The Republican Party in the United States has moved farther right in recent years. And as it’s done so, you would think racialized Americans might be distancing themselves from it and its policies.
But at last week’s GOP primary presidential debates, three of the seven people on stage were candidates of colour. Racialized citizens also have been drawn to far-right politics, including key players in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol and recent racist attacks.
Which begs the question: Why are racialized people upholding white supremacist ideologies that work against them?
Daniel Martinez HoSang, a professor of Ethnicity, Race and Migration and American Studies at Yale University, has been exploring this question for a long time. He is the author with Joseph Lowndes of Producers, Parasites, Patriots, Race, and the New Right Wing Politics of Precarity. HoSang sat down with us to discuss what they call the politics of multicultural white supremacy.
