One of the central points of this book is that liberals and radicals have different approaches to racism and class. Their approaches to both of these systems are interrelated. Of the two intersecting systems, racism remains a more controversial and easily misunderstood concept, because there is such a long history of denying its existence in the United States and other nations.¹ Central to this denial is academia’s preference for the “race relations” paradigm, which problematizes people of color rather than the system of racism.² Sociology, often seen as the most liberal of the social science disciplines, contributes to this denial.³ What is more, people have different definitions and understandings of racism. When I first began studying racism as a student in the 1990s, I constantly had to explain the differences between so-called individual and institutional racism and rarely found references to systemic racism in mainstream media. Today, the terms “institutional racism” and “systemic racism” have become more prevalent. I find that my students are much more familiar with these terms than they were even in the early 2000s. However, I am not convinced that everyone knows what these terms mean, how they are connected, or how they should be defined. Therefore, it is important to distinguish between different manifestations of racism, how I define racism in this book, and what this has to do with the most modern forms of color-blind ideology as well as what I call liberal white supremacy.

Color-blindness and racism-evasiveness are connected to a liberal ideology that focuses on nonconfrontation. Historically, liberals have preferred a color-blind focus on unity and harmony.⁴ Using the words “racial,” “race,” “minorities,” or talking about the “race issue” is much less confrontational than defining the issue explicitly as racism. Ironically, when liberals do name racism and engage in discussion about it, they help reinforce racism-evasiveness, because these discussions are meant to assert their moral superiority over other less educated, stereotypically working-class European Americans. This liberal approach to racism and class reinforces liberal white supremacy. To understand this process, we must first address how we should define racism: its origins, sustenance, and consequences.⁵

Defining Racism

THE ORIGINS OF RACE

Any definition of racism must begin with the origins of “race” as an idea. There are various theories on how racism emerged in the Americas. Audrey Smedley’s and Theodore Allen’s are probably the most accepted and supported in the social sciences. They and other scholars find that skin color was not a precursor to slavery.⁶ People of African descent were not automatically seen as inferior or uncivilized because they were darker in complexion. In fact, prior to the development of slavery in colonial Virginia, the English saw Africans as more civilized than the Irish.⁷ Most Africans came to Virginia as indentured servants and some were able to become landowners. Court cases show that Africans of landowning status had certain rights.⁸ Smedley notes that social interaction, collaboration, and marriage between English and African people were not uncommon.⁹ These factors indicate that skin color was not viewed the same way as it is today and was not an automatic indication of social status as much as class was. The idea of “race” as a scientific hierarchy of white over black did not exist until slavery developed in colonial Virginia.¹⁰

Even as Africans were enslaved, they still interacted and rebelled with English servants, who did not see their treatment as vastly different from slaves. Moreover, as indentured servants of all ethnic backgrounds were freed, they began demanding land and more rights as part of their freedom. Smedley talks about a growing number of unhappy, unruly former servants who were lacking opportunities and “on the make.”¹¹ African and English servants would take part in small and large rebellions: stealing hogs, running away together, and destroying property. The most troubling rebellion to the English ruling class was Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, which resulted in the burning of Jamestown, Virginia. These rebellions prompted the Virginia General Assembly and ruling elite to develop laws that would create specific racial categories of people for the purpose of branding African Americans.¹²

In 1691, anti-miscegenation laws called for the banishment of any free white person who intermarried a “Negro, Mulatoe, or Indian man or woman.”¹³ People were whipped and fined for engaging in such marriages or other interracial interactions. In 1705, slave codes were passed by Virginia’s ruling class proclaiming that all “white” people were superior to “black” people.¹⁴ Servants now identifying as “white” were offered a greater number of benefits that were previously denied to them. Indentured servants were also allowed more days off, could testify in court, and were admitted into social clubs. Poor European Americans did not own slaves but were given the status of overseer on the plantations. They were given public deference that was denied to Africans, regardless of class background. This gave them a public and psychological wage over Africans.¹⁵ In short, the Anglo-Saxon ruling class in colonial Virginia created a society where the interests of poor people diverged and freedom depended on tying oneself to whiteness.

At this time, the Virginia General Assembly remained subjects of the King of England and had to justify the laws and practices they were developing in the New World. A British attorney, Richard West, was tasked with overseeing these new laws. In 1723, the Assembly passed a measure titled “An Act directing the trial of Slaves, committing capital crimes; and for the more effectual punishing conspiracies and insurrections of them; and for the better government of Negros, Mulattos, and Indians, bond or free.”¹⁶ West’s reaction to this measure indicates that skin color was not viewed as a natural way to divide people. In response to the measure, he stated, “I cannot see why one freeman should be used worse than another, merely upon account of his complexion . . . it cannot be just, by a general law, without any allegation of crime, or other demerit whatsoever, to strip all free persons, of a black complexion (some of whom may, perhaps be of considerable substance) from those rights, which are so justly valuable to every freeman.”¹⁷ In this response, West registers his confusion about why the Assembly would want to take rights away from people who were of substance and had property, regardless of skin color. The Assembly had to convince West, and others in England, that skin color now mattered more than class status.

William Gooch, who later became governor of Virginia in 1727, sent England a justification for stripping Africans of certain rights that emphasized his concern that free African Americans and “Mulattos” were engaged in a conspiracy against the English. He argued that there was no proof to convict the conspirators, which was all the more reason to “fix a perpetual Brand upon Free-Negros & Mulattos” and “to make the free-Negros sensible that a distinction ought to be made between their offspring and the Descendants of an Englishman.”¹⁸ Gooch had heard of plans for revolutions and uprisings and wanted to quash them. He wrote about “the Nature of Negros, and the Pride of a manumitted Slave,” who thought themselves “as good a Man as the best of his Neighbours” upon acquiring their freedom.¹⁹ He wanted to put African Americans who had freedom, and property in some cases, in their place; to brand them forever so that they would know their place. He had to convince West, and others in England, that Africans were not their equals regardless of their landowning status and class position, and that unification between the English and African servants and slaves was a threat to profit. As Smedley points out, the scientific study of “race” did not occur until after it was already a social, legal, and political construct.²⁰ In Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson called on science to provide answers to biology and “race.”²¹ The pseudo-scientific hierarchies of “race” that then followed supported the economic system of slavery and formed the basis of racism.

SUSTAINING RACISM

Carter Wilson develops a theory on the reproduction of racism from slavery to advanced capitalism.²² He argues that racism is sustained through the interaction of three entities: economic structure, political elites, and racist culture. In Figure 1, I offer my conceptualization of Wilson’s work. Wilson analyzes the evolution of racism, which, he argues, changes forms depending on the mode of production in place. Out of the economy of slavery, for example, came a sadistic racist culture that in turn maintained this oppressive economic system. Wilson states, “Increasing profits in this system required increasing the level of sadistic control over the slave.”²³ This racist culture included imagery, ideologies, and sadistic acts such as castration, all of which helped maintain the oppressive economic structure. The image of Sambo, for instance, “functioned in southern society to reinforce whites’ views of themselves as Christian and civilized and their perspective on the slave as happy and childlike. Whites had to see the slave as Sambo, or they would have been driven to the brink of insanity by their fear of the slave and by their inhumanity.”²⁴ Political elites are also deeply connected to the economic structure and racist culture. Wilson contends, “This concentration of wealth produced a powerful planter class with the resources and resolve to protect slavery. This class dominated southern regional politics and strongly influenced national politics . . . Members of this class used wealth and prestige to either run for office or support pro-slavery candidates.”²⁵ Political elites have the power to control discourse and promote racist imagery and ideologies that support their positions.

Political elites helped create the racist culture we face in the twenty-first century. That racist culture includes ideologies of color-blindness and liberal white supremacy. We can point to President Richard Nixon’s role, for example, in using color-blind ideology as a political strategy. In his diaries, H. R. Haldeman quotes Nixon as stating, “You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”²⁶ Then, in 1980, Ronald Reagan’s campaign consultant, Lee Atwater (who would later serve in the administrations of Reagan and George H. W. Bush), stated:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N—, n—, n—.” By 1968 you can’t say “n—” . . . So you say stuff like, states’ rights . . . You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites . . . if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other . . . because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N—, n—.”²⁷

The dilemma conservative political elites faced after the civil rights movement was that it was no longer acceptable to make openly racist comments. Therefore, they had to develop new discourses and ideological support for the racist economic structure from which they benefited. Conservative political elites, therefore, helped create a racism-evasive and color-blind discourse that worked to their advantage. As Wilson’s work implies, racism evolves in every historical period, taking whatever form is necessary to support the racial and economic status quo.²⁸

Origins, Prevalence, and Consequences of Liberal Color-Blind Ideology

Contemporary racism is sustained by color-blind ideology. One of the earliest uses of color-blindness is found in constitutional law. In his argument against “separate but equal,” Justice John Marshall Harlan stated, “Our constitution is color blind and neither knows nor tolerates class among citizens.”²⁹ Yet, in his book “Color-Blind” Racism, Leslie G. Carr argues that most people conveniently ignore the implications of Harlan’s first paragraph, which states: “The White race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in advancements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty.”³⁰ Here, Harlan subscribes to liberal doctrines of color-blindness, but the result is a text that can be used to further racial inequality. As Carr states, “Justice Harlan tried hard to make the majority of the court understand that the law and the constitution must remain blind to the existence of ‘race’ because color blindness was the best way to maintain white supremacy.”³¹ Carr argues that conservatives have easily used Harlan’s sentiment and color-blindness, in general, to argue that any policies that take “race” into account are unconstitutional and even racist.³² Carr also contends that because liberals promote a free marketplace, they have trouble defending arguments for policies such as affirmative action that require government intervention. Here we see the problems of liberal’s pro-capitalist attitude interacting with their color-blind approach to racism (see chapter 2). Therefore, both liberals and conservatives have helped perpetuate modern-day color-blind ideology.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s work played a pivotal role in drawing attention to the significance of color-blind racism. Bonilla-Silva analyzed attitudinal data to conceptualize the tropes and frames of color-blindness.³³ First, there is “abstract liberalism.”³⁴ Here, there is a focus on individual rights and abstract ideas of equality—the notion that we are all equal regardless of skin color. Using the frame of abstract liberalism, racism can come across as very reasonable. In fact, this theme and its focus on equal rights is what helps fuel white nationalist movements today.³⁵ A central point in Bonilla-Silva’s conceptualization of color-blind racism is that while many European Americans deny the significance of whiteness, they navigate a “white habitus”: a “racialized, uninterrupted socialization process that conditions and creates whites’ racial tastes, perceptions, feelings, and emotions and their views on racial matters.”³⁶

The second theme, biologization of culture, places the blame for racial inequality on the cultural deficiencies of African Americans, who are viewed as lacking proper values of hard work. Bonilla-Silva’s respondents recognized that African Americans have had to deal with racism but argued that they have “thrown in the towel” and are not willing to work hard anymore. Bobo and Smith referred to this as “laissez-faire racism” and argued that it has taken the place of Jim Crow racism.³⁷ It never occurs to respondents making these claims that middle-class people of color, those who have good jobs, who have internalized all of the “right” values, still face racism.³⁸

The theme of naturalization was most prevalent in perspectives on racial segregation in Bonilla-Silva’s study. Bill, a manufacturing manager in his forties, explains segregation this way, “I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault. Because people tend to group with their own people . . . Doesn’t mean if a black person moves into your neighborhood, they shouldn’t go to your school. They should and you should mix and welcome them and everything else, but you can’t force people together.”³⁹ Bill misses a point I have been teaching my students for the past twenty years, which is that, historically, laws forced people apart. Laws were necessary to prevent integration. If anything, this implies that segregation is unnatural.

In Bonilla-Silva’s final theme, minimization of racism, European American respondents argued that racist discrimination had all but disappeared.⁴⁰ They denied the existence of racism by emphasizing other factors responsible for poor outcomes, such as individual behavior. They also argued that social class or gender was more important than racism in determining life chances. Bonilla-Silva’s work offers a concrete understanding of what color-blindness sounds like. However, conceptually, the term “color-blind racism” conflates two separate yet related issues, the ideology of color-blindness and systemic racism, of which it is itself a part. Some clarification is in order, then, if we are to understand how contemporary racism works.

There are at least three separate issues scholars attempt to address through the concept of color-blind racism. First, there is systemic racism, which is a centuries-old and highly organized system of “race”-based oppression that operates at every level of society.⁴¹ Systemic racism refers to the entirety of racist ideologies, institutional practices, and individual behaviors. Within this system, there are different levels of racism that interact to reinforce each other and uphold the larger system.

In their book Black Power, Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton distinguished between two levels of racism by using the city of Birmingham, Alabama, as an example.⁴² They argued that bombings of African American churches and the forced movement of African Americans out of white neighborhoods in Birmingham were both examples of individual racist acts that were quickly condemned by most people. In the same city, however, they pointed to a less recognized institutionalized racism, which was evident in a lack of proper food, shelter, and medical facilities. They argued that while this manifestation of racism was not as quickly condemned as individual racial bigotry, it resulted in equally devastating effects on human life, including the death of five hundred African American babies each year. As author Tim Wise states, institutional racism is “the gasoline, allowing the otherwise stationary combustion engine of individual racism to actually function.”⁴³ For example, the institutional practice of redlining helped create racial segregation, divesting resources from predominantly African American neighborhoods and enriching predominantly white neighborhoods.⁴⁴ That institutional practice would not have been successful without individual racial bigotry and vice versa. Individuals make decisions that help reinforce patterns of racism at the institutional level, and those individual decisions are enabled by institutional practices. As a Levittown resident stated in the film Race: The Power of an Illusion: “I can understand an individual . . . being racist, but for your country . . . to condone it, give him the tools to do that, there’s something definitely wrong there.” All these interactions compose the system of racism.

The second issue jumbled into the term “color-blind racism” is the ideology of color-blindness. Color-blindness is the belief that one can actually be blind to color in a highly racialized society. People who make this color-blind claim express that no one should be treated differently because of the color of their skin. This is largely a liberal belief that relies on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assertion that people should be judged by the content of their character. Third, there is the negative outcome of this seemingly positive color-blind ideology. Claiming not to see color often results in refusing to see or talk about racism. This is racism-evasiveness, and it is very often strategically employed.

Thus, systemic racism is held together by ideologies of denial and avoidance. Color-blind ideology can operate in any institution and result in racism-evasiveness in a way that interferes with progress. For example, many primary and secondary schools emphasize color-blindness as an ideal and as a result do not talk explicitly about racism. This can lead to a failure of schools to adequately address any racist incidents that do occur. In Mica Pollock’s study of race talk in California high schools, students and teachers deliberately avoided using “race words” or any description of people by their ethnicity, such as African American, Samoan, Chinese, and so forth.⁴⁵ She describes this phenomenon as color muting. Ironically, Pollock notes how even she was affected by her respondents’ silences on racism and at times would use color-muted language to describe racial issues. Pierce finds a similar phenomenon in her study of a law firm that was sued in the 1970s for “egregious discrimination.”⁴⁶ Because of the lawsuit, the firm worked hard to present itself as “excellent in diversity.” That public presentation silenced any discussion on racism, because the firm was supposed to be color-blind in its practices. Talking about racism, then, was seen as doing something wrong. That is precisely what Barbara J. Risman and Pallavi Banerjee find in their study of schoolchildren, who feel guilty for noticing racial inequality and talking about it.⁴⁷ What all these studies show is that liberal color-blind ideology creates an environment that confines racial discourse to uncritical conversations on “multiculturalism” or “diversity.” The larger ideology of color-blindness leads to racism-evasiveness.

Finally, the concepts many scholars have developed to explain color-blind ideology are themselves racism-evasive. Just as Pollock was affected by color-mute practices in the schools she studied, I believe racism scholars, in general, are impacted by the very racist ideologies they are trying to address. Cazenave attributes the lack of conceptual clarity on color-blindness and racism in the social sciences to what he calls Linguistic Racial Accommodation (LRA).⁴⁸ He argues that most academics are conflict averse. Scholars examine the “race issue,” “minorities,” “culture,” and the like, never conceptualizing what “race” is or how it operates in a larger system of racism.⁴⁹ Moreover, academia as an institution rewards those who remain in the LRA tradition while punishing scholars who engage in Linguistic Racial Confrontation (LRC). This perpetuates a cycle that sustains LRA over LRC to the detriment of honest and intellectually sophisticated scholarship on racism.

Cazenave’s model explains the conceptual confusion I find within the scholarship on color-blind racism and reveals the power color-blind ideology and racism-evasiveness have in the larger society.⁵⁰ Scholars of color-blind or so-called post–civil rights racism critique respondents for denying racism, yet the terms these scholars develop also underplay the central importance of racism. Ruth Frankenberg recognizes that the term “color-blind” obscures complex political and social dynamics.⁵¹ Yet Frankenberg’s concept of color evasion fails to capture the central issue of racism, again refocusing the discussion on color. Her concept of power evasion is better at identifying the central issues in racial discourse today. Frankenberg explains that power evasiveness in racial discourse downplays “differences of racial identity and their connections to positions of domination and subordination.”⁵² Still, the issue of racism is not centrally named. Power operates on many levels, and one can talk about power in a way that avoids racism. Power with regard to class inequality is often more comfortably addressed than racial inequality. In fact, a student in my racial and ethnic relations course used an analysis of power to deny racism. She argued, “It all comes down to power; if you have money, you have power regardless of ethnicity.” Scholars must develop concepts that will adequately capture this kind of avoidance and denial of racism that maintains white supremacy. My conceptualizations of racism-evasiveness and liberal white supremacy pinpoint these issues more centrally. What people are ultimately avoiding when they say they do not see color (color-blind), when they overlook differences in power (power-evasion), or avoid “race words” (color-mute) is racism.

Cazenave defines racism-blindness as “the dominant ideology and practice of not seeing systemic racism in highly racialized societies in which strong sanctions are applied in the denial of its existence, pervasiveness, and consequences.”⁵³ He defines racism-evasiveness as “the deployment of various processes and practices that avoid treating systemic racism as a social problem by keeping society blind to the pervasive racism that would otherwise be obvious.”⁵⁴ Further, he defines racism denial as “the refutation of the existence, pervasiveness, or seriousness of systemic racism despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”⁵⁵ I address strategic racism-evasiveness as the product or consequence of societal color-blind ideology. I argue that the shared ideology in U.S. society, and among progressives in particular, is not that we should be blind to racism, but that we should be blind to color. The result of this seemingly well-intended ideology is racism-evasiveness and denial.

Building on my previous work, I see racism-evasiveness as a strategic action; the response to and negative consequence of color-blind ideology.⁵⁶ In my past work, I found that activists did, in fact, see racism. They had sophisticated understandings of racism and never denied its central significance but were afraid to address it explicitly. I expand on this case study in chapter 4. I address racism-evasiveness as an action individuals strategically deploy within their organizations, particularly because organizational cultures are influenced by larger societal ideologies and liberal discourse on civility and color-blindness. Just as scholars are punished for addressing racism centrally,⁵⁷ progressive activists may be portrayed as too controversial, radical, and divisive if they make racism an explicit part of their agenda.

Furthermore, in her study of predominantly white law firms, Tsedale Melaku states, “White male discriminators disappear into vague or abstract terms (e.g., society discriminates).”⁵⁸ In such professional settings, European Americans do name systemic racism, but they may do so to hide their individual agency in contributing to racism in their workplaces. I have found the same behavior in academic workshops meant to educate European Americans about racism. They point to the institution or the system as the problem rather than examining their own potentially racist behavior. They consciously and strategically evade racism, when it serves their rational self-interests to do so, even while they explicitly name racism as a problem.

Conceptualizing Liberal White Supremacy

Liberal white supremacy includes the behaviors, practices, beliefs, and rhetorical moves by progressive European Americans who deny their role in perpetuating racism to maintain their position as morally superior, not only to people of color, but to other European Americans. Like color-blind ideology and racism-evasiveness, liberal white supremacy is part of the racist culture Carter Wilson identifies. To understand how, I magnify the racist culture component of Wilson’s model to more closely examine how all the parts within it interact. Figure 2 shows that color-blind ideology leads to racism-evasiveness, and both work together as key components of liberal white supremacy and contemporary racism.

Racism-evasiveness can be further broken down to show the tropes it involves. Racism-evasiveness includes arguments that position class, gender, and culture over racism as the more important variables in social life, “race-talk,” linguistic racial accommodation, and race-craft.⁵⁹ There are also liberal behaviors that are tied to racism-evasiveness but are more immediately about promoting a virtuous pro-white core.⁶⁰ White fragile behaviors of crying, defensiveness, pointing to friends of color, diverse workplaces, neighborhoods, and schools as justifications of one’s antiracist politics uphold liberal white supremacy. When European Americans engage in these behaviors, the focus and concern remains on their feelings and need for validation rather than the actual injustices people of color face and how to combat these injustices. Such conversations easily come to center around convincing European Americans, responding to their feelings and addressing their criticisms so that they may feel comfortable about racial inequality. In this context European Americans may dominate the discussions and may even be seen as the experts on racism or what is more often addressed as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” rather than people of color who have actually experienced and researched these issues. Asserting moral superiority above working-class white racists and poorly behaving radicals represents the class-elitist behaviors of liberal white supremacists, defined in the introduction (see figure 3).

Liberal white supremacy reinforces a white racial frame that positions European Americans as superior and people of color as inferior.⁶¹ When liberal European Americans use various rhetorical and other tools to assert their level of enlightenment on racism, they are viewing themselves as superior and placing people of color in a subordinate position to be used as needed. For example, when they point to their friends or relatives of color, the diverse schools their children attend, the people of color they admire or vote for, and so forth, they use and objectify people of color. European Americans position themselves in the dominant role even on a subject, such as racism, where people of color are the more likely experts. In contradiction to Anna Julia Cooper’s famous statement, European Americans who operate in this white racial frame are deciding when and where people of color may enter the conversation.⁶²

Liberal white supremacy is also furthered by political elites, who benefit from oppressive economic and racial arrangements and work to sustain them. I have already outlined how conservatives, such as President Nixon, have contributed to liberal color-blind ideology to support their positions in the economic and racial order. Liberal elites secure their positions in electoral and local politics and gain access to important occupational roles that exist because of the liberal ideals of equality they allegedly support. For example, positions in “diversity management” operate within liberal principles of equality but address racism in a nonconfrontational way that ultimately protects predominantly white institutions. These kinds of positions help contain radicalism, as diversity becomes something to manage. Workshops and conversations on “race” are not really about combatting racist practices that impact people of color but controlling radical discourse and challenges to the institution.⁶³

Politicians draw on liberal ideologies that support “diversity” to further their own success. President Bill Clinton was able to secure support from African Americans on a liberal, diversity platform. He claimed to support a liberal cause that was inclusive of people of color and was credited for having a diverse cabinet. At the same time, he developed policies that hurt working-class African Americans, other people of color, and working-class European Americans.⁶⁴ We continue to see liberal white supremacy in today’s political debates and campaigns. In March 2020, Joe Biden supporter Hillary Rosen attempted to lecture Nina Turner, Bernie Sanders’s campaign cochair, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Rosen, a European American woman, claimed that King was only criticizing silent moderates, not people like Joe Biden. She further stated to Turner that she had no standing to criticize Biden by using the words of MLK. Turner, an African American woman, responded, “Don’t tell me about Martin Luther King. Are you kidding me? Don’t tell me what kind of standing I have as a black woman in America! How dare you!”⁶⁵ Furthermore, Turner explained that to MLK, white moderates were more concerned with maintaining the status quo and their comfort level than with true equality.

Here, a liberal European American women purported to have greater authority over the words of MLK, twisting them to favor her liberal candidate, Biden, over Sanders, often portrayed as a radical socialist. In my view, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party worked hard to support Biden because they thought Sanders was a greater threat to the economic status quo. Sanders made comments in support of some aspects of Democratic socialism, he discussed socializing medicine, and he was portrayed as more anti-capitalist than Biden. This scared some liberals.⁶⁶ During the 2020 primaries, many liberals began arguing that Sanders could not beat Donald Trump, but was this a reality or a social construction? Like Trump, Sanders had the ability to mobilize marginalized working-class European Americans and those who felt like outsiders. At the same time that liberal Democrats were claiming that Sanders could not win, people were stating they would vote for anyone but Trump. So was liberal Democratic support of Biden really about his ability to beat Trump, or was it about their commitment to maintaining capitalism at all costs? This is also a question we should pose when examining the debates and disagreements between representatives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, who represent a more radical wing of the Democratic Party, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents the liberal, mainstream Democrat. What we have been witnessing is a radical/liberal split within the Democratic Party, and that split is tied to racism-evasiveness and liberal white supremacy. In the next chapter, I further develop this connection by presenting my model that distinguishes liberal and radical perspectives and approaches.