The role racism has played in the dismantling of the social safety net in the United States, in my opinion, has not been given the kind of attention it deserves. I find it frustrating that many liberal commentators and progressive activists seem to downplay this phenomenon. Sure, many acknowledge that President Obama's race is the major reason why so-called conservative "tea partiers" have whipped themselves in a frenzy for the past two years. But all this resistance to Obama, the Democratic Party, and the very idea of government and a comprehensive social safety net for all Americans goes much deeper.
We wonder why working class conservatives rail against government, while at the same time happily taking their Social Security checks, using their Medicare and veterans' benefits, taking subsidized home loans, sending their kids to public schools, etc. Why do these people ally themselves with Wall Street CEOs and vote against their own self-interest? It's not that working class conservatives really hate government. In fact, judging by all the benefits they enjoy, they love government. They would just rather their tax dollars not pay for programs that serve the needs of people who aren't white and Christian. To put it bluntly: working class conservatives would rather that America ONLY serve the needs of white Christians. They see Wall Street barons as part of their white Christian conservative tribe. It's the solidarity of white privilege that has plagued this country since its founding, and it is the core reason why America has resisted the kinds of comprehensive social democratic programs - universal healthcare, expansive government pensions, government-provided childcare, paid family leave, free university education, mandatory vacation time and other worker supports - enjoyed in Canada, Europe, Japan and other western democracies. And racism is also lurking behind the current attacks on public employees and the concept of government itself. The progressive movement needs to face up to this problem.
America's slow motion train wreck has been in the making ever since the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence. The seeds of inequality were sown upon this country's very foundation, and now threaten to destroy the social contract thousands died fighting for in the labor movement. Slavery was the first institution of inequality embedded in the new American nation. The Founders owned slaves, and the Constitution initially designated African-Americans as 3/5 of a person. Slavery - and later, Jim Crow - perpetuated a racial caste system. This free black labor kept many poor whites out of work. To keep poor whites from turning against them, wealthy, white landowners dangled the carrot of white privilege -- letting poor whites have many more rights than blacks (but still keeping them socially inferior to the elite). Thus, an uneducated and impoverished white farmer from Appalachia occupied a higher social rung than an educated, free black merchant who owned land.
In the Jim Crow era (1870s-1960s), southern segregationist Democrats were fervently anti-union and pro-business. Even unions, at the time, discriminated against blacks. So those gains the labor movement achieved at first weren't broadly shared. Many of the New Deal programs progressives lionize today initially excluded people of color. When the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts granted equal rights to people of color, the realignment of the major political parties that slowly began with Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, accelerated. Blacks, who had largely identified with the Republican Party because Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery, were quickly switching over to the Democratic Party. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs cemented blacks' new allegiance to the Democrats.
Meanwhile, working class white Democrats - upset over having to suddenly share America's wealth with "coloreds!" - bolted to the Republican Party. This phenomenon intensified with Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" and Ronald Reagan's smaller government-low taxes mantra. The tactics used by the Republican Party over the last 30 years to keep the white working class voting against their own interests frequently invoke the age-old racial caste system, with coded language ("welfare queens," "welfare state") and appeals to selfishness framed as "individual" or "personal responsibility." What's really meant: "You don't want your hard-earned tax dollars going to THOSE (black and brown) people!" I live in California, and before I was born four decades ago, public services here - especially the schools - were the envy of the world because people were willing to tax themselves to pay for them. But the state was much whiter then. The late 1970s ushered in Prop. 13, which enacted a requirement of a 2/3 vote of the California legislature to raise taxes. This anti-tax revolt swept the country, became the basis for conservative (non)governance, and the direct cause of state budget deficits and reduced services everywhere. With increased immigration from Mexico and Central America, California got browner. All of a sudden, voters decided they no longer wanted to pay for state services. Unconscious (and overt) racial animosity hovered in the background, influencing the voting patterns of low- and middle-income whites, keeping most of them firmly wedded to the Republican Party and stubbornly averse to political appeals from Democratic politicians and progressive activists. And the right wing gleefully exploited that animosity.
Melissa Harris-Perry (formerly Harris-Lacewell), an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, spoke with Keith Olbermann on his former show, Countdown, early last year about the race-baiting that poisoned the debate surrounding health reform:
Author, educator and anti-racist activist Tim Wise, best known for his books and lectures on white privilege, perfectly sums up the problem of racism as an historical barrier to the expansion of progressive legislation:
Here is a clip from a talk by Tim Wise about how the notion of white privilege has betrayed the white working class:
Today, we are seeing the same divide and conquer tactics that have been used against minorities now used to divide white members of the working class: private-sector employees are being pitted against public-sector employees. The kinds of insults the right wing are flinging at public employees and their unions - "freeloaders," "lazy," "irresponsible," "people who don't want to work" - are quite familiar to people of color, who have had to deal with this kind of invective for years. And those white workers who once ignored the right-wing evisceration of the social safety net, or who actively participated in that evisceration, are discovering that they are the new targets. Doesn't feel good, does it?
Black and brown people were the canaries in the proverbial coal mine. For decades, corporate interests - through right-wing politicians, think tanks and mainstream media - demonized social programs and mocked the poor. Starting with teachers, the right wing denigrated the public employees who provided government services. Even though most low-income people are white, social programs and poverty were equated with people of color, who were stereotyped as "lazy" and "undeserving." Right-wing politicians and the mainstream media perpetuated these stereotypes. The concept of the social safety net was equated with the word, "handout." Social Security and Medicare morphed into "entitlements." These programs are belittled as handouts someone else pays for, rather than more appropriately viewed as insurance programs workers pay into as a hedge against destitution. "Entitlements" are anathema to the American ideal of the rugged individual, that mythic Horatio Alger-type hero who pulls himself up by his bootstraps. So, we hear a lot of conservatives say, "I did everything on my own because I worked hard." They conveniently forget that none of that success was possible without the public benefits all Americans pay for through taxation.
But if the plutocrats could get low- and middle-income whites to repudiate government programs because ethnic groups they don't like might use them, it would be much easier to get rid of the entire social safety net - including those programs the white working classes enjoy. So many white working class conservatives are unaware that their own racial resentment has been used against them. Corporate thieves and conservative media blowhards have ginned up this resentment to cleave the majority of the white working class away from those with whom they should naturally ally themselves - workers of color. Because the robber barons know that once white workers figure out they are being conned, they will join with other workers, and rise up against the corporate elite. This might finally be happening.
Emboldened by their victories in 2010, right wing, neo-fascists in America are escalating their attacks, moving on from people of color and the poor to the entire working class, including white workers who had supported conservative politics ever since Ronald Reagan. The attacks on the collective bargaining rights of public employees in several Midwestern states is simply the next stage in the American Class War. The chickens are home and nesting comfortably in their roosts. For 30 years, the majority of white workers has unwittingly supported harmful neo-liberal economic policies, the demise of private-sector unions, and the corporate corruption of our elections by constantly siding with the GOP. In fact, the majority of whites voted in favor of John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008, and voted overwhelmingly against Democrats in 2010 (fortunately, younger whites vote more progressive). Furthermore, white voting patterns have encouraged the infiltration of pro-corporate politicians into the Democratic Party. These "Blue Dog Democrats" dress up as social and anti-tax conservatives to make themselves more appealing in red districts. But, in reality, they have little or nothing in common with the historical, worker-centered values of the Democratic Party. So the Democratic Party perceives that it cannot run true progressives in red districts and red states. Racism still has a lot to do with perpetuating that dilemma. Therefore, the conservative white working class has been complicit in its own impoverishment and the continuing impoverishment of other ethnic groups.
Racial resentment and bigotry of all forms are infections that have to be stamped out. The majority of white workers must understand that they gain nothing by continuing to harbor such resentment. They will lose if they continue to identify with the wealthy elite and Wall Street crooks in a perverse racial solidarity. They will lose their livelihoods if they continue to fight against efforts to make the rich and corporations pay their fair share in taxes. They gain nothing by viewing "equality," "egalitarianism" "economic justice," "social justice," "shared prosperity" and "wealth redistribution (downwards)" as dirty words. They will gain a lot by supporting progressive public policies that will bring prosperity to all Americans. The employed, the underemployed and the unemployed of all races must work together to wrest power away from the oligarchs, regain the ground we have lost over the last 30 years, and work to strengthen the American social contract to include the kinds of public benefits citizens in Western social democracies enjoy. Hopefully, what we're witnessing in the Midwest is the beginning of this new kind of solidarity.
Updated by mooremusings at Wed Mar 2, 2011, 06:01:13 PM
Wow!! So happy to get all the rec's, and apparently this diary made the list briefly. I'm still reading all of your comments, and I appreciate your input. Also, thanks to those of you sharing this post with friends. Americans really don't talk enough to each other about racism and its effects on our society. Talking about it more is the only way we can heal as a nation.