Tim Wise (as usual) recently nailed a discussion about race and health care. Namely, why is it, really, that people are so against this program? The answer? Because overt government support of Americans has become so racially coded in the American mind that such programs equal "helping lazy welfare queens" or giving more entitlements to "illegal aliens" and, once again, Republicans and America, Inc. have convinced what I think are a lot of well-meaning white Americans to vote against their own interests in favor of sustaining a necessary sense of superiority through racial paranoia.
This statement is a generalization; clearly you can oppose healthcare without the racial paranoia. But the racial taint is here. It is visceral. And, dear white reader, I'm asking for your help to try to knock it back.
It's an old trick.
It worked as a means of integrating the Irish from reviled immigrant status to becoming the head of an American political dynasty. To a lesser degree, it also worked for the Italians.
And now?
Middle aged working class white people seem to once again be in favor of fighting policies in their own best interest so that they can "get back the America" they grew up in; i.e. a segregationalist America where Blacks were to be seen and not heard, Latinos were some variant of Ricky Ricardo, and American Indians only served the Lone Ranger.
I know that this has been circulated ad naseum around the interwebs, but it really put my heart in my throat. Something about the cheering of the crowd, and the frog-marching away of the black woman terrified me. And continues to terrify me.
Change is scary as hell; especially when it results in powerful groups losing power. And the erosion of race-based power has been rather steady the last 40 years, for white people in general, for white straight people a bit more particularly, and for heterosexual white men at the center. Right now, a shift towards leveling a very uneven playing field--one in which, historically, white people have disproportionately benefitted--is causing a bit of a panic, to put it mildly. And this panic is only going to increase as our nation becomes increasingly diverse.
The right of women to vote, the creation of civil rights laws and the ending of (official) segregation, women's access to reproductive freedom and the workplace, etc.; they all chip away at some fundamental sense of "this was supposed to be mine" that drives so much of the discord around health care reform. How else to explain, exactly, the healthcare = reparations argument? Although we seem to be dwelling in crazytown more often these days, the reparations statements, the Pat Buchanan crazy; these things are so outlandish, but they are striking cords. And that should make all of us very afraid.
So I am hoping to update the late great American poet Pat Parker with this healthcare debate:
For the White Person Who
Wants to Know How to Be My Friend
The first thing you do is to forget that i'm Black.
Second, you must never forget that i'm Black.
You should be able to dig Aretha,
but don't play her every time i come over.
And if you decide to play Beethoven--don't tell
me his life story. They made us take music
appreciation too.
Eat soul food if you like it, but don't expect me
to locate your restaurants
or cook it for you.
And if some Black person insults you,
mugs you, rapes your sister, rapes you,
rips your house, or is just being an ass--
please, do not apologize to me
for wanting to do them bodily harm.
It makes me wonder if you're foolish.
And even if you really believe Blacks are better
lovers than whites--don't tell me. I start thinking
of charging stud fees.
In other words, if you really want to be my
friend--don't make a labor of it. I'm lazy.
Remember.
If you are a white person who wants to be my friend, please work (even if through a phone bank) to reassure your white neighbors, bosses, colleagues, teachers, etc. that this search for a new health care mandate isn't about stripping anyone of any rights, but endowing all of us with some more. That there is no power being lost here; only power gained in that voting against one's own interest for a black boogeyman does not make things better. That this country's potential is further fed and nurtured when its citizens are ALL provided for.