Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: President Trump’s Supporters Are Racist

EXCERPT:

OCASIO-CORTEZ: "Well, first of all, I think the biggest mistake that we have, and it’s a trap that gets set by the right, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is just the frame of asking 'Is blank racist?' That is something that we have to pull ourselves out of. It’s not about asking whether Trump voters are racist. We need to talk about racism, not racists. Racists — it’s a very two-dimensional, boring conversation? Is something racist? Yes or no? And then you debate it. What do you do about that? We need to talk about racism, its contours, its histories, where it manifests, how it’s used. Because like all winning political phenomena, whether they’re good or bad in your opinion, they rely on coalition building. So, Trump relied on a coalition and a core part of that coalition were racists, building a coalition with all sorts of other people that could be susceptible to racist views if they were blanketed and layered and made people feel good about it not being a racist thing. And so there are a lot of people who support Trump that genuinely don’t believe that they are racist. Because we do not talk about or educate people on recognizing racism, and because we do not do that, it — it just allows itself to just — we get caught in this debate of is something racist and then a person uses their defensiveness and they say, 'Well, it’s not racist because I’m not racist and I believe this thing because it’s economic in nature.'"