Good White People Can Be Racist, Too
Complicity can often look like delusional optimism.
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This article was originally published by Bitch Media on November 29, 2016.
Who are good white people? I have lived with good white people nearly all my life. If you can’t identify them, they will gladly identify themselves. In a 2014 essay published in Jezebel, author Brit Bennett writes, “A racist troll is easy to dismiss. He does not think decency is enough. Sometimes I think good white people expect to be rewarded for their decency. We are not like those other white people. See how enlightened and aware we are?”
My beachside hometown in a forgettable part of New England is insignificant in size on the map. It is insignificant in the number of electoral college votes that could tip the direction of an election, and it is full of good white people. These good white people had never seen or experienced racism and, thus, thought it had ceased to exist. I served as proof that racism was an exotic relic trapped in history books and the foggy memories of a strange land carved before equality.
I have lived with too many good white people. They swear they do not see color. They visibly bristle when they are called racists or accused of racism. They believe that loving their narrow version of Black culture is an expression of unconditional love. They do not use racial slurs because racism begins and ends with the N-word, but they slap Confederate flag stickers on their bumpers and decorate their front lawns with Trump/Vance signs. They call the Black Lives Matter movement “anti-white” and its activists “terrorists.”
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Do we really need to turn the reality of racism into a horned monster in order to understand its blood thirst? According to 2016 exit polls, 60 percent of white men and 52 percent of white women who voted cast their ballots for Donald Trump. Four years later, national election results once again dispelled the myth of a “post-racial” America. In partnership with various news organizations, NBC News conducted exit polling across the country in 10 key states; results showed that 60 percent of white men and 53 percent of white women decided a Black and South Asian woman with decades of legal and political experience, including serving as the vice president of the United States, couldn’t measure up to their fraudulent, spray-tanned hero: a businessman with an undeniable losing streak, a proud misogynist, a morally vacuous bigot, and a reality TV buffoon.
These particular numbers aren’t limited to class or state or age. These particular numbers include good white people: white men dating Black women, white women who have a Black friend, white people who were eager to flash their “allyship card” by posting black squares on Instagram and then moving on to the next trending topic that would guarantee likes and engagement.
People with guilty consciences want to downplay how racism impacted the polls. The outcome wasn’t about racism, it was about sexism! It wasn’t about racism, it was about economic anxieties! Sexism and economic worries are certainly factors in the results, but the possible loss of the institution of whiteness is an overwhelming motivator. According to CNN’s 2024 exit poll results, although 53 percent of white college graduates voted for Harris, 45 percent voted for Trump; the numbers showed an even greater divide regarding white voters without a degree. More than half of the polled voters (66 percent) voted for a man who, in 2016, said with his whole chest: “I love the poorly educated. We’re the smartest people; we're the most loyal people.”
It seems that bruised egos matter more than confronting the ugly state of the nation’s cultural divide.
Good white people believed Trump was more of a joke than a threat. All of the good white people would band together to keep a personification of white supremacy out of office. We’re a country that (finally) elected a Black man into the White House. Surely, this wasn’t proof of exceptionalism, they argued; Obama’s win was evidence of America’s overdue repentance. All of the good white people didn’t stop to think that progress isn’t a straight line, that white supremacy not only thrives on the bitterness and anger of its followers, but the apathy and complacency of its bystanders, too.
Good white people have been afraid to name the cause of Trump’s rise by its rightful label: white supremacy. Naysayers will provide a distraction and argue that because 94 percent of Republicans voted for Trump in 2024, it proves that it isn’t white people who are racist, it’s just Republicans. We must stop peddling such empty comforts. White supremacy doesn’t care about party lines. Writing for The Establishment in 2016, Ijeoma Oluo says, “You CAN be a Hillary supporter, a Jill Stein supporter, a Gary Johnson supporter, or a die-hard anarchist and still be a White Supremacist.”
Trump has been amplifying and selling white supremacy since the inception of his first campaign. Good white people have refused to admit this, as it means they would have to acknowledge their complicity. It seems that bruised egos matter more than confronting the ugly state of the nation’s cultural divide. We need to stop giving white supremacy the benefit of the doubt as though it operates under rational judgement and not logic engineered to stoke paranoid fear. Similar to white supremacist efforts to block and dismantle Reconstruction-era efforts through widespread racial intimidation, coordinated political strategy, and state-sanctioned violence, Trump’s second campaign tactics borrowed a reigning feature of white supremacist ideology: turning marginalized groups into looming, cultural boogeymen destined to tear down the fabric of our society.
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This mindset reflects his reversed stance on Project 2025, a 900-page policy blueprint for modern fascism dressed up in the blinding righteousness of white Christian nationalism and cooked up by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation. Though Trump denied his support of the initiative during his second campaign run, he’s since appointed many of its authors to advisory and government positions. It’s unsettling but not shocking. Trump, his party members, and his sycophants aren’t motivated by the desire to cultivate a “better” or more just America. Their endorsement of Project 2025 is a mask-off admission of cruelty peddled as radical democratic revision.
In 2016, Late Night host Seth Meyers confessed, “I am hopeful for President Trump because hope is always the best possible path to take…So I’m hopeful that he’s not actually a racist, and that he just used racist rhetoric to court voters—because when you’re courting someone, you’re always willing to pretend you’re something you’re not.” Why hope for Trump to be something he obviously is not? And even if he really has been using racist rhetoric just for votes, the damage is already done. Why would he now speak against the very demographic that carried him to victory?
I don’t think many people of color, especially Black people, are all that shocked that Trump was elected twice. The backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement shows that white people are bothered even when Black people dare to declare their humanity. Good white people insist our democracy is working for everyone yet fail to understand how optimism can lead to blindness or how liberalism inadvertently solidifies oppression. The solutions to oppression promoted by good white people rely on integration at the expense of the oppressed, as Model View Culture writer Kẏra points out. The notion that the oppressed must love thy oppressor operates on the assumption that patience absolves violence and dehumanization and that misinterpreted Martin Luther King Jr. quotes mean that minorities should turn the other cheek.
Minorities cannot afford to “wait and see” if Trump will follow through on his campaign promises. The fact that he has been elected twice signifies that racism and white supremacy do not have to cower in the shadows or hide behind 4chan and Reddit keyboard warriors. Good intentions are not enough in a world that refuses to let white supremacy die. Good intentions rely on the mental, emotional, and physical endurance of minorities; they will always be there to educate good white people and racists alike. Dehumanization doesn’t always have to wear white hoods. Dehumanization expects Black, Brown, and other marginalized groups to silence their own voices out of politeness and to award merit badges to all the good white people who think racism is not a white people problem or an American legacy, but a rare affliction contained below the Mason-Dixon Line.
This story was updated to include more up-to-date references, dates, and statistics.
Vanessa Willoughby is an editor and a pop culture writer whose bylines include the New York Times, Bitch Media, Allure, Teen Vogue, and BookPage. She is a featured contributor in the anthology The Weird Sister Collection (The Feminist Press, 2024).