I very much doubt many people these days - obviously some, perhaps a vocal significant minority - are traditional racists IE black people have a lower IQ or whatever. But I have no doubt people are culturally racist - IE Muslims believe X or Somalians act Y therefore I dislike them. It's opposed to treating individual people by their actions or the content of their individual belief, more grouping people together - not from a skin colour or DNA point of view but rather a cultural collectiveness.
Hence why your father in law is against immigration or looks unfavourable on muslims (or whoever) but when he meets his daughters fella he judges him by his actions or personality and then it's fine because he isn't "one of them"
I think what lots of 'us' on the the liberal left miss, is that many people dont accept our definition of racism.
I mentioned this a while ago with regard to my farther in law. He jokes about black men being criminals, Jews being mean and other similar racist tropes, to an extent he believes them too. He is fiercely anti immigration. But he was perfectly comfortable when his daughter was dating a black guy, and would have been equally comfortable if his grand kids had of been mixed race.
The liberal left, the media, academia, has all largely and I think, justifiably, decided racist language and racist stereotypes are the building blocks of more pro active racism.
The fact is, millions of people dont agree, nor do they agree that there is any connection between racsism and being anti immigration.
So they arent ignoring Trump or Johnson's racist comments, they dont see them as a problem, they don't see them as racist.
I feel like we need another term, having to use same one for my father in law and a fully fledged combat 18 member, misses a lot of nuance.
So if we want to convince voters Trump is racist, the things he says are almost irrelevant, what has he done that shows an active hatred of other races?
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