The 2026 blue wave delivered historic victories, but America’s long history of racial backlash warns that rejecting Trump is not the same as rejecting the racism that fueled his rise.
By Mark P. Fancher
When the big blue wave came crashing through the most unlikely regions of the country, it washed ashore a remarkable group of newly elected racial, ethnic, gender and religious “firsts.” Progressives were of course gleeful. But if America’s history is any guide, joy about racial electoral breakthroughs may be premature. There is a well-established record of this country riding waves of legal and political progress toward the racial ideal, but at the same time being pulled backwards by a social undertow driven by white racists. There is no reason to believe things will be different after the recent mid-term elections.
The push/pull racial dynamic has been here from the beginning. The abolition of slavery in 1865 was a step forward, but as formerly enslaved people began to make impressive political and economic gains during Reconstruction, the white community used terrorism to take the south backwards and to restore the old racial order. It was during that period that the Ku Klux Klan was established, and lynchings became community-wide celebrations.
During the 20th Century, the struggle against discrimination waged by the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements may have yielded civil rights legislation that moved the country forward, but many white voters took us backwards when they embraced Richard Nixon’s coded pledge to restore “law and order” which when translated meant the Black militants would be repressed and put back in their place of subjugation.
In the 1970s, when the courts sought to move forward by enforcing the long-ignored 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling with court-ordered busing, white parents responded with violent non-cooperation intended to take the country backwards. Also, affirmative action offered real potential for achieving racial equity in higher education, but the broad masses in the white community came to regard these programs as “reverse discrimination” and they successfully fought them in the courts, in legislatures and in the streets.
In the 1980s, the movement for racial justice may have succeeded in having Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday declared a national holiday, but at the same time the country embraced and revered Ronald Reagan and his ongoing efforts to gut civil rights legislation and undo much of what King accomplished.
In the 1990s, Bill Clinton may have presented himself as a champion of racial justice, but he was shrewd enough to understand the racist sentiments of many in the white community, and he pandered to them, most notably in his attack on Sister Souljah.
In 2008, many would have been willing to bet that the election of Barack Obama marked the dawn of a new day in this country, and some went so far as to proclaim the beginning of a “post-racial” era. However, the true sentiments of many in the white community were channeled into a racial undertow that dragged the country backwards when in 2016 they elected Donald Trump.
So, as 2026 draws to a close, we find ourselves in the wake of the election of many racial “firsts,” and yet again there is widespread optimism that the country has found its way. But an inner voice informed by our history counsels otherwise. Because the tradition in this country is for white racism to drag racial progress backwards, we are compelled to go beyond the self-delusion enabled by conventional political pundits and to examine objectively the full measure of our collective experience over the past two years.
Most political analysts babble endlessly about voters’ collective sense of betrayal. The talking heads suggest that presumably, Trump received support in 2024 because of his promises to: abstain from endless wars, lower the cost of living, release the Epstein files, “drain the swamp,” and secure the borders. It is suggested that the mid-term results occurred because Trump failed to honor these pledges and the financial consequences hit his supporters hard. This analysis contains elements of truth, but it distorts and ignores hard, ugly facts about the persistent racist undertow that has always raged beneath the surface in this country.
Trump’s support had little to do with his posture as a populist reformer. It had almost everything to do with his coded promise to conduct a race-oriented ideological pogrom and physical purge of non-white communities, and to then make real the idea of a “white nation.” He conducted a mean-spirited, hateful campaign grounded in and fueled by fear. It was a fear that this country’s white population is diminishing and its rates of growth are substantially outpaced by not only birth rates of resident communities of color, but also by immigrants from the southern hemisphere. In the minds of Trump’s supporters, to make America great again is to make America white again.
When it is suggested that voters’ repudiation of Trump reflects a rejection of his fascist proclivities, that is true of only part of the electorate. We know this because his support remained steady throughout his first year in office. During that first year Trump was a very busy fellow, and among his highest priorities was the prosecution of his own little race war. He set out to eliminate federal DEI programs. He shut down FAA diversity hiring. He threatened to withhold federal research grants from universities that maintained race-oriented initiatives. He threatened private federal contractors that were not on board with his racial agenda. He declared his opposition to museums that he regards as offensive to white sensibilities. The National Museum of African American History and Culture was a special target. Public school districts were threatened with loss of Department of Education funding if they persisted with DEI programs.
Trump was literally obsessed with race. With the blessing of the Supreme Court, ICE was greenlighted to use racial profiling during their round-ups. Although Trump railed endlessly against immigrants, he shamelessly encouraged the immigration of white people from non-“shithole countries.” He even went the extra mile to get white Afrikaners from South Africa to come to the U.S. to escape a mythical genocide. The military’s removal of memorials and memorabilia honoring heroic people of color was especially obnoxious.
Through it all, the country cheered Trump on. It’s not simply that Trump’s overall approval ratings remained stable throughout this racist rampage. Pew Research Institute reported that in April of 2025, 44 percent – nearly half of the population – specifically approved of Trump’s DEI policies. Because that figure includes people of color and others with progressive racial views, it is likely that they are the only reason the approval rate was not higher. Among Republicans, 78 percent approved of Trump’s racist crusade against DEI.
What then accounts for the mid-term election results? Did white people and people of color who sought white privilege by voting for Trump in 2024 have a racial epiphany? That’s unlikely. It’s more likely that they thoroughly appreciated the targeting of “illegals,” Blacks, Muslims, LGBTQ communities, and all of the “others” threatening prospects for a white America. But ultimately, when ICE killed two white people, and tariffs and war drove up the cost of fertilizer and diesel fuel for big rigs, and the lives of white people became otherwise miserable because of Trump’s policies, racists learned the hard way that, as Bob Marley said: “When the rain falls, it don’t fall on one man’s house.”
So, in the end, was there a massive repudiation of Trump? Absolutely. But there was not a repudiation of his racism. There was a massive expression of anger that he had betrayed the cause of white nationalism with policies and practices that harmed white people. And it is likely that this hatred and anger will manifest in new and different ways as time passes, and many will wonder why people who rejected Trump will sink to new lows in matters concerning race.
What then is to be done? It should be obvious that America does not have a problem that can be resolved in the political and legal arenas, because the dilemma concerns the people’s character and morality. Just as a swimmer caught in the undertow should not swim forward or backwards but should instead strike out in an entirely different direction, this country’s spiritual bankruptcy must be addressed in unusual ways.
Much of the Democratic Party’s recent success is due to the willingness of many of their candidates to go in a different direction politically. Rather than writing off states believed to be irreversibly red, campaigns engaged Republican voters who, because of their personal pain, responded and voted blue. To effectively address this country’s racial intolerance, a similar approach is needed, but because the problem is spiritual it should not be dealt with as a political project.
Although bigots harbor racist views, they nevertheless mistakenly regard themselves as moral. Their spirituality, such as it is, is often developed within white Christian nationalist settings and institutions which promote a warped, twisted, blasphemous theology that in many ways affirms white supremacy and the othering of fellow human beings. Consequently, in addition to challenging the politics of reactionary forces, there is a compelling need to challenge the theology of white Christian nationalism. That fight needs to be taken into white Christian nationalist churches where the stark contradictions between the tenets of white Christian nationalism and the Christian gospels can be highlighted, debated and heard by congregations.
They need to be challenged to justify for themselves why they buy into a theology that regards the white community as God’s chosen people when Jesus himself was clearly a person of color who challenged his followers to love and embrace all people, including strangers from foreign lands and the poorest of the poor. How is it that they justify sitting in pompous judgment of others when Jesus specifically admonished his followers to not only leave all judgment to God, but to also embrace sinners in need of redemption and salvation?
It’s of course likely that many who are challenged to reassess their commitment to white Christian nationalism will not listen and might even go on the attack. But we will never know whether a progressive racial message will resonate with at least some of these people unless an effort is made to engage them. If during those encounters they are touched by the Holy Spirit, anything can happen. After all, who would have ever believed that Scott Colom’s outreach to Mississippi MAGA folks would actually bear fruit?
Reprinted from the LA Progressive
