The Washington Post is highlighting an article by Carol Anderson, an Associate Professor at Emory University, originally printed August 29, 2014, that what is happening in Ferguson, Missouri, is not the result of Black Rage against Whites, it is the Result of White Rage against Progress.
Protests and looting naturally capture attention. But the real rage smolders in meetings where officials redraw precincts to dilute African American voting strength or seek to slash the government payrolls that have long served as sources of black employment. It goes virtually unnoticed, however, because white rage doesn’t have to take to the streets and face rubber bullets to be heard. Instead, white rage carries an aura of respectability and has access to the courts, police, legislatures and governors, who cast its efforts as noble, though they are actually driven by the most ignoble motivations.
White rage recurs in American history. It exploded after the Civil War, erupted again to undermine the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision and took on its latest incarnation with Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House. For every action of African American advancement, there’s a reaction, a backlash.
I had great hopes for President Obama ending America's long history of Racism, but the Republican Party greeted the President open hands with a Closed Fist. The Republican Party Leaders schemed behind closed doors and conspired that no matter what the President proposed, they would oppose and they would obstruct.
Even when the President proposed the Conservatives' model Health Plan, created by their own think tanks and first implemented by a Republican Governor, the Republican legislators and Senators did not adopt it they actively derided the ideas that their own political planners had proposed.
And, then they decided on a nationwide scheme to limit the Vote. Anderson states,
A little more than half a century after Brown, the election of Obama gave hope to the country and the world that a new racial climate had emerged in America, or that it would. But such audacious hopes would be short-lived. A rash of voter-suppression legislation, a series of unfathomable Supreme Court decisions, the rise of stand-your-ground laws and continuing police brutality make clear that Obama’s election and reelection have unleashed yet another wave of fear and anger.
I encourage the NAACP, Black Churches and other organizations to provide their members with Photo ID Concealed Carry Permit Cards as soon as possible, and then, and only then, will the Republican Party end the Fraudulent Farce that is Voter ID.
So, follow the Thoughts below the little Orange Squiggle.
Professor Anderson lays waste to the entire history of the Republican Southern Strategy, that is the result of Karl Rove, Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater and others of their ilk, and lays the blame right at the door of Chief Justice Roberts:
It’s more subtle — less overtly racist — than in 1865 or even 1954. It’s a remake of the Southern Strategy, crafted in the wake of the civil rights movement to exploit white resentment against African Americans, and deployed with precision by Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. As Reagan’s key political strategist, Lee Atwater, explained in a 1981 interview: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N-----, n-----, n-----.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n-----’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights’ and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that.” (The interview was originally published anonymously, and only years later did it emerge that Atwater was the subject.)
Now, under the guise of protecting the sanctity of the ballot box, conservatives have devised measures — such as photo ID requirements — to block African Americans’ access to the polls. A joint report by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the NAACP emphasized that the ID requirements would adversely affect more than 6 million African American voters. (Twenty-five percent of black Americans lack a government-issued photo ID, the report noted, compared with only 8 percent of white Americans.) The Supreme Court sanctioned this discrimination in Shelby County v. Holder , which gutted the Voting Rights Act and opened the door to 21st-century versions of 19th-century literacy tests and poll taxes.
Sure, President Obama is a Black President, but the Republicans greeted him with derision. He was a usurper. A non-American, Kenyan, Socialist, Islamic, Radical, Dictator, wannabe Monarch, bent on destroying the Constitution, born in Kenya, denied the recognition of even being the son of an American woman, Hawaiian born, grandson of a World War II veteran, Constitutional law scholar. NO, President Obama was called a "Liar" and denied the dignity afforded the Republican scoundrels who had recently stolen the White House after a disputed vote.
So when you think of Ferguson, don’t just think of black resentment at a criminal justice system that allows a white police officer to put six bullets into an unarmed black teen. Consider the economic dislocation of black America. Remember a Florida judge instructing a jury to focus only on the moment when George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin interacted, thus transforming a 17-year-old, unarmed kid into a big, scary black guy, while the grown man who stalked him through the neighborhood with a loaded gun becomes a victim. Remember the assault on the Voting Rights Act. Look at Connick v. Thompson, a partisan 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2011 that ruled it was legal for a city prosecutor’s staff to hide evidence that exonerated a black man who was rotting on death row for 14years. And think of a recent study by Stanford University psychology researchers concluding that, when white people were told that black Americans are incarcerated in numbers far beyond their proportion of the population, “they reported being more afraid of crime and more likely to support the kinds of punitive policies that exacerbate the racial disparities,” such as three-strikes or stop-and-frisk laws.
Only then does Ferguson make sense. It’s about white rage.
From one Old White Man who is Proud to be a Veteran of America's United States Army Security Agency, the White People of America need to wake up. This could be a pretty good place to live, but it won't be if the Republicans are in Charge.