Culture | Johnson

Language is a telling clue to unacknowledged racial attitudes

Overt racism is declining, but studies show that unconscious bias remains widespread

“WHEN THE looting starts, the shooting starts,” tweeted Donald Trump (invoking a slogan from the 1960s), when unrest broke out after the killing of George Floyd. “THUGS”, the president wrote, were disrespecting Mr Floyd’s memory. Mr Trump likes “thugs”, tweeting it often. He almost always does so when some matter of race is at issue—either the treatment of African-Americans or in reference to “illegals” and “gang members”, implicitly Latinos.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Snide and prejudice”

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