When White (and Black) conservative Republicans speak these days — to borrow from the late, great James Brown — they talk loud and almost always say nothing.
My capacity to connect dots (and shameful rhetoric) has led me to a fateful conclusion: In the age of Donald Trump, there is very little difference between conservative Republicans and White supremacists, who, by the way, come in all races. They now speak the same language.
You may have noticed that these two groups pepper their language with certain words and phrases that are meant to flip the script and transform themselves from instigators into victims. The trigger for their use of these words and phrases, which have increased in popular usage since the murder of George Floyd inspired resurgent Black Power, is usually a Black person (like me) speaking their mind.
Here’s what these folks really mean when they drop their favorite buzzwords.
All Lives Matter
This is their roundabout way of saying White Lives Matter — and now there are shirts to spread the message they’ve been sending all along.
Cancel Culture
This, to the conservative Republican (and others who have had to face consequences, sometimes retroactively, for saying and doing stupid things), is a system of oppression where people — especially Black people and the LGBTQ community — exercise their Freedom of Speech to criticize language and actions they find offensive and demand repercussions. So what is it called when conservative Republicans ostracize anyone, from Lynne Cheney to the United States Capitol Police, who reminds them that the GOP has become an organization of basic, immoral, hypocritical opportunists? Preserving “traditional American values,” which I will define here as protecting generations of white supremacy and white privilege.
Colorblind
“I’m color blind” is basically just code for “Let’s just stop talking about race. It makes white people uncomfortable.”
Critical Race Theory
Most white conservatives probably don’t know what it actually is, but to them, it applies to any discussion that acknowledges the physical and mental brutality white Americans inflicted on Black Americans during the country’s formative years and how that multi-pronged cruelty continues to inform and influence race relations today. They may say they oppose CRT because it’s “divisive” (see below) and they don’t want white kids to feel bad, but the only feelings they are worried about are their own, because, as we all know, the truth hurts — especially when it’s about you.
Divisive
If you say anything that serves as a reminder that in the United States, there is Black, and there is White — and although we were all created equal, we aren’t all treated the same — you are being “divisive.” The word is exclusively reserved to shut down conversations about race and shut up the (usually Black) people who start them. It’s always about race. You won’t hear conservative Republicans/White supremacists using “divisive” to try to manage people who call out homophobia, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia, or anti-Semitism. And they certainly don’t apply it to the Confederate flag or to themselves when they push voters’ buttons by making polarizing topics like abortion, marriage equality, and gun control major election-year issues. And if that doesn’t work, they just attack the U.S. Capitol. No divisive behavior there!
Replacement Theory
In other words, Make America White Again — even though America has never been White. But what do White supremacists know about actual U.S. history, which isn’t taught in schools because no-one wants White kids to feel bad?
Reverse Racism
In reality, there is no such thing. Racism is racism. But when people add “reverse” to the big, bad R-word, they are doing something similar to what they do when they put “White” before “trash.” The qualifiers suggest subconscious foregone conclusions about Black and White people — that one group (White people) is inherently more likely to be one thing (racist) and the other group (Black people) another thing (trash). In other words, they’re inadvertently owning their racism. Semantic implications aside, conservative Republicans typically use “reverse racism” in response to a Black person who has just said something that underscores an inescapable fact: White Americans were the architects of racism in the United States. There have been renovations over the centuries, but the foundation remains the same. And the actions — and inaction — of multiple generations of White Americans have allowed the original structure to remain standing.
Self-defense
To the conservative Republican/White supremacist, it now covers aiming a gun and, if deemed necessary, shooting to kill peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors, unarmed Black men, and a Black woman minding her own business in her own home in the middle of the night.
Snowflake
A liberal who dares to call out anything conservatives say or do gets tagged with this dishonor. Conservatives are apparently the only ones allowed to be victims, whether it’s over the devastating effects of cancel culture and reverse racism or whatever ghastly plot liberals have concocted to divide and destroy the United States and turn it into a cesspool of Socialism and Communism (words, by the way, that they use and abuse because they’ve never bothered to actually look them up).
Garrick McFadden
Woke
Do you dare to acknowledge that we’re no longer in the 1950s, that times have changed and the way we should act and speak have changed with them? Then to the conservative Republican who longs for simpler days of segregation when Blacks and other minority groups knew their place and White people didn’t have to think twice about what they say, you are “woke.” The word, invented by Black people (of course) to describe a certain social currency and virtue, has been co-opted and is now used against them by conservative Republicans/White supremacists. It’s also a favorite cutdown disdainfully dropped by “libertarian-leaning” straight White male podcasters and TV hosts who love to hear themselves talk and wallow in nostalgia for a pre-#MeToo world of unchecked male domination where straight White men rarely faced consequences for rotten social (and sexual) behavior.
I’ve never been a fan of the buzzword, but I’d rather be “woke” than be in a lazy state of perpetual slumber.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Jeremy Heligar's work on Medium.