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There’s an obvious political utility for voices on the right to amplify the idea that White Americans are experiencing unusual duress.

Concerns among Republicans that White people were losing out in America were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/08/12/how-to-understand-trumps-condemnation-of-all-types-of-racism/?itid=lk_inline_manual_16" target=_blank>a strong indicator</a> of support for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> in 2016. As president, he amplified the idea that White Americans faced discrimination or were targets of racism. As a candidate in 2024, Trump has made unwinding programs targeting historic discrimination <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/01/white-advantage-elections-trump/" target=_blank>a focus</a> of a potential second term in office.

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“I think the laws are very unfair right now,” Trump said in <a href="https://time.com/6972021/donald-trump-2024-election-interview/" target=_blank>an interview</a> with Time magazine. “If you look right now,” he added, “there’s absolutely a bias against White and that’s a problem.”

There’s no reason to think that Trump doesn’t believe this to be true, given his politics. Polling conducted by KFF last year <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/07/kff-racial-descrimination-polling/" target=_blank>found</a> that Republicans were more likely to say White people faced discrimination than they were to say any other racial group did. But that reinforces that pledging to combat this purported reverse discrimination holds political value.

The current presentation of White defense that Trump is selling follows a mounting vocal rejection of diversity efforts among his compatriots. The Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 triggered new hostility to the idea that racism is systemic in the United States. That evolved into identifying <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/24/white-scare-critical-race-theory-debate-echoes-with-history/" target=_blank>critical race theory</a> as a boogeyman; that, in turn, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/24/diversity-white-america-desantis-crt/" target=_blank>became</a> opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Officials like Florida Gov. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/ron-desantis-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Ron DeSantis</a> (R) have earned political capital by pledging to uproot state funding of DEI efforts, leveraging right-wing fears about White disadvantage.

On Tuesday, former Trump administration official Larry Kudlow used this line of argument for a more tenuous purpose: combating Biden administration proposals for increasing taxes on wealthy people.

In a diatribe presented on his eponymous Fox Business show (and an essay published by the <a href="https://www.nysun.com/article/free-market-capitalism-is-colorblind-thats-its-great-success" target=_blank>New York Sun</a>), Kudlow tied the wealth tax to DEI — after disparaging DEI programs in a sweeping, dishonest fashion.

“Joe Biden’s strong support for woke DEI policy — diversity, equity and inclusion — that his administration has inserted into virtually every aspect of American life and government and of course, these colleges,” Kudlow <a href="https://archive.org/details/FBC_20240430_230000_Kudlow/start/480/end/540" target=_blank>said</a>. “DEI is also the progenitor of the antisemitism virus that is spreading throughout American culture, including universities.”

No part of that is true? The administration has not “inserted” DEI into much of anything, including colleges. That’s just Kudlow trying to leverage the right’s fixation (the protests on college campuses) for his purposes, even as he was trying to leverage the right’s slightly older fixation (DEI) in the same way. Hence blaming DEI for antisemitism, which is a bit like blaming computers for the bubonic plague.

Kudlow then asserted that DEI was “socialist class warfare,” an allegation more commonly leveled against critical race theory. But he needed the hook for his next claim.

“The Biden budget has come up with this crazy idea of taxing White people because they own more assets than people of color. So Biden seeks to raise capital gains tax all the way up to 44.6 percent,” he told viewers. “And the Janet Yellen Treasury Department points out that White families disproportionately hold assets.”

“We know that,” Kudlow offered dismissively, pivoting to offer praise for the economy during Trump’s presidency. But it’s useful to not dismiss the point quite so quickly. White Americans hold 83 percent of the nation’s assets, <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/" target=_blank>according to</a> the Federal Reserve, despite making up less than 60 percent of the population. (Those assets include real estate and stocks that might be subject to capital gains taxes.) Black and Hispanic Americans, meanwhile, hold less than 7 percent of assets combined. Those racial groups make up 31 percent of the population.

Part of this overlaps with age; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/22/white-america-older/" target=_blank>White Americans are older</a>, and older people typically have more wealth. But part of it is a reflection of the inequality that numerous programs are hoping to address by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/14/race-colorblindness-trap/" target=_blank>adjusting for historic discrimination</a>.

White Republicans simply don’t believe economic differences between White and Black Americans are a function of discrimination. For decades, the General Social Survey has asked a question specifically centered on that divide. While White Democrats became more likely to point to discrimination as a cause in the wake of the initial Black Lives Matter protests a decade ago, White Republicans are still most likely to say the problem is that Black Americans “don’t have the motivation or will power” to overcome poverty.

Or, in Kudlow’s framing on Fox Business, they don’t have the beneficence of Donald Trump’s tax cuts to help reduce levels of poverty.

“Biden is proposing a $5 trillion tax hike overall, which will punish the economy and raise the inflation rate,” Kudlow said in concluding his on-air speech. “But when you look under the hood of this tax policy’s goals, you see class warfare. You see diversity, equity, inclusion. You see racial warfare against White folks and especially successful White folks.”

That last line is important. Biden’s tax proposals focus on rich Americans and, therefore, disproportionately on White Americans. But Kudlow doesn’t emphasize the “rich” in “rich White Americans,” because it is less appealing. He emphasizes the “White,” with the caveat that the White people being targeted will “especially” — read, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/03/11/fact-sheet-the-presidents-budget-cuts-taxes-for-working-families-and-makes-big-corporations-and-the-wealthy-pay-their-fair-share/" target="_blank">overwhelmingly</a> — be “successful” ones.

“This left-wing, socialist, woke approach,” he continued, “is absolutely antithetical to traditional American values and the traditional ladder of opportunity <i>that is colorblind</i> and has made America the strongest country in the world.”

The emphasis on the ladder being colorblind was his. But it begs the question: The whole point of programs including affirmative action elements is that the ladder hasn’t been colorblind. There are <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/racial-differences-in-economic-security-housing" target=_blank>reams of evidence</a> bolstering that idea. Mind you, DEI programs generally focus on diverse representation rather than affirmative action, but it’s clear what Kudlow is trying to get people mad about here.

Kudlow probably didn’t convince many people with his argument. Not simply because it’s not a great argument, but because his audience is presumably disproportionately wealthy and conservative and didn’t need culture-war reasons to oppose a tax on the wealthy.

But the argument was still useful. It is a stark, unvarnished demonstration of how appeals based on race can be and often are stalking horses for standard Republican economic policies.

The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America

Ohio State University

Philip Bump is a Post columnist based in New York. He writes the newsletter <a href="https://wapo.st/3m3QTiy">How To Read This Chart</a> and is the author of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/696653/the-aftermath-by-philip-bump/">The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America</a>.

Philip Bump

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