Racism in 2026 Does Not Look Like 1960’s Racism, As America Traded ‘White Only’ Signs for ‘Free Speech’
Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Texas, told MS NOW that he wants hate groups like Patriot Front to “have their free speech.”
“Let them march and let people see that this level of racism and hate still exists, that the Klan has only metamorphosed now,” Green said on “The Weekend.”
Rep. Al Green hit the nail on the head.
Folks like Wesley Hunt try to say “slavery is over” and “Jim Crow is dead,” and since there are no more “White Only” signs, racism must be over too.
But 250 years after America’s founding, racism still lingers through generations of white Americans.
Whether directly through Jim Crow, the KKK and groups like Patriot Front, or systemically through economic disparities, Black maternal health and beyond.
A photograph can tell a thousand words, and these two photographs told an entire American story: America is still racist, and maybe it always will be. Seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same.
This Is What Hate Looks Like
On July 4, as America celebrated its 250th anniversary, hundreds of masked Patriot Front members marched through Washington, D.C.
About 400 men reportedly dressed alike in dark blue shirts, khaki pants, baseball caps, sunglasses and white face masks. They rode public transit, marched toward the Capitol and carried Confederate flags, upside-down American flags and Patriot Front banners while chanting “Reclaim America.”
Two images in particular showed train cars filled with masked white nationalists and, among them, seemingly only one Black passenger. Officials confirmed that the march concluded peacefully with no reported confrontations or arrests.
So what is all this white supremacy, “America First,” and racist discussions arising without the 1960s era of heckling, violence, harassment and bullying?
In the 1960s, racism did not dare hide. In the South was Jim Crows segregation and “coloreds only” signs, fire hoses, police dogs and white mobs screaming in Black children’s faces. It was direct, public and shameless.
From Jim Crow To ‘Free Speech’
In 2026, racism has learned to modernize.
Now, it can hide behind “free speech.” It can show up through presence, intimidation, micro-aggressions and policies that somehow always ‘seem’ to hit Black Americans harder. And in the age of Donald Trump, it can be emboldened by a political movement that has made resentment, grievance and “America First” rhetoric feel good to boast.
That is what made these images so striking. It captured the new and improved contemporary racism that Black Americans continue to face in a country that has seemingly come so far with civil rights. While the vehicles of racism have evolved, racism itself has never left or changed.
Patriot Front is not some harmless patriotic club. It is a white supremacist and neo-fascist hate group formed after the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Its ideology promotes a white ethnostate.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was repeatedly asked whether President Donald Trump should condemn the group. Instead, he talked about free speech and called democracy “messy.”
“What they stand for is nothing that I could possibly agree with,” Burgum said. “But one of the foundational principles of the United States, which makes democracy messy, is free speech.”
Hateful speech is generally protected in America. However, “free speech” is not the right answer to a hate group that explicitly wants a whites-only state, especially when the pursuit of that goal has historically involved violence. In 2022, 31 Patriot Front members were arrested near a Pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and charged with conspiracy to riot after authorities found them packed into a U-Haul with riot gear.
The New Face Of An Old Hate
And perhaps that is the real danger now: not the racism that announces itself with harassment and “coloreds only” signs, but racism that has learned to be subliminal, sound constitutional, and be politically convenient.
Maybe Al Green is right to let them march. Let America see them. Let the hate be labeled as “free speech.” Because as Trump and Republican lawmakers fight and vow to “Restore Truth and Sanity to American History,” let the ignorance and reality clash once again.
Like I have said before, since the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln’s leniency toward the South and former Confederates out of fear of deepening resentment, racism has remained a protected evergreen in this country.
Until this country can recognize hate even when it is not screaming a slur in our faces, we will keep mistaking a change in appearance for progress.
Until then, good night and good luck.
