Say you're deciding how to vote

Say you're deciding how to vote, and aren't Aboriginal. I think you should consider how racists plan to vote – they're the best experts on which outcome would be more racist. As Andrew Gillum said: I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.

Few racists would explicitly say: "I'm voting No because I want the lives of Aboriginal people to be worse". They must resort to euphemisms, lies & dog whistles. They can get VERY good at this. But their vote – and how they discuss the Voice amongst themselves – strips away the euphemisms. Briggs said it best: "Not everyone who’s voting No is racist. But every racist will be voting No."

Now, trying to account for this makes many No arguments sound very weird:

• If you think Yes is "divisive" – wouldn't racists be voting Yes because they want to divide us?
• If you think Yes is "the real racism" – don't racists know what real racism is?
• If you think Yes is a token outcome that would block better achievements like Treaty – wouldn't racists love to block Treaty by voting Yes?
• If you think Yes will create more harm by entrenching race-specific laws – wouldn't racists want this?

You could say: "well, racists are stupid" – but underestimating racists is a mistake. If they were incompetent, how would you explain 90% of world history? Plus, many are educated in top-tier institutions.

Many (most?) No arguments can be reformulated as: "Extreme racists might oppose the Voice for racist reasons, but **I** oppose it for non/anti-racist reasons". And maybe you do! But a No result will have the same outcome regardless of voting reason. And I just don't think that racists have some deep misunderstanding of the consequences of a Yes vs No. If anything, they know better than most of us.

Another explanation for racists voting No would be that they correctly see No as the best vehicle for their racial animus. Occam's Razor anyone?