America Was Built On Race

Trump's Attack on Black Votes Was There the Whole Time, We Just Didn't Call It a Crimehttps://t.co/sXhZb5XXVJ

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) July 20, 2023

For now, I want to talk about how the press cognitively missed this — myself included. I want to talk about how the press — myself included — didn’t treat an overt effort to make it harder to count the votes of Black and Latino voters as a crime.

Because “This is America, it’s always about race,” is the proper default setting we dare not employ? The same reason affirmative action is not about race but has always been about race and yet can’t be about race because it might be unfair to white people who are not a race and so can’t be treated like one, because that would be really unfair.

That said:

One reason TV lawyers didn’t see this is they have always treated Trump’s suspected crimes as a white collar affair, plotting in the Willard, but not tasing Michael Fanone at the Capitol. 

But it is also about race and visibility. 

January 6 was spectacular, there for the whole world to see. But those earlier mobs — at the TCF center in Detroit, the State Farm arena in Atlanta, Phoenix, Milwauke — those earlier mobs were also efforts to make sure certain votes weren’t counted, or if they were, were only counted after poorly paid election workers risked threats of violence to count them, after people like Ruby Freeman were targeted by Trump’s team to have their lives ruined. 

And we, the press collectively, didn’t treat those efforts to disqualify votes as the same kind of crime, as part of the same conspiracy, as Trump’s more spectacular efforts on January 6.

This is America. It’s always about race.