White Grievance and the Politics of Regression

October 18, 2025 – Los Angeles, California

As the No Kings protests continue across the United States—standing in opposition to the tyranny and corruption of the current administration—a deeper crisis reveals itself. Each week exposes a new layer of decay: from Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth’s drunken antagonism toward the press to Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem’s crusades against any community she deems “beneath” her. The most recent scandal, however, cuts to the ideological core.

Earlier this week, Politico uncovered a private Telegram chat belonging to a network of “young” Republicans, most of them in their late twenties, working in or around the White House. The messages were explicitly racist, affirming what many already understand about the GOP’s moral trajectory under Donald Trump. But the greater scandal may be the response that followed.

Vice President J.D. Vance dismissed the incident, saying:

“That’s what kids do. Reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes… I don’t want to live in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke ruins his life forever.”

This was not an apology. It was a defense of racism disguised as empathy. These are not “kids,” and these are not “jokes.” This is ideology—an ideology that thrives under the pretense of youthful indiscretion, legitimizing white supremacy as immaturity rather than intent.

From the Classroom to the Cabinet

When I was in seventh grade at South Gate Junior High, my history teacher once threatened a student with physical violence for misbehaving. At the time, I dismissed it as the act of a bitter man nearing retirement. Only later did I understand that his resentment may have run deeper.

South Gate, California, had undergone dramatic demographic change. Once a predominantly white enclave, it had become a working-class, largely Mexican American suburb. That teacher had grown up in the South Gate of the 1950s, when white residents fought against school desegregation and resisted the arrival of Black and Mexican families. His hostility was not simply personal—it was ideological, born of a culture unwilling to relinquish dominance.

When I heard Vance’s remarks, I thought of that classroom. The same logic applies: racism rationalized as behavior rather than belief, prejudice reframed as personality. It is the same defense mechanism that shields institutions from accountability by reducing systemic hate to individual error.

Ideology, Not Error

The racist comments exchanged in that Republican group chat are not outliers; they are expressions of the Trump administration’s underlying worldview. From Vice President Vance to Speaker Mike Johnson, from Noem to Hegsworth, Carr, Leavitt, Miller, and Bondi—the pattern is unmistakable. Their collective agenda seeks to restore a racial hierarchy threatened by demographic and cultural transformation.

White racism in America has rarely faced sustained accountability. The nation prefers amnesia, invoking progress as proof of redemption. Yet the persistence of white grievance politics—now central to the GOP’s identity—demonstrates that the past was never resolved, only repressed.

This administration’s open contempt for diversity, equity, and inclusion is not a rejection of “wokeness”; it is a rejection of justice. Their rhetoric about “free speech” or “anti-cancel culture” serves as camouflage for a campaign against pluralism itself.

Demography and the Politics of Fear

The United States is projected to cease being a white-majority nation between 2040 and 2050, with most estimates placing the transition around 2042. This shift—driven by lower birth rates among white Americans and the growth of Latino, Black, and Asian populations—represents the inevitable outcome of decades of migration, interconnection, and cultural exchange.

Trumpism, in this light, is not a movement of renewal but of reaction. Its xenophobia, its obsession with border walls, its attacks on education, and its fetishization of “law and order” all stem from the same anxiety: the loss of unchallenged white authority.

What we are witnessing is not a series of political scandals or youthful missteps but the reassertion of a racialized worldview dressed in populist language. It is the politics of regression—a movement seeking to reverse history rather than confront it.

Conclusion

The faction of racist white America is making its last grasp. The defensive outrage over diversity, equity, and inclusion—the sneering attacks on so-called “wokeness,” the casual racism excused as humor, and the nostalgic call to “make America great again”—all emerge from the same fear of displacement. Yet this fear is not truly a fear of loss; it is a fear of equality.

The No Kings protests remind us that resistance remains both possible and necessary. The question now is whether the nation will recognize this moment for what it is: not a dispute over political correctness or generational sensitivity, but a reckoning with the unfinished business of American democracy.