President-elect Donald Trump ran on a fundamentally racist platform.
President-elect Donald Trump promulgated the idea that Mexicans are rapists, blacks are trapped in inner cities, Muslims are terrorists and that America could only be great “again” by becoming what it was in the 1950s when all manner of de facto and de rigeur racism was common.
That is probably why noted and admitted white racist groups supported his candidacy, celebrate his election and congratulate themselves for winning.
For the media, this presents a special kind of problem for which modern media is poorly equipped.
.@criener I'm actually close to deciding that media's style guide choice to never call something racist is rationalized white supremacy
— Tressie Mc (@tressiemcphd) November 9, 2014
I said over two years ago that media style guides precluded major newspapers from calling something racist.
Then I asked around and professional media people told me that there isn’t a style convention on this matter so much as an informal culture. The general rule, I was told, is to never call anything racist and certainly to never call anyone racist. At best, they might quote someone calling something or someone racist.
The implication is that there is no such thing as objectively racist. Racism, according to many mainstream media producers and gatekeepers, can only be subjective.
There is a lot of research on this.
The most cited and widely recognized is Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s theory of colorblind racism in which there is racism but no racists. It is worth noting Sarah Mayorga-Gallo’s etymology of the term, attributing first usage to Grace Carroll Massey, Mona Vaughn Scott and Sanford M. Dornbusch’s 1975 article. But, recent scholarship tends to start with Bonilla-Silva.
Using a variety of survey and discourse analysis methods, Bonilla Silva (also later writing with Tyrone Foreman and David Embrick) traces the discursive moves that whites use to de-center racism in their everyday race talk. This discursive distancing takes several forms. Whites attribute race to some unknown other. Sometimes they locate race and racism in biology or nature, attributing any racism to a deity or natural order. The most common tactic, according to research by Teun a van Dijk, is whites using euphemisms.
Perhaps you see where we are going.
Media had, at some point, produced a culture that normalized using euphemisms for racism and racists.
One question, of course, is if this has always been the case.
We have a lot of literature on “colorblind” and “media”. Bonilla-Silva is back with Austin Ashe in a book on media (2014). But, the article doesn’t focus on media usage. It’s argument is about how media promoted the idea of colorblindess after President Barack Obama by using stereotypes, selective inclusion of post-racial imagery, and shaping narratives of post-racial progress.
There is additional research on colorblindness across different media types like sports and reality television and news coverage. Each of these use some version of Bonilla-Silva and Ashe’s level of analysis: on stereotypes and ideologies.
Eileen Walsh gives us some empirical data on race and gender “code” language in media. She finds two dominant media archetypes in coverage of Obama and Clinton during the 2008 election. Each archetype attempts to mitigate language about gender and race to conform to post-racial and post-feminist hegemonic notions of progress.
Fundamentally, I am less interested in a contextual discursive question than I am in some measure of the change in media norms. And, I am mostly interested in these data because they should provide insight on how and why mainstream media was woefully unprepared to cover a professionally racist presidential platform like Donald Trump’s and why they continue to be ill-equipped for what promises to be an aggressively, blatant racist political platform.
I decided to look at the frequency of the words “racism” and “racist” in the New York Times.
Not bad.
This graph suggests that the New York Times has, as one might hope, become a lot more comfortable talking about racism and racists over time. It is also worth noting the steep increase after 2008, which is when the U.S. elected President Barack Obama who is black.
Now, let’s talk proportions. How much of the news in the New York Times does this represent?
Well, at its peak “racism” appeared in 1.5% of articles published in 2016. 
How about “racist”, as in “that fool talking about he won’t rent to black people is racist”?
1.32% of articles published in 2016.
At an historical high, the most coverage that “racism” and “racist” got in the New York Times clocks in at less than 1.5% of total news coverage.
But, maybe the New York Times just isn’t into identity politics. In New York City. It might be like “Friends”.
Let’s take a look at a comparative concept, gender.
Okay, that’s interesting. I am actually intrigued by the the 1960-1990 time period. But let’s stay on task. An historical high for the term “gender” is 2.52% of all stories published in the New York Times so far in 2016.
Now, let’s add “sexism”.
Sexism clocks in at a full .43% of all stories published so far in 2016 in the publication of record
For the record, when you do a combined search (think intersectionality) of “racism” and “sexism” you get an all-time high of .03% of articles. That’s in 2016.
.
So those are some interesting enough patterns.
But, the theoretical proposal and question of interest is the frequency of euphemisms for racism.
I used a semi-scientific list of euphemisms from a cursory re-read of the above literature and a search of ironic “oh really” tweets of recent coverage about Trump.
Not bad, not great. It is what it is. But then I did “racial”.
The very stupid “racially tinged” was up next
I move that even .03%, or 25 articles in 2016, are too many to have this useless, meaningless term.
Then I went with “racially motivated”, as in “millions of white people were racially motivated to vote for a white supremacist”.
I don’t do it here but if you take the raw numbers for each of the euphemisms for racism, they outnumber the number of articles that use “racism”.
The favored term, by far, of this brief textual analysis dictionary is “racial”.
What is “racial” and why would a major media organization favor it over “racism”?
It could be about part of speech. Racism is a noun. Racial is an adjective. As a writerly person, adjectives are more colorful in prose.
But, it is also true that nouns tend to move action better are certainly more useful in the old school “5 Ws” of journalism construction: who, what, where, when, why.
An adjective modifies a noun. Maybe it is less threatening to say that a person, place or thing has some characteristics related to race than it is to say the person, place or thing is inherently characteristic of racism.
The issue there is the definition of “racial” — of or about race — isn’t at all what racism is. Racism is not about race. Everybody has race. And, that’s not how we’re using it. Racism is about racial hatred, animus rooted in racial superiority beliefs that often justify the unfair allocation of resources, both cultural and material.
Do you catch that?
Racial describes race.
Racism describes animus and stratification.
They are not interchangeable.
Racial, being related to race, is not what President-elect Donald Trump means when he says a Mexican judge cannot fairly adjudicate his legal case or Muslims are inherently violent or blacks are morally inferior.
He is describing animus rooted in beliefs of racial superiority.
If the media cannot call that racism, will they be able to cover President-elect Donald Trump?
And while they figure it out, how bad will the lives of racial people get while racism hides behind euphemisms?
Time will tell.
But will the New York Times?
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, and Austin Ashe. “The End of Racism? Colorblind Racism and Popular Media.” The Colorblind Screen: Television in Post-Racial America (2014): 57.
It’s the world of liberal PC correctness. Nextdoor is an application used by many neighborhoods in the US. Under the guise of communication guidelines anyone can post material using coded language, calling others generally thugs, as in “Most of those kids in our schools are thugs” is okay, but calling the people who posted this a “racist” can get you banned from using Nextdoor.
I was banned. I setup and administered Nextdoor for our neighborhood for several years and promoted it. At one point I posted a general request for information asking across several neighborhoods if anyone had seen the grant proposal the city had received from DOJ, after having contacted city alders, who also knew nothing about its contents. I received only a couple snide comments from some posters, at one point I posted to one snide commenter to stop being an asshole.
At that point many from multiple neighborhoods lit on me as though I had committed treason. “As one of the leaders of our community, you of all people….” Let’s place this in more context. This is Madison Wisconsin a supposedly bastion of liberal thought, and concern for our non-white brothers. As a well regarded report has concluded, both Madison and Milwaukee constitute two of,the worst places to live in the US for especially black residents — not in relative terms but absolute.
To continue the story, I defended myself by pointing out that that they had not condemned calling people thugs, or calling on community leaders to send “them back to Chicago” and many other examples of acceptable euphemisms. “So, it’s okay to be a racist but it’s not okay to call them one. It’s okay to be an asshole, but it’s not okay to call them one.” This was not acceptable to others in the neighborhood, and several administrators, some political connections to the city, got Nextdoor to ban me. Of course, Nextdoor condescendingly wrote me that offerings and genuflections were required from me. I refused.
A second example where I was warned and accepted banishment was in a forum MacRumors. When the iPhone 7 became available, many commenters who had purchased an iPhone 6 the year before with the one year free upgrade plan were incensed that they were unable to exercise that option due to supply limitations. The tantrums on this site were quite numerous. What comment got me banned? I replied to one particularly vociferous person only this “it doesn’t seem you would have passed the marshmallow test”. By the way, the site administrator who warned and then banned me, I wasn’t going to genuflect for them either, was from the U.K.
I have a suggestion for your further analysis. The PC correctness and normalizing of racism might an example of something more general. Here is a cogent quote from Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray:
“Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrées, as Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject; and there is possibly a good deal to be said for his view. For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us. Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.”
I am interested on why you think this particular censorship in the media is a left bias. I am well aware and in full agreement that the illiberal left is both out of line and need to be corrected, however, I think we ought also to point to the hypocrisy in the conservative platform that all allegations of racism are necessarily diversions on the part of the left to digress from conservative talking points.
” Sometimes they locate race and racism in biology or nature, attributing any racism to a deity or natural order. The most common tactic, according to research by Teun a van Dijk, is whites using euphemisms.”
I have read, with great interest, about the Alt-right movement lately. It seems very much the case that Alt-right uses these very tactics that the above article sites. “Hereditary intelligence”, and perpetuation of “Western- European Culture”. These are pretty names for what is essentially a philosophy of racism. They can be found within Milo Yiannopoulos’s article on breitbart.com (Bannon’s self claimed outlet for the alt-right), summarising the alt-right.
As I said, I think it is true that the left has gone too far with PC culture. However, I think it is also true that up to and after the election of Donald Trump, the right has gone WAY to far in trying to make blatantly racist ideas mainstream. It is a frequent claim of conservatives, after all, that to call someone “racist” is the easiest way to shout down a valid conservative point. But at some point, we do have to call a spade a spade.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/
It’s not liberal PC correctness at all. It’s a commercial enterprise waiting to see which way the wind blows. Nothing new there.
This is good.
Dr. Cottom, I just want to leave a comment to thank you for the hard work you do, both here and on Twitter. I’m very grateful to be able to read your writing and I understand the world better by seeing your perspective.
I know this work is always hard and often unrewarding and that not only do (mostly white) people take it for granted, but they are always asking you to perform more of it, on demand, unpaid.
So I am saying thank you. Thank you very much.
Fascinating information. I’m always looking for someone who can help me understand what’s going on. And I really need that right now.
When I was in college, way back in the late 70s during the Apartheid boycott movement, we had many discussions about what is “racism.” Because in our society racist attitudes are effectively universal, we wanted to find a useful way to distinguish between “prejudice” and its more serious form, racism. That way, if you can consciously recognize your prejudice you can then use that consciousness to combat your racism.
The upshot, as I recall, was that advocating for or tolerating actions and institutions that would specifically harm people based on race/religion/etc was properly called “racist.” With that approach, Trump’s call for blocking a judge based on his heritage is clearly racist.
Of course, as clear as this definition is it will never be used by mainstream media. Taking a number of steps back, we see clearly that our economic systems, many parts of our educational systems, and our overall social functioning are also racist because they tolerate and sometimes encourage negative impacts based on race/religion/etc. I think the problem with using the word racism in any precise way is that it is fundamental to our structures, not just a personal characteristic. If the media used the term consistently and honestly, we’d have to question almost everything about our society.
Trump never said Mexicans are rapists. That is the sort of propaganda that shouldn’t arise in the first place, let alone be passed around months later as fact.
What he said was that Mexicans are not sending their best to the US. They are sending criminals, including rapists. That idea is incorrect (Mexico is not “sending” anyone), but it is not racist. All societies have criminals and racists; Mexico is not an exception.
Eyeroll
I guess you missed the entire premise of this piece. Maybe you should consider writing one about the importance of being a precise bigot.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” – Donald J. Trump, June 16, 2015
Trump invites his fans to see people who look Mexican as mediocre or worse, as troubled, as problem carriers, as drug mules, as criminals, as rapists. These descriptors forward obvious racist stereotypes. The hedge he added at the end of this attack doesn’t change this, although it gave his apologists at CNN the opening to falsely claim that he assumed that “many” were good people rather than merely “some” and thereby distract attention from Trump’s racism.
Nice graphs. I was wondering if you can share with us your formula for determining whether a person should be labeled racist. Perhaps the media finds it difficult to determine whether an individual is racist, so they shy away from using an imperfect formula for determining such. I believe that if you would share your formula for determining whether a person is racist, the media would have more certainty in using the label on individuals who qualify. Thanks, and keep up the good work.
Dear Professor Cottom,
Three years ago, someone shared your article on Jonathan Ferrell and whistling Vivaldi. In three years of people sharing tons and tons of articles – that is the one I remember and keep going back to. It says something about me and my ignorance that this was so powerful to me, but I also think it says a lot about what an incredible writer and thinker you are. Whenever something big happens in America (on any topic), I come right to your page, to hear your heart-rending voice, to learn about the situation from your perspective, and I am always both challenged and encouraged. I can’t thank you enough for it.
Thank you also for this latest installment and important research. I wanted to add one point, in recent years, I think the publications that are comfortable talking about race are some of the publications on the far right, but they often talk about in terms of reverse racism (though still just calling it racism). For example. I just checked the “racism” tag on Breitbart and there have been 30 articles posted with that tag since November 15, 2016. While the New York Times and NPR are uncomfortable calling the alt-right white supremacists, Breitbart has no problem tagging a short article about Black Lives Matters protests in Chicago as “racism.” So I fear that there a lot of people (and I especially worry about the young people) who hear nothing about systemic or institutional racism, and everything about how “playing the race card” hurts them at every turn. I’m sure that this is nothing new to you, your NYT research just highlighted the starkness of it for me.
Thank you very much. And a very good idea for comparative research!
To your final point, I just heard a story from an African American friend here is Maine. She works with the King Fellows, a group of young people trained in civics and leadership including deep discussions about identity, systems and power. The King Fellows gave a workshop last month attended by many other young people, including a group of Somali American students. The Somali students said it was the first time they had heard that “reverse racism” was not real.
Amazing irony: we have a president-elect who rails against political correctness and who is being protected by the media’s PC approach to calling racists and racism what they are.
Really, do we need a “formula” to understand Trump is a Racist and to call him one? This reminds me of the Rodney King trial when the defense essentially spent Hours of testimony explaining that the officers beat him according to their training. They were acquitted by formula. But did he get beaten long after he was subdued?
Racism comes from persons who believe in it and consider themselves superior. While walking toward downtown, while a junior in college, I heard a boy call me niggar without thought. I kept walking towards downtown and did not return to the dormitory until I returned from shopping unharmed. Fortunately for me I was not physically harmed.
This is a very interesting article. I just have two comments:
I thought the definition of racism was “racial prejudice in the hands of the powerful”, implying the ability of the person who harbors racism to negatively affect other people based on their race.
Why should a person who has one so-called Caucasian and one black African parent be described as Black?
So a person who has no power can not be a racist? You make my point – everyone has their own definition of racism. Here’s the real definition, which says nothing about “the powerful”: the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.
Racism has its effects. Being in places and buying things that some people believe is not for persons not like him or her can be unpleasant.
“Racism” discussion is SO boring.
Words fly, someone gets offended, others get labeled, “You’re one”/”No, you’re one” exchanges fly, and, finally, someone gets called a “fascist”.
What a waste of time.