(CNN) The issue of white extremism is taking on a new and important role in the American political conversation, and it is separate from the problem of guns and the people who will use them to mow down their fellow citizens.

The two issues mix together after mass shootings carried out by racially motivated killers. But they are often distinct.

The issue of gun violence has divided Americans along political lines for decades and will continue to do so, but white extremism is jumping to the forefront of the political conversation in a new way: Democrats say it's a crisis that needs to be addressed immediately while President Donald Trump and some pundits appear to believe there is no problem at all.

Two Democratic presidential candidates -- former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey -- gave speeches Wednesday in which they drew lines between the extremist hate that motivated the gunman in El Paso on Saturday to the rhetoric Trump used to build his nationalist political base. They also cast back to slavery and Jim Crow and decried the institutional racism that still poisons the United States.

Read More