By Musa T. Bey

Rebranding Racism: The Normalization of White Grievance Politics

In Part 1, we traced the historical roots of white identity politics as a ruling-class instrument—designed not for liberation, but to solidify racial capitalism by weaponizing whiteness as property. It was never about “identity” in the liberatory sense, but about control, hierarchy, and state power. In this second part, we will examine how white identity politics has been repackaged in the 21st century—migrating from explicit white supremacy to coded cultural war narratives—and how this rebranding functions to obscure its ongoing role in upholding systemic domination.

Today’s white identity politics no longer always drapes itself in white hoods or Nazi regalia. Instead, it appears in the sanitized language of “anti-wokeness,” “parental rights,” “defending Western civilization,” and the so-called “war on political correctness.” In these forms, it is deployed across party lines and social classes, from liberal handwringing about “white working-class alienation” to reactionary think tanks pushing “replacement theory” with academic polish. Yet beneath these rhetorical makeovers is the same old ideology: the preservation of whiteness as a cultural and material entitlement.

Cultural Wars as Counterinsurgency

Much of today’s white identity politics revolves around cultural warfare. From book bans and attacks on Critical Race Theory to moral panics over trans youth and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives, the Right has effectively constructed a narrative of white victimhood. These attacks serve a dual purpose: they distract from the real crises—mass immiseration, ecological collapse, corporate looting—and they reassert white dominance under the guise of neutrality or tradition.

But these “culture wars” are not simply spontaneous eruptions of grassroots rage. They are highly organized, well-funded counterinsurgencies aimed at rolling back the modest gains of Black and Indigenous struggles, feminist movements, queer liberation, and anti-colonial resistance. This is not cultural discomfort—it is strategic suppression. Think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Manhattan Institute, media empires like Fox News, and fascist-adjacent influencers work in concert to mobilize white resentment as a political weapon.

Liberalism’s Complicity

White identity politics does not only thrive in conservative circles. Liberalism, in its pursuit of stability over justice, often reinforces the same structures. The fixation on a “white working-class voter” who must be appeased by abandoning “identity politics” is not just a political miscalculation—it is a concession to white supremacy. By framing Black, Indigenous, and other oppressed identities as divisive, liberal centrism reinforces the myth that whiteness is neutral, unmarked, and above “identity.”

This centering of white grievance—whether through media narratives, electoral strategies, or institutional hiring practices—normalizes the idea that white people, particularly men, are owed political and economic dominance. Even when cloaked in moderate tones, this is still white identity politics. It is the polite mask of empire.

White Identity as Counter-Revolution

The strategic function of white identity politics is to neutralize revolutionary possibility. When working-class white people are taught to see immigrants, Black communities, or gender nonconforming people as their enemies, they are effectively recruited into the ranks of capital’s foot soldiers. The lie of shared whiteness obscures their real enemy—the billionaire ruling class—and binds them to a violent racial order that exploits them as well, albeit differently.

Instead of building solidarity across lines of oppression, white identity politics fractures movements. It undermines the class consciousness that might otherwise emerge through collective struggle. It whispers to the white poor that they are temporarily embarrassed elites rather than fellow exploited workers, and it frames racial justice as a threat rather than a shared liberation.

Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Solidarity

White identity politics must be understood not as a fringe pathology, but as a central pillar of U.S. political life. It is foundational to the very architecture of the nation-state, rooted in genocide, slavery, settler colonialism, and imperial conquest. Dismantling it requires more than moral outrage—it requires material transformation and mass political education.

Revolutionary solidarity means rejecting the lie that whiteness is a legitimate political identity. It means organizing white people to betray the ruling class, not align with it. It means building multiracial, working-class power rooted in mutual struggle—not in appeals to a mythical national unity built on Black death and Indigenous erasure.

We must move from calling out white identity politics to defeating it. That requires clarity, courage, and a politics grounded not in reform, but in liberation. The future belongs not to whiteness, but to the abolition of its power.

Let me know if you’d like a Part 3 focused on organizing strategies to counter white identity politics, or a version of this written for broader public education.