The White Moderate Strikes Again

Arturo Dominguez
10 min readMar 9, 2020

White folks have a tendency to invoke unconscious discriminatory-driven biases and sometimes invoking purposeful superiority over minorities.

Photo by Zach Lucero on Unsplash

Unless you’re Mel Brooks, race relations in America are as touchy as ever. Trying to address the implicit biases of white folks is only more problematic given the polarization of the current environment. None is more troubling than trying to address this issue among white moderates who typically see no fault in their words, their views, or their actions.

After Joe Biden won the Democratic primary in South Carolina with overwhelming support from Black voters, plenty is being said about those voters and their decision to vote for Biden. Much of what people are saying comes from white folks who were surprised by the predictable result in a state that Biden himself referred to as his firewall.

Some of those words are simply terrible.

Many progressives seem taken aback by Black voters turning out for Biden. Much of that shock comes from Sanders’ momentum taking a hit and his supporters trying to make sense of it. But it’s in these moments where white folks from either side of the political aisle, so to speak, tend to cross boundaries with implicit and sometimes unconscious bias.

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Arturo Dominguez

Journalist covering Congress, Racial Justice, Human Rights, Cuba, Texas | Editor: The Antagonist Magazine |