What happened to the salience of racism?

[Crumpets]

Trump's 2016 campaign was very race-focused, and this was amplified at the time by the alt-right, which was at their peak of influence. The alt-right declined over Trump's term, making racism less useful to him as a political tool. In 2020, Trump I think personally had moved on from race (though not necessarily gotten better, more just became disinterested) until the death of George Floyd, which brought it back into the spotlight.

Ever since 2020, I think we've just been on an extended post-George Floyd race issues hangover. Biden hasn't done anything to antagonize the situation, and Trump is more concerned with re-litigating the 2020 election than race baiting (or anything else for that matter). There are still plenty of people who are actively promoting/opposing racism, but there's not much of a market to discuss it as a salient issue on most media.

Either that, or Joe Biden just solved racism on January 20th, 2021. Seems possible.