In the recent months leading up to and subsequent to Trump’s election, I, like many others, was an observer and was and involved in many politically and racially charged conversations. One of the most memorable, however, was in reference to the racial history of political groups in America. The person with whom I was having the discussion didn’t understand how Democrats who were the party of the Confederate states, and as such, the party of pro-slavery have the same values as Republicans today which will hopefully be phased out of a progressive society - mainly racism, in this case.

With that, I went into the history of both parties as of the Civil War, conveying that many things came down to economics on their most basic level. Even today, with marijuana being legalized and decriminalized in several areas, people understand that this isn’t due to a change in morality, so much as economic opportunity. Well, this same dynamic applied in the late 1800s, as well. There is evidence that even Abraham Lincoln did not particularly care about slaves, or even seen black people as equals, but instead was helping to fulfill a political agenda, but I digress.

Being that everything is about economics, the Democratic Party has always been associated with the working class, while the Republican Party has always been the party of business and entrepreneurship, to put it simply. In the 1860's, this meant agriculture and industry, respective to the South and North, and to the Democrat and Republican parties.

Now, after the war, and the subsequent “freedom” of former slaves, two things happened. Primarily, former slaves, who had virtually no economic foothold weren’t able to reconcile the economic beliefs of the Republican Party, mainly because many of them simply weren’t applicable on principle. Secondarily, in an effort to distance themselves on a social level from the newly freed slaves, white people, even the ones that had previously supported slavery and voted Democrat, became Republicans, not only because in comparison to the disenfranchised black people, they could consider themselves relatively wealthy, but also as a result of economic beliefs of the Republican Party, they could ensure that their wealth continued to grow, while blacks’ would continue to be generally nonexistent. Thus, Southern whites brought over their regressive ideals, which eventually began to saturate the party.

Now, of course, this isn’t to suggest that all Republicans are racist, or that all Democrats/Liberals are morally sound people. As a relatively sensible black American, I know not to trust any institution in a country built at my expense, especially in terms of political systems. Moreover, there are people in the areas of small business, law, and white-collar areas who vote Republican for what they see as justifiable reasons from an economic perspective. However, it speaks volumes that the Ku Klux Klan changed its political affiliation from Democrat to Republican, but again, I digress.

However, for the most part, for the past few decades, more sensible Republicans have seemed like the norm, while those that voiced more extreme ideals and strategies were kept outside of the mainstream.

And then 2008 happened.

2008 marked the election of America’s first black President, and consequently, there was a great deal of backlash involved, especially among Republicans and (you guessed it) elderly white people, whose candidate had lost. the election was the first time the term “paleoconservative” was coined, referencing conservatives who didn’t want to accept the changing values of this country, but instead return to the values of a simpler time, whatever that means. These “paleoconservatives” were the precursor to what today is known as the “Alternative Right,” and they gave a voice of unity to what was previously considered a scattered mass of nameless people on the outskirts of the Republican Party’s borders.

Today, they’ve taken over.

In a few weeks, Donald Trump, a candidate who was supported en masse by the Alternative Right, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the KKK alike (that’s a relationship I don’t want to even try to dissect) will be inaugurated as our next President, and as his political appointments have shown, there is a growing legitimacy being given to the Alt. Right, a political group that, like the KKK in the past, seeks to recruit by appealing to common peoples’ thoughts on illegal immigration, same-sex marriage, crime, and other things.

If you’re still reading this, waiting for a happy ending, I don’t know what to tell you. I am, too.