> The problem is that this approach creates divisive politics.

No, this approach is making the existing division visible. The other approach is to politely ignore it and not talk about it, if you are anti racist be silent about what you see. Allow them to promote its politics and representants, do not object, do not point out to the obvious.

And that is pretty much how abortion protections got removed - "reasonable mainstream" was mocked for telling the truth and supposed to pretend republicans do not plan to destroy them until it was inevitable.

No. The other approach is to talk about it. Not make things more extreme. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis

This is the only effective way to end racism and hate. The problem is that you pool too many people together as "racist" which eliminates the power of the word and sends them into a position of "I'll be hated by the left no matter what I do so I'll go full on".

This strategy has objectively not worked. More Latinos voted for Trump in this election even though his rhetoric got MUCH worse. He wants to deport 18M people and revoke citizenship. Yet, they still voted for him in much larger numbers. Women whose rights were denied voted for him. Why?

You can say they're all stupid and indeed there are quite a lot of those. But the fact is that saying to a person that he, all his friends, family and community are evil and racist doesn't bring that person to your side. It pushes them further down that bad path. It might be satisfying to confront a person in a "good vs. evil" scenario, but that doesn't fix the problem and makes everything worse.

Calling things what they are is talking about it. What you want is to enable one side and castigate the other for telling anything mildly bad about the one choose side. If many people are racists, yep that word will cover many people. There is nothing weird or wrong about it.

Latinos who voted for Trump did it because they are very conservative, have a thing against blacks/arabs and like Trumps personality. Effectively very similar reasons to why non latinos vote for Trump.

> Women whose rights were denied voted for him. Why?

Trump is a lot more popular among men then among women. That is the first thing. Second, yes there are women who deny some rights like abortion for women, that is not shocking new development or something.

> But the fact is that saying to a person that he, all his friends, family and community are evil and racist doesn't bring that person to your side. It pushes them further down that bad path.

Pretending racism is not racism and enabling racism and enabling it does not make these people less racist either. It makes you more like them and it makes middle more like them.

Indeed, what happens and happened is that their opinions are the ones primary being heard, those who oppose are mocked by those who want to be seen as enlightened. What happens is that their real goals are ignored untill they achieve them.

> Pretending racism is not racism and enabling racism and enabling it does not make these people less racist either

Again. Not what I said.

I think what you heard me say is appeasement. Which is VERY MUCH not what I said. I said you should avoid instant judgement which goes against the basic process of persuasion.

I said talking to people and not judging them immediately. Asking instead of confronting. If you start by calling someone a racist his shields go up and he won't listen to you. What did you accomplish by the attack?

Nothing. You didn't change his mind. You preached to the quire. People who hear you either agree with you and people who disagree with you think you're an ahole. Everyone digs deeper into what they already believe and become more entrenched/hostile.

If your goal is to keep people in their positions and prevent change then sure, that would work. You can virtue signal and position yourself as the "good guy".

My goal is to understand people and communicate with them. Even people who might be "bad" or uninterested in communicating/changing their mind. To do that I try to interact without being too judgemental. That's hard sometimes when I read some pretty horrible stuff from some people. E.g. I had a recent debate where a guy implied that me and all of my family should be dead or homeless (I'm an Israeli) so that's hard to reconcile and indeed we didn't reach a reasonable understanding because I feel he wasn't open to another point of view. He was just looking to prove his point (which is pretty insane if his point is I should die).

But it's still a conversation worth having. Understanding what drives a person to a racist position and asking the right questions can sometimes help them along the path of better understanding.

Around 2014 a friend of mine was running from Gazan missiles every night with his kids. His son started bedwetting again and his kids were very scared. They lived in the south very close to Gaza and it is indeed a dangerous area. Back then iron dome wasn't as good and the alarm times are very short. He exclaimed that as far as he cares the IDF should bomb the hell out of Gaza. Fck them for coming after his kids.

If you would have confronted him as a racist he would have become more enraged and probably would have moved to the right.

I asked him how a Palestinian father in Gaza would feel about that. He initially gave some kickback on that so I stressed the difference between Hamas and the civilian population which made him see that his statement was of rage that doesn't represent who he is.

I'm not saying you should tolerate racism. I'm saying you should understand people, listen to their motivations and logic. Talk to them individually and understand where they are coming from. Snap judgements are very problematic and overly simplistic.

I will add: Trump did not won by being nice and accommodating to leftists. Trump won by being accusatory and aggressive. Trump won by treating "suckers" badly.

Trump winning is the ultimate proof that what you suggest is a loosing strategy.