How Trump and White Supremacy Are Killing American Democracy—And Why White Americans Are Helping It Happen

Trump’s America is proving that white supremacy isn’t just oppressive—it’s self-destructive. Here’s how racial caste politics empowers billionaires, weakens democracy, and hurts the very people who uphold it.

The Role of Caste Preservationism in Trump’s Policies

White supremacy bedevils American democracy, like a congenital disease set to finally exterminate its host unless White Americans can prize country above race. 

During the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump and the broader conservative movement endeavored to further entrench Whiteness as the hegemonic, organizing force in electoral politics. The machinations succeeded, and Trump recaptured the White House, defeating sitting Vice President Kamala Harris.

Like before, Trump ran as what I call in my upcoming book, Their Accomplices Wore Robes, a caste preservationist—a person who, in the race context, sets as an objective the eternal primacy of the White population. His campaign operated from the understanding that he would strengthen the country’s White-on-top racial caste system. He quickly translated into policy the right-wing’s ambition of advancing caste preservationism, the quintessentially American project of maintaining a racial hierarchy in a nation that professes to extend freedom and liberty to all.

During his first days at the helm, Trump signed executive orders that targeted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs and revoked a 1965 executive order issued by President Lyndon Johnson that required non-discrimination from federal contractors. These presidential actions expand the unfair advantages awarded to White people.

Another executive order attempts to terminate birthright citizenship. This wildly unconstitutional ploy, aimed particularly at recent immigrants of color, reminds them that many real Americans consider them forever unworthy of citizenship rights regardless of birthplace. By torpedoing DEI programs, dismantling non-discrimination protections, and attacking birthright citizenship, Trump’s administration not only reinforces racial hierarchy but also undermines the foundational democratic ideal of legal equality.

Trump heads a movement that rejects efforts to welcome long subjugated racial groups—the lower castes—into the national family. The administration warns Black and Brown communities especially to no longer expect equal protection of the laws and informs like-minded caste preservationists that the federal government will refrain from intervening on behalf of their victims. Only those born with Whiteness, in Trump’s America, can ever be true members of We the People who deserve governmental representation.

Two truths concerning White supremacy, in just a short time into Trump’s presidency, have grown impossible to ignore. First, that it fuels destructive voting patterns that empower oligarchs and erode democracy. Second, that it drives support for policies that sabotage the American economy and democracy, even in areas seemingly unrelated to race.

The American people must appreciate and act on these truths by forging a sustainable, majority multiracial coalition if they desire to emerge with any chance, after Trump, at reconstructing political systems and institutions.

How White Supremacy Fuels Destructive Voting Patterns 

Even before the Civil War, many among the White masses, faithful to White supremacy, had already devolved into what the country’s founders dreaded: voters easily manipulated by the ultra-wealthy and thus turning into patsies who defeat the central conceit of democracy. And that enduring mindset empowers oligarchs who are destroying the nation. Destroying its institutions. Its way of life. Men like Elon Musk are crushing into rubble what could take generations to clean up and repair.  

During the colonial era and the early years after the Revolutionary War, the fear that non-landowning White men would act as the easily manipulated dupes of their “masters,” or what we now would call bosses, convinced colonies and then states to restrict voting rights to landowners, with the holding of acreage equating to financial independence.

Many early leaders envisioned America as a new land that would best old England. The hereditary elite ruled England, catering to nobility and the landed gentry, while neglecting the needs of the masses. Although in America, the small farmer with land commanded a high level of regard, early generations doubted that the “servant” class, viewed as dependent, could ward off the pressure of their economic betters. Under the doomsday scenario, America would deteriorate into England. Become a place where elites ruled, albeit through proxies who pulled the lever against their own interests.   

Many White people now vote for what they consider as good for White people. Yet, they mistake the interests of the rich as “White interests.” Thus, the rich control our democracy. In an ideal world, individuals vote to secure their own financial, medical, and bodily safety. They vote for their own wellbeing, and that of their fellow citizens. They behave, in other words, rationally. This steers the country in a direction most beneficial to popular majorities. Instead, millions vote against “the others,” against out-group members, against Black and Brown people, turning potential allies into persecuted enemies. This allows capital to prosper from division amongst labor.

The White working class, like many balloters, visited the polls in 2024 griping about inflation. About the price of goods, services, and living expenses. Trump discussed those concerns, offering no real solutions. True—he offered tariffs. But tariffs increase prices. He forged tremendous headway blaming the others though. He blamed, for example, rising housing costs on undocumented persons. Through such remarks, along with the political right’s prolific manipulation of bigotry, like hurling “DEI” as a racial slur, caste preservationists prompted White voters to consider their vote along racial lines. 

Nonetheless, soon after regaining the White House keys, Trump swung the door open to oligarchs, most notably Elon Musk. Through the newly created Department of Governmental Efficiency, Musk is the face of the administration’s evisceration of the federal government. Musk handed nearly $300 million dollars to elect Trump, and Trump repaid his debt, allowing Musk, putatively, to cut wasteful government spending. In actuality, though, Musk is corrupting government. Worsening the lives of everyday Americans. But enriching himself. 

Musk has fired thousands of federal employees, including 6,000 veterans. He has demeaned countless others, asking them to justify their continued employment and feeding their written responses to an artificial intelligence system to evaluate the necessity of their positions. Fired employees have received letters impugning their work, even when their performance reviews were stellar.

He has slashed cancer and Alzheimer’s research. Because of layoffs, federal parks are closing to the public. Even social security payments seem infirm given that Musk called the program a “Ponzi scheme,” and sources inform that thousands, maybe even half the Social Security Administration 60,000 person workforce faces layoffs.

Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX businesses, however, have received $18 billion in federal funding since 2015. Eight million dollars a day. The world’s richest man engorging on billions in taxpayer dollars. Not wasteful though. That spigot keeps running. Meanwhile, Musk is furthering his own business interests by firing regulators investigating his companies as business leaders pay Trump as much as $5 million to dine with him.

White supremacy has prevented many from understanding that they routinely sacrifice their own health, comfort, and prosperity and that of their fellow citizens to advantage billionaires. They have become the very dupes a fledgling nation, desperate to evade the pitfalls that inspired many to cross the seas and bear muskets for independence, deemed unworthy of the ballot.

The Economic and Social Costs of Racial Hierarchy

White supremacy, furthermore, engenders support for ideas and policies that debilitate society even in areas having little connection to race. The taint of White supremacy, simply put, bleeds everywhere. 

This observation builds on what sociologist Joe Feagin terms the “White racial frame” which describes how White people see and understand the world and everyday occurrences. White people, Feagin observes, generally view America through a lens. American culture has indoctrinated them into assuming they represent the intellectual and cultural vanguard. Trained them into viewing their dominant status—their privilege—as proper. Taught them to conclude that racial inequalities cannot be traced back to their race’s past or present transgressions. Those who most perceive the world through the White racial frame interpret events to defend the status quo and a White-on-top racial hierarchy.

Operating out of the White racial frame buys trust with much of White America. This trust grows not from expertise, not from logic, but from cultural and racial solidarity.

The politicians, political commentators, anyone really, who most strongly operate out of this frame receive instant and often unshakeable credibility, giving legitimacy to viewpoints even on subjects unconnected to race. The sort of folk who, for example, criticize movements for racial justice in policing also, for instance, often call climate change a hoax, or attack the safety of vaccines. The credibility the speaker earns through the embrace of White supremacy helps sway listeners into accepting the speaker’s other positions. White supremacy, therefore, colors all policy conversations.

Trump voters, who expressed dissatisfaction with the economy and the price of goods, supported a candidate promising to introduce tariffs, which would further raise prices. His alignment with White supremacy signaled general trustworthiness, signaled that he too played for their team. But now, his economic policies are producing predictable effects, higher prices, increased unemployment, more financial insecurity, inflicting real damage that injures the economy.

Similarly, prominent caste preservationists like President Trump or Tucker Carlson have lauded tyrants like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Viktor Orbán. This, in turn, has swayed millions of their followers to align with fascists.

America now condones a commander-in-chief opening his arms to strongmen but stiff-arming a democratically elected leader like Ukraine’s Volodymyr and inciting trade wars with Mexico and Canada. By praising authoritarian leaders, Trump signals a rejection of democratic values and an embrace of fascism, crippling America’s standing, however undeserved, as a global champion of freedom and human rights. Now trusted allies won’t even share intelligence with America.

We will forever be the country that elected a man who embraced tyrannical leaders, undermining our future safety in a myriad of unpredictable ways.

Building a Multiracial Coalition for Democracy

America’s redemption requires a great abandonment of White supremacy. 

Instances of White people choosing interracial coalitions over White solidarity fills America’s present and history. Black and White southerners joined together in 1870s and 1880s Virginia under the Readjuster Partybanner. Then again, they did in 1890s North Carolina through center-left fusion politics. In both states, they ousted avowedly White supremacist, conservative state governments, during an era far more racist than now.

Whiteness can be organized around something other than White supremacy as Linda Martín Alcoff, philosophy professor at Hunter College, maintains in her book The Future of Whiteness. She rejects “white exceptionalism,” or “the idea that whiteness is so distinct as a form of social identity and so problematically tied to its supremacist illusions that it cannot be redeemed.” We mustn’t idle as impending doom draws close. Fatalism can produce no victories. And it errs on analytical, historical, and moral grounds.

What would trigger a reimagining of Whiteness today, however, proves difficult, yet what potential strategies deserve a chance presents an easier question. White voters who have enlisted with Trump liked what they heard, at least more than what they heard from his opponents. The Democratic Party, then, should rework how it addresses White voters, particularly the much-discussed White working-class. The Republican Party, the political headquarters of caste preservationism, wielding both dog whistles and direct appeals to communicate with White voters about race, depicting issues within a dishonest us-versus-them narrative. The time has arrived, perhaps, for Democrats to also talk about race with these voters. But Democrats should tell them the truth in hopes that they finally direct their ire at those truly deserving blame. The billionaires. The oligarchs.

In his farewell speech, former president Barack Obama attempted something approaching this. “[W]e’re not where we need to be,” he said referring to matters of race. “And all of us have more work to do. If every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hardworking white middle class and an undeserving minority, then workers of all shades are going to be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves. If we’re unwilling to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don’t look like us, we will diminish the prospects of our own children.”

America needs an interracial majority coalition. And the Trump opposition might be able to help build this by instructing White Americans, explicitly, about the price White supremacy extracts from them and everyone else. That teaches them how they and the nation can flourish by pursuing a democracy that advantages everyone, one that jettisons its racial caste system.

Storytelling provides the best way to teach, the best way to change a mind. Trump has been telling White people a story that they are believing, even though it ends with the rich and powerful as the actual winners. Ends with them as the losers. Ends in economic ruin. Ends with a tattered democracy.

White supremacy has turned millions into foot soldiers for billionaires. Someone seeking the presidency should tell White people this story. Time has come to tell them the truth.

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