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Marcus H. Johnson Profile picture
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9 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Everyone acts like the “Actually Democrats should throw Black people under the bus to win elections” analysis is new. People been saying this **** since the 1960s! Its the same repackaged mess. Biden defeated Trump by saying “white supremacy” more than any Dem nominee ever!
This “analysis” also fails to answer WHY democracy in the US is on the brink. Because minorities are gaining more political power and the dominant in-group is nervous and upset about it.
What is implicit in the anti-antiracism people’s calls for Dem strategy is that it isn’t enough to “not talk about race.” They actually want/need you to throw marginalized groups under the bus to show the wwc they’re not really that liberal. “We won’t give your $ to Black ppl”
It just gets me that people act like being anti antiracism is some new, brave strategy. It’s literally American history to appease reactionaries and say “We shouldn’t give Black people too much political power. It might piss some people off.”

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More from @marcushjohnson

Marcus H. Johnson Profile picture
5 Nov
The funny thing is people think the CRT discourse is something new. No, this is the same cultural-political fight going back 200+ years. Over the level of political power Black people can have in society. Black people gain something politically, there’s a conservative backlash.
Abolitionist movement — secession.

Reconstruction — jim crow and state sanctioned vigilante violence. lost cause propaganda.

Civil rights/Voting/Immigration — southern strategy, modern gop realignment. tough on crime, conf monuments

Obama — Trump

BLM/Floyd Protests — anti CRT
Each perceived political gain by Black people — who are supposed to be the permanent underclass, as slavery itself was originally codified in the constitution — is responded to with a vicious backlash. Its a 2 steps forward 1 step backwards kind of thing.
Read 16 tweets
Marcus H. Johnson Profile picture
31 Oct
My take on our politics is that demographic change is slowly breaking our society—America was never designed to accommodate non whites with large amounts of political-cultural-economic power. Happening across the west but especially here.
So you get extremely low trust in media and institutions (been falling since the Civil/Voting rights act in the 60s), rampant conspiracy theories (Birtherism, 5G-Covid, Election “fraud”) and political violence (1/6). Its all because of the same thing.
Racial hierarchy is as fundamental to the American experiment as democracy, actually probably way more so. Since it was here long before democracy was. To upset the racial hierarchical norms is, for many, to destroy what America is and represents.
Read 4 tweets
Marcus H. Johnson Profile picture
18 Oct
Every country has a ruling, decision making class. And every countru has a founding myth/event/ethos which serves to give that class legitimacy. In the US, that is the story about the founding fathers and their commitment to “freedom,” “liberty,” “equality.”
It is this founding myth from which the US ruling class derives its legitimacy, and thus maintains their power and influence. They rule today because they supposedly maintain these ideals and are the descendants, in blood and ideology, of the founders.
Which obviously means to challenge the narrative of the founders is to challenge the right to rule of the people currently in power. This is a big part of the reason why conservatives fight so hard to protect the narratives surrounding the founders and colonial settlers.
Read 7 tweets
Marcus H. Johnson Profile picture
28 Sep
I don’t know how the “Democrats need to stop talking about race” takes still exist. The idea is that it alienates working class whites (sure). But how can they believe refusing to talk about race won’t provoke a backlash of poc/college educated? That we’ll just roll with it?
Its not an unusual or unpopular concept, you hear it from MY, from Shor, etc etc. I think the idea is totally bogus. They can perceive a white backlash to Dems talking about race, but funny how they cannot conceptualize a poc backlash for Dems dropping racial equity.
I also think they dramatically overstate the extent that the white working class can be won back in these highly polarized (because of race) times. Dems aren’t winning back Iowa and Ohio if they start saying Obama and CRT are bad.
Read 13 tweets
Marcus H. Johnson Profile picture
24 Sep
Extremism is also relative. Extremists never consider themselves to be so. It is very uncomfortable but important to understand how Nazi Germany was inspired in part by US early racial laws and expansionism. assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/i1092…
Obviously not taught in most schools, it turns the American exceptionalism myth and ethos upside down. It makes people question and the should—how could Nazi Germany’s actions be inspired, even in part, by early American political actors?
Think about it in this way, from the Native American perspective, wasn’t America largely a violent totalitarian regime that could not be trusted? Broken treaties, land theft, genocide?
Read 8 tweets
Marcus H. Johnson Profile picture
18 Sep
If you wanted to simplify American history, break it down to its most elementary form, it is a long struggle over the question: “How much power should whites have in society relative to everyone else?” Viewed in that framework and context all events make much more sense.
When you earnestly believe in the ethos, the American myth, about liberty and freedom and egalitarianism and rights you find it hard to understand Trump voters. But when you understand the central question in American history it all makes sense.
Slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the New Deal, Civil Rights, the Southern Strategy, Reagonomics, the Obama coalition, the Tea Party, Trumpism. They’re all about the central question in American history.
Read 5 tweets

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