I should have seen it sooner

Valerie Fitzgerald

Part 4 in a 4-part series
From Heather Cox Richardson, I learned about an era called the 'Liberal Consensus.' She traces it back to the New Deal of the 1930s. The programs that helped my parents during the Depression remained popular and had bipartisan support for decades, but there was strong opposition from the start.
A group that Heather calls'movement conservatives' equated any kind of government spending with socialism. When the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s moved toward desegregation and voting rights, race became a key factor in conservative ideology. At first these conservatives were seen as radical. However, their ideas gained traction over the years.
In her book "Democracy Awakening," Heather writes: “In the years after 1980, a political minority took over Congress, the state legislatures, the courts, and the Electoral College.”
I remember when Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, the Democratic incumbents, defeated Gerald Ford in 1976. Watergate was fresh in American memory. I recall that my driver’s ed class was interrupted to air Nixon’s announcement of his resignation. Our Republican Party separated from the National Republican Party. From 1975-1995, Minnesota had the Independent Republican Party.
The first time I voted was in 1980, and the mood had changed by then. There was an energy crisis, gas prices were rising, and American hostages were held in Iran. Reagan’s message, that government was the problem, was enormously popular.
Reagan made a symbol of a woman in Chicago who collected public benefits fraudulently using multiple aliases and phony addresses. In his book "The Queen," Josh Levin tells the story of Linda Taylor, the real person behind Reagan’s campaign rhetoric. Ms. Taylor was dubbed “The Welfare Queen” in newspapers at the time. Her story weaves together strands of race, poverty, and exploitation that are prominent in our national history.
I voted for Carter in 1980, Mondale in 1984, and Dukakis in 1988. All lost to their Republican rivals. By 1992, I assumed that Democrats would never win a presidential election.
I was surprised when Clinton won. His administration was plagued by scandal. During all the investigations of the Clintons, it was hard to tell the difference between reality and incendiary political rhetoric. It turns out there was a good reason for this.
In her Jan. 29, 2020 essay from the series "Letters From An American," Heather wrote about a Republican training organization, GOPAC, which “distributed a document called ‘Language: A Key Mechanism of Control’ to elected Republicans. The document urged them to refer to Democrats with words like ‘corrupt,’ ‘cheat,’ ‘disgrace,’ ‘endanger,' ‘failure,’ ‘hypocrisy,’ ‘intolerant,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘lie,’ ‘pathetic,’ ‘sick,’ ‘steal,’ ‘traitors,’ ‘waste,’ ‘welfare,’ and – ironically, considering the Republicans current stand – ‘abuse of power.’”
In 2000, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore. It was a contentious election, and the Supreme Court intervened to declare Bush the winner.
In her September 25, 2024 essay, Heather wrote about a discussion between journalist Ron Suskind and a senior advisor to Bush which took place in 2004. The advisor referred to Suskind as part of “the reality-based community.” This community “believed people could find solutions to problems through careful study of discernible reality.”
By contrast, the advisor said, the Bush administration was an empire, “and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Barack Obama was elected in 2008. His secretary of state and former First Lady Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016. Trump’s first administration dealt with a worldwide pandemic and civil unrest following the police killings of several Black individuals. In Minneapolis, George Floyd was murdered.
In 2020, Trump lost to Joe Biden, but that didn’t stop him. His administration oversaw the division of the Republican Party. In one camp are mainstream politicians, whose values align with earlier movement conservatives. In the other are the group identified by the slogan Make America Great Again, or MAGA. In 2024, Trump won both the popular vote and the electoral vote. He is president once again.
This is the fourth in a series of columns intended to explore the roots of whiteness, also known as white supremacy or systemic racism, in my own identity. As I wrote I was reminded of Langston Hughes’ poem, Let America Be America Again:
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek –
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
In 1998, the American Anthropological Association released a statement based on the analysis of genetic data. This statement noted that “there is greater variation within ‘racial’ groups than between them…The ‘racial’ worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth.”
In other words, race as a biological reality does not exist. Race as a factor that influences the legal, economic, and social systems of the United States, however, is very real.
I regret that it took me so long to see how systemic racism lived in my own identity. I should have seen it sooner. People in oppressed communities saw it clearly, and plenty of White people figured it out before I did.
As I write these columns January-February of 2025, it seems to me we are once again deciding whether to find realistic solutions to problems in the present, or cling to the dated ideology my great-grandparents assimilated into. I believe my ancestors would encourage me to learn from their mistakes, shed the burden of oppression they carried with them, and move forward with the evidence of my senses and the courage of my convictions. I will do my best.
Valerie Fitzgerald is a clinical counselor who has worked in mental health care since 2011. She resides in Howe.

Read the full series:

Part 1: The Reckoning 

Part 2: In the beginning

Part 3: From Europe to America 

Part 4: I should have seen it sooner