out of upward mobility. More explicitly, strong white identifiers often blame their own economic struggles on other racial groups, particularly immigrants. Americans tend to produce largely cultural explanations for structural problems, and former President Trump openly declared that Mexican immigrants are “taking our jobs” and “taking our money.” By pushing these narratives, right-wing populists are able to mobilize poor whites around a common enemy and ignore the complicated, structural reasons for poverty.
Abstracted into theory, complex studies, and inflammatory rhetoric, the consequences of white identity politics may seem immaterial or even hyperbolic. The Capitol insurrection ought to dispel any such illusions. The rhetoric employed by former President Trump and outside organizers is symptomatic of white identity politics, and the resulting attack on democracy is emblematic of the prognosis.
President Joe Biden’s victory in many crucial swing states was highly contingent on Black voting power. As a result, the election fraud conspiracy theories proliferated by Trump and his supporters targeted majority Black cities and attacked the authenticity of their elections. This tactic played directly into the narratives of white identity politics. American democracy and the rights of white voters had been covertly attacked by a minority group, and failing to respond could have frightful consequences. When January 6th arrived, Trump’s racial dog whistles became as loud as bullhorns. In his speech to the mob, he identified the election fraud conspiracy as part of a larger conspiracy to “silence” the voices of his supporters. The unspecified “they” wanted to destroy the Confederate statues and “hurt our monuments, hurt our heroes,” directly linking the election to a threat to white status and history. “They” also wanted to “indoctrinate your children, “use the pretext of the China virus” to steal the election, and “let everybody flow in” from Mexico. This new threat was only further evidence that the “country has been under siege for a long time.” Here, Trump invoked the racial threat aspect of white identity politics, stoking fear and rage. Thankfully, he informed the mob, there was a chance to “take back our country” if only they were courageous enough to act. Since they caught their opponents in fraud, they were “allowed to go by very different rules” than the Republicans who wanted to “play so straight.” He called on them to “show strength” and “fight like hell,” or they “were not going to have a country anymore.” The speech’s rhetorical mechanisms specifically activated the anxiety, resentment, and group consciousness characteristic of white identity politics and used it to attack the democratic process. The Capitol insurrection remains the most salient proof that white identity politics is the dominant framework for fostering and mobilizing antidemocratic action and sentiment within the United States.
Despite these telltale signs of a broader problem at the Capitol insurrection, one might still be inclined to write off these rioters as extreme examples disconnected from the whole. The truth is that between 30 and 40 percent of white Americans identify with their race in a politically consequential way. This identification does not always overlap with racism, and plenty of those identifiers reject blatant white supremacy, but it is certainly correlated to negative racial sentiment. Even more concerning, the racial sentiments present in white identity politics have a “substantial negative effect” on democratic values. Strong white identifiers are more likely to embrace authoritarianism, and ethnic antagonism has a positive linear relationship with antidemocratic sentiments. The continued construction and proliferation of white identity politics indicate that the Capitol insurrection was not the end of a failed effort to usurp one election but the starting gun for a new era of authoritarian threat. Authoritarian and opportunist politicians within the United States have every incentive to foster the embrace of white identity politics. White identity is highly tied to vote choice, and white identity and consciousness were two of the best predictors of support for Trump. These identitarians yearn for “a phantasmic past, an imagined idyllic, unfettered, and uncorrupted historical moment (implicitly located around 1955) when life was good,” elections were fair, and their neighborhoods and jobs were safe. This dream is a far more commanding vision than that of a diverse, egalitarian democracy. Until the United States seriously confronts the racial motivations at the core of authoritarian populism within this country, our fragile democracy can only lie impotently in its sickbed, awaiting the next blow.