Presenting these relevant thoughts from
this tweet stream, cleaned up for easier reading on a forum. (Note: I didn't write this but consider it spot-on.)
The other day, I heard an NPR podcast about politics where a white woman broke down in tears of joy and relief listening to Trump. She said she was crying because Trump was speaking out against political correctness - something she's been angry about for decades. I was stupefied to hear an adult woman crying tears of joy for an avowed misogynist... but she's a white woman, in post civil rights America.
What I understood, more deeply, is the reality of what it means to be a racist in the US after the civil war... and the civil rights movement. The reality is that white-male supremacy was the literal law of the land for centuries. It's the foundational core of the U.S. project.
The result is that we have generations of white people who were socialized to believe that what we now call "racism" is just "the way it is." These people, and their parents, grandparents before them, were taught by all of the nation's major institutions that whites are superior. Further: they inherited a culture that openly and proudly tortured & denigrated blacks for centuries. The word "openly" is important here. For centuries, the political and economic leadership of the U.S. was openly, explicitly and officially white-male supremacist, and while they were disadvantaged by certain aspects of white-male supremacy, white women also participated in the oppression of non-whites.
Except they weren't taught that slavery, lynching, Jim Crow or discrimination were "oppression". The nation framed these things as moral. The end of the Civil War highlighted the contrast between the nation's superficial racial liberalism and its ongoing white supremacy. The southern states that supported slavery were told - by the same nation that legalized slavery - their "way of life" was now "immoral". Meanwhile, the same nation that now claimed to be racially liberal by "ending" slavery actually perpetuated it through prisons. So you have this deeply hypocritical situation, in which the racist values of the nation were superficially disavowed but maintained in fact.
As all of this unfolds, white racial attitudes liberalize somewhat, but not drastically. And the power structure remains white supremacist. Social norms have shifted such that being "openly" racist is increasingly stigmatized -- but the nation remains systematically racist.
So, let's return to the white female Trump supporter who broke out in tears listening to him rage against "political correctness". She's emotionally reacting to a sense of betrayal by her country... a country that officially and proudly oppressed non-whites for centuries. She's reacting to the hypocrisy of white supremacist Democrats and liberal elites who blame poor and working class whites for racism. While she probably couldn't articulate it in these terms, she's crying because deep down she knows Trump really does represent this country. She's tired of hearing politicians pretend to not be the racists that they actually are. She's relieved to hear someone "tell it like it is."
Political correctness is the trope that allows white elites (liberal and conservative) to pretend to not oppress the people they oppress. While the woman surely had no critique of oppression, she knows intuitively that the language of political correctness doesn't match reality. The political reality Trump has so brazenly and successfully tapped into is that this country 1) is racist and 2) belongs to white people. Not to mention the associated truths -- that the nation is also fundamentally sexist and that it especially belongs to white men.
In any case, millions of white people are crying and raging because their country lied about itself when it pretended to liberalize. They feel betrayed by a nation that built its economy and culture on anti-black white supremacy but then progressively said "Nevermind." The reality is, you can't build a nation on white-supremacist ideology & violence for centuries, then turn around and say "Well, actually..."
This contrast between political correctness and political reality will continue to enrage - not only racists, but also victims of racism.
) It's why black people sometimes call someone with an exotic hair color "Kool-Aid" - and I could potentially see it being used as a slur by someone who regards them as lower class (or of an "inferior" race?) for doing that, too, although I've never personally witnessed that. My daughter had a gay, black stylist call her "Kool-Aid" and act snooty about it while he was styling her hair, once - but I think that may have just been his general personality. 
