Trump v Nixon on Race: Why 2020 Isn't Quite 1968

2020 is '68 all over again. But not the '68 you think. Yes, 1968 also saw protests, racial divisions and political polarization. Adam Serwer covers politics for The Atlantic, and he says you can certainly draw comparisons between Trump and Nixon – in that Trump is actually a backlash to the policies that came out of 1968. But Serwer says 1868 is a better point of comparison – it was a moment of hope, when white Republicans had been fighting for black rights for years, before ultimately abandoning them to pursue white voters. Serwer sees Americans coming together in this moment, as they have in the past, but as a student of history, he says the backlash always comes eventually.

Interview Highlights

On whether white people will sustain their support after this moment

Please don't kill us or beat us is such a reasonable demand that it's hard for almost anyone who does not envision the police as the enforcers of the color line to reject it. But once the demands go beyond that, once they go to more material questions, much as King's civil rights movement went beyond questions of political power to material dimensions, there is often a tremendous backlash.