Abstract
Journalism, it is said, is the first draft of history. If so, history is a rewrite of that draft. In today's environment, historical analyses written in the midst of rapidly changing events risk the same shortcomings of journalism. Despite their use of sophisticated research, Fording and Schram's Hard White: The Mainstreaming of Racism in American Politics suffers a somewhat similar fate.
To quote another cliché, timing is to political history what location is to real estate. When published, the book's insights situated the Trump campaign and presidency in the larger historical context of American racism, particularly its role in the nation's electoral politics. These insights are still valuable, especially for readers outside the US, as they paint a more complex picture of contemporary developments and Trump's contribution to the country's political and social crises.
The authors attempt to answer two core questions: What role did racism play in the election of Donald Trump? How has racism changed American politics in the Trump era? In nine well-organized, empirically based chapters, they demonstrate how racism, or out-group hostility, evolved as it entered the political mainstream during the past several decades and how the Trump candidacy intensified and exploited this transformation for electoral advantage. They refute several misconceptions about the nature of racism in the U.S., the electoral shifts that produced Trump's upset victory, and the underlying motives of many Trump voters. They conclude with some recommendations as to how to reverse the current dangerous tide.
Chapter 2, ‘The changing face of racism’, describes how economic globalization, demographic transformation, and changes in the political opportunity structure altered longstanding racist animus in the US from an ‘anti-Black’ focus to one that also targeted three other out-groups – the Latinx population, particularly immigrants, Muslims, and Jews. This new environment facilitated the transition of white racism and white identity grievances from the fringe to the mainstream of American politics. Chapters 3 and 4, ‘The rise of the modern White Nationalist Movement’ and ‘The mainstreaming of the White Nationalist Movement’ provide a broader historical perspective that elaborates on this theme. The authors outline the contours and characteristics of the White Nationalist Movement and draw key distinctions not only among white supremacist groups, but also between these groups and other organizations that professed either explicit or implicit racist messages, such as the Tea Party that emerged shortly after the election of Barack Obama. According to Fording and Schram, the Tea Party served a short-term purpose: it enabled the mainstreaming of racism and white nationalism but ultimately lost influence as the Republican Party absorbed its outlier sentiments and took advantage of the increased out-group hostility it generated, setting the stage for Donald Trump.
Five subsequent chapters focus on the role that Trump and his campaign staff played in normalizing extremist rhetoric and mobilizing out-group hostility to his electoral advantage. The new media landscape – Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and the growing power of social media – abetted the receptivity of largely white audiences to Trump's inflammatory language. His campaign capitalized on their influence, especially among low-information, low-cognition voters, by targeting them in so-called battleground states. Due to the vagaries of the American electoral system, this successful targeting strategy enabled Trump to win the Electoral College and the presidency although Hillary Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes. In fact, a shift of approximately 77,000 votes in three key states accounted for Trump's margin of victory.
In their final chapter, Ford and Schram outline a strategy to combat the rise of racism in American politics and the threat it poses for the survival of liberal democracy. Rather than attempting to appeal to the economic grievances of Trump voters among the white working class, they propose out-mobilizing the racist right through the formation of a multiracial coalition of racial liberals and moderates. Election results in 2020 and 2021 demonstrated both the strengths and limitations of this approach.
The book's major contributions are its placement of the Trump phenomenon in the broader canvas of American political and social history and its effective use of empirical data to validate or disprove a number of core assumptions about Trump's rise and the sources of his support. The book's limitations are partly the results of the timing of its publication. Not only have others already written much of what the authors assert, subsequent events – particularly the 6 January 2021 insurrection and the spread of disinformation by Republicans about election fraud and Covid vaccine mandates – have intensified the threat they describe and called into question their cautious optimism about the future.