Issac J. Bailey wrote a column for Politico in which he calls on our president to step up to the plate to fix the racism Trump has conjured. Bailey then writes that the browning of America is a problem which tens of millions of Americans are beginning to become anxious about, not because they’re all racist, but because they don’t know that it means for their children (sic).

I have to admit that I didn’t have the stomach to read any further. The first paragraph, reproduced below, has plenty in it it that needs unpacking, starting with the title.

First things first, Bailey is a Black conservative who has renounced his membership in the GOP.  With that caveat out of the way… No, President Obama must not reach out to angry whites. It isn’t his responsibility to appease anxious racists.

Trump didn’t summon any racism. We’ve been a racist nation from the start. Racism has been in practice,  all this time, in the open for all to see. What Trump is doing, consciously, is appealing to the most racist elements in our nation. The angry whites who support Trump, to a man and woman, are all racist. With everything that’s been said and done by Trump since the start of his campaign, there is absolutely no need to pretend to give his supporters any benefit of the doubt.

Angry whites need to ask themselves what about becoming a minority it is that angers them and immediately follow up with why. Assuming whites can figure out for themselves that the anger is due to their racism, it follows that their fear stems from repressed knowledge of supremacist behavior. Following that bit of self-revelation, the next step is self-examination. The beginnings of a cure? Learning to suppress the almost but not quite genetically-encoded reflex, and imaginary belief, that prompts you to go out and preemptively screw those you’ve oppressed before they come to screw you.

As for doing right by our kids? My advice to white people is to stop teaching their kids racist behaviors by the time they start Pre-K and Kindergarten. Whites need to stop acquiescing to the whitewashing of history in their kids’ schools and do everything they possibly can to teach their kids the truth about themselves and their ancestors. Whites need to acknowledge to themselves how really hard it is to wean off of the deeply ingrained bad habits one’s own parents inculcated in them. But like a mother weans her baby off, it is something that simply must be done.

This quote of James Baldwin’s still holds absolutely true and we must all strive to make it obsolete:

“Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.” 

White people need to fix themselves. It’s OK for them to ask – not demand – help from Black America. The first move, however, must be ours.

Obama Must Reach Out To Angry Whites

White America, fast becoming a minority, needs to hear reassurances from somebody other than Trump.

For all the bad feelings that Donald Trump’s naked religious bigotry and race baiting are conjuring up, they are also providing our nation with an opportunity. The ugly rhetoric just might force the country to finally contend with a problem many don’t even want to acknowledge exists: that we are fast becoming a nation in which minorities make up a majority of the population. As a result, tens of millions of white Americans, accustomed for so long to having all the benefits of being the majority, are scared out of their minds—and it is this fear that Trump is exploiting so effectively. These feelings are emerging not because whites are all racists, but because they don’t know what that might mean for them and their children.

As long as angry, scared white Americans follow Trump and his rhetoric, the racial divide in America will only deepen, and it will become increasingly difficult to solve the nation’s most pressing problems. So the question becomes: Who can counter Donald Trump?

Read the rest of this article on Politico.