Avoiding Talk About Race Is A Losing Strategy

Whether or not we talk about the role of racism in the authoritarian campaign for power consolidation is one of the most critical strategic questions facing democratic resistance right now. The historical record shows that avoiding discussions of race under authoritarian pressure is ultimately counterproductive.

The Strategic Retreat and Its Logic

Why Organizations Are Backing Away:

• Donor pressure: Major funders fear being labeled “woke” or “divisive”

• Coalition fragility: Worry that explicit references to race and gender-based oppression will fracture fragile alliances

• Electoral calculation: Belief that economic populism is more broadly appealing

• Survival mode: Organizations under attack prioritize immediate institutional survival

• Media environment: Authoritarian framing has made racial justice seem too controversial

The Apparent Logic: This retreat can appear to be tactically smart because it seems to:

• Broaden potential coalition membership

• Reduce targets for criticism

• Focus on “universal” issues that affect everyone

• Avoid internal coalition conflicts over priorities

Why This Strategy Fails: Historical Evidence

Germany (1930-1933): The Social Democratic Miscalculation

The Strategy:

German Social Democrats downplayed anti-Semitism and focused on economic class issues, believing this would build broader working-class solidarity against fascism.

The Failure:

• Scapegoating effectiveness: Nazis successfully used anti-Semitic scapegoating to fracture working-class solidarity

• Moral authority lost: Social Democrats couldn’t counter Nazi racial appeals with purely economic arguments

• Coalition weakness: Jewish Germans and other targeted groups felt abandoned, weakening overall resistance

• Strategic initiative: Fascists controlled the narrative about who was responsible for economic problems and gained definitional power on the subject of race

Lesson:

When authoritarians center race, democracy advocates who avoid it cede the definitional battlefield, and the definitional battlefield is critical ground that we must fight for in order to be successful.

United States (1930s): New Deal Coalition’s Racial Compromise

The Strategy:

New Deal Democrats largely avoided explicit racial justice to maintain Southern white support for economic programs.

Short-term Success:

Built powerful coalition for economic reform.

Long-term Failure:

• Authoritarian opening: Exclusion of Black Americans from New Deal programs created ongoing grievances that white supremacists exploited

• Coalition fragility: When civil rights became unavoidable in 1960s, the New Deal coalition fractured, creating the opening through which authoritarians were able to move their agendas over subsequent decades

• Incomplete victory: Economic gains were undermined by racial exclusion

• Moral authority: Limited ability to counter racist appeals

Lesson:

Racial exclusion makes democratic coalitions vulnerable to authoritarian divide-and-conquer strategies.

Contemporary Examples: Brexit and European Populism

The Pattern:

Center-left parties across Europe avoided explicit discussions of race and immigration, focusing instead on economic inequality.

The Results:

• Authoritarian narrative dominance: Populist parties controlled immigration discourse

• Working-class defection: White working-class voters moved to explicitly racial appeals

• Coalition collapse: Multiracial coalitions fractured without explicit racial solidarity

• Policy failure: Economic policies couldn’t address problems framed in racial terms creating an opening for reactionary populists

The Specific Risks of Avoiding Race

Authoritarian Scapegoating Goes Unchallenged

The Mechanism:

Authoritarians need scapegoats to explain why their policies hurt ordinary people. When democracy advocates don’t explicitly defend targeted communities, authoritarian narratives become dominant.

Current Example:

HUD cuts hurt everyone, but they’re being sold as eliminating “waste” that helps “undeserving” people (racial dog whistle). Without explicit race-based analysis, this framing goes unchallenged.

Historical Pattern:

Every successful authoritarian movement has used racial scapegoating. Democracies that survive explicitly reject this framing.

Coalition Fracturing Along Racial Lines

The Dynamic:

When race isn’t explicitly addressed, race and gender-based tensions within coalitions aren’t resolved, they just go underground until authoritarians exploit them.

Tactical Vulnerability:

Authoritarians will use racist appeals to peel off coalition members. Without explicit antiracist commitment, these appeals often work as repression grows, and the protection of the strongman leaders becomes more appealing.

Trust Erosion:

Communities of color lose trust in coalitions that don’t explicitly defend them, weakening overall resistance capacity.

Missing the Economic-Racial Connection

The Reality:

In the U.S., economic inequality is inseparable from racial inequality. Policies that address economic inequality without addressing racial inequality often fail or have limited impact.

Policy Blindness:

Housing, healthcare, education, and criminal justice policies that ignore racial dimensions often perpetuate the problems they’re trying to solve.

Mobilization Failure:

The most effective economic justice movements in U.S. history (labor organizing in the 1930s-1940s, civil rights movement, Fight for $15) explicitly connected economic and racial justice.

Moral Authority Deficit

The Problem:

Democracies derive strength from moral clarity about justice and equality. Avoiding discussions of race undermines this moral authority.

International Implications:

Global democratic solidarity depends on U.S. commitment to universal human rights, including racial and gender equality.

Historical Legitimacy: American democratic ideals are inseparable from struggles for racial and gender equality. Abandoning this history weakens democratic identity.

Recommendations for Current Moment

Organizational Strategy

For Mainstream Organizations:

• Values integration: Incorporate racial and gender justice into organizational mission and messaging

• Coalition partnerships: Partner with organizations led by communities of color and women

• Resource sharing: Share funding and platform access with explicitly justice-focused organizations

• Staff development: Invest in organizational capacity for intersectional analysis of power and opportunity

For Explicitly Justice-Focused Organizations:

• Bridge building: Develop messaging that connects to broader audiences without compromising core mission

• Policy integration: Show how racial/gender justice policies benefit everyone

• Coalition leadership: Take leadership roles in broader democratic resistance

• Narrative development: Develop compelling stories that connect particular experiences to universal values

Messaging Strategy

Core Principles:

• Lead with values rather than avoiding difficult topics

• Connect particular and universal rather than choosing between them

• Historical grounding in American democratic tradition

• Forward-looking vision of inclusive prosperity

• Moral clarity about justice and equality

Tactical Flexibility:

• Audience adaptation: Adjust emphasis based on audience while maintaining core message

• Strategic timing: Intensify racial justice messaging when it’s most effective

• Coalition coordination: Align messaging across coalition partners

• Rapid response: Counter divisive racist attacks with unity messaging

The Long-Term Stakes

Historical Pattern:

Movements that successfully prevent authoritarian consolidation are those that explicitly defend targeted communities while building broad coalitions.

Contemporary Reality:

Right now, communities of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants are explicitly targeted by authoritarian policies. Democratic resistance that doesn’t explicitly defend these communities is likely to fail.

Strategic Imperative:

The choice isn’t between “divisive” identity politics and “unifying” economic populism. The choice is between explicit commitment to equality (which builds trust and moral authority) and implicit acceptance of hierarchy (which authoritarian movements exploit).

Moral Foundation:

Ultimately, democracy depends on the principle that everyone deserves equal dignity and opportunity. Movements that compromise on this principle lack the moral authority necessary to defeat authoritarianism.

The Takeaway:

The risk of explicit racial justice messaging is real but manageable. The risk of avoiding these discussions, however, is movement failure and democratic collapse.