The psychological phenomenon that blinds Trump supporters to his racism

President Trump’s tweet proposing that four Democratic congresswomen of color — three of them born in the United States, one a naturalized citizen — “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” was textbook racism. Yet while some Republicans condemned the statement — Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), who is black, lamented its “racially offensive language” — others flatly denied that there was a racial component to the salvo. A particularly contorted reaction came from Rep. Andy Harris (Md.), who said, “Clearly, it’s not a racist comment,” adding that the president “could have meant go back to the district they came from, to the neighborhood they came from.” But the president could hardly have made his meaning more clear: He said the four “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe.”

“Well, I certainly do not think the president’s a racist,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who suggested that the tweet was justified by the representatives’ constant criticism “not only [of] the president but also Congress and our country.”

Fear of crossing a president who’s popular with the Republican base surely explains some of the convoluted rationalizations on offer. But a psychological phenomenon called cognitive dissonance may also shed light on some people’s unwillingness to acknowledge the self-evident racism in the tweets.

Cognitive dissonance, first described by the psychologist Leon Festinger in the late 1950s, occurs when conflict emerges between what people want to believe and the reality that threatens those beliefs. The human mind does not like such inconsistencies: They set off alarms that spur the mind to alter some beliefs to make the perceived reality fit with one’s preferred views.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-psychological-phenomenon-that-blinds-trump-supporters-to-his-racism/2019/07/18/29789344-a8ac-11e9-ac16-90dd7e5716bc_story.html