America’s new racial politics: white protectionism, racial reparations, and American identity

Abstract

The United States has been shaped by clashes between rival “racial orders” or “racial policy alliances” since the nation’s very beginning. For the last half century, those contests have chiefly been between proponents of “color-blind” and “race-conscious” public policies. Today, however, the nation’s dominant racial policy alliances are transforming into ones centered on significantly new themes. The racially conservative “color-blind” policy alliance is, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, becoming an alliance promising “white protectionism.” The “race conscious” policy alliance is, with the mobilizations around the slogan of Black Lives Matter, becoming an alliance focused on “racial reparations” to end “systemic racism”. These new, even more polarized racial policy alliances have counterparts across the globe, and they are likely to shape political life for many years to come.

Small advances and swift retreat: Race-conscious educational policy in the Obama and Trump administrations

“…The privatization push was accompanied by targeted restrictions on raceconsciousness in education law and policy, from diversity training to data that included racial/ethnic categories, to use of race in competitive admissions processes, to disparate impact standards. This too represented a throughline for conservative administrations dating back to Reagan, though Trump's messaging carried more overt racial animus (Smith & King, 2020).…”

Entitled and self-conscious? The ego-centric underpinnings of electoral preferences during the 2020 U.S. election

“…President Donald Trump’s bombastic campaign behavior described by Nai and colleagues (2019) aligns with previous developmental research observing children with grandiose self-regard (such as entitlement) react to shame by aggressively attacking (i.e., blaming) a source of shame to offset an unflattering self-image (Thomaes et al, 2008). On the other hand, Democratic Candidate Joe Biden emphasized racial justice and environmental conservation policies (Kang, 2021; Smith and King, 2021), which are akin to making amends with historically marginalized communities (Smith and King, 2020).…”