But uncontested multiracial democracy is a recent development in American history. For most of our national life, the United States has been a herrenvolk democracy, one in which whites have been favored citizens enjoying principal access to wealth and opportunity and presumptive status over nonwhites. And in the middle of the 20th century, that also meant first dibs on the fruits of an interventionist government. For millions of white workers formerly confined to cities—where social standing was found in the ability to create space away from blacks and assorted others—it meant status security in white schools and white enclaves. And if they belonged to unions, even integrated ones, it meant white shop floors and specialized jobs, for whites. When this was challenged, by black incursion into white spaces, the results were explosive, from political backlash—like the one that installed white supremacist Albert Cobo as mayor of Detroit in 1950, over vocal objections from liberal union leadership—to outright violence and anti-black pogroms.

We assume that the relative lack of racial violence over the last generation is because of a change of heart and attitude. And surely that has happened to some extent. But to what degree does it also reflect an erstwhile political consensus wherein leaders refused to litigate the question of multiracial democracy? Absent organized opposition to the idea that nonwhites were equal partners in government, there was no activation in the broad electorate. It wasn’t an issue people voted on, because they couldn’t.

Donald Trump changed that. With his tirades against nonwhites and foreign others, he reopened the argument. In effect, he gave white voters a choice: They could continue down the path of multiracial democracy—which coincided with the end of an order in which white workers were the first priority of national leaders—or they could reject it in favor of someone who offered that presumptive treatment. Who promised to “make America great again,” to make it look like the America of Trump’s youth and their youths, where whites—and white men in particular—were the uncontested masters of the country.

In the same way it has always been possible for white Americans to love black individuals and vote for the subjugation of black people, it is also possible to like Barack Obama and also yearn for a return to this idealized past, especially in a world that is tenuous and unstable. Which means that, in the case of the Obama/Trump voter, all we have is a case of simple preference order. When the choice was between Obama and a conventional Republican, these voters chose Obama. But when the choice was between Obama’s flawed successor and a man who promised to restore their greatness, Trump won.