What percent of the U.S. population is white (as of the 2010 census)? Want to take a guess before reading further?
With a newly unearthed video making the rounds of the social media sites, Vice-Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan's words have managed, however briefly, to draw attention from his boss's troubles and blunders. Ryan's words, however, would not be receiving this focus and scrutiny were he not confirming the same prevailing attitudes held by Romney (and presumably others in his party) -- that much of the country is beyond saving, beyond help, and not worthy of their attention.
When watching the Ryan video, however, that number he gave -- a more generous 70% of America worth saving -- rang as familiar. That Ryan's view of the American populace is 17% more optimistic than Romney's isn't the issue here. These are men, to be sure, who see many of their fellow Americans as parasites -- creatures less than human -- at best to be used or contained by a system that promises much but delivers less and less with each passing year. It's no coincidence that Paul Ryan's figure of 30% parasites is also roughly the percentage of non-white people in the United States, depending on what one considers "white."
This is nothing new, of course. Since President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, particularly Title VI, which prevents discrimination by government agencies that receive federal funds, the conservatives in this country have been bent on so-called "smaller government," by which they mean "less services for people browner or poorer than they are." We can take the Civil Rights Movement and its achievements in the mid-60s as the turning point when the focus became dismantling the Government.
Indeed, Nixon's "Southern Strategy" is still very much Chapter One of the Republican Play Book. Since 1968, the unspoken narative they have more or less successfully pushed on the public is this: Democrats will take your money away from you and give it to black people.* And it's worked because, in a sense, it's true. Democrats favor programs that raise the standard of living for all Americans, without exception or prejudice. Many, many people of European ancestry in America vote against their own financial best interest because they can't stand the idea that the same programs will also help "the other." Why? Why this collective desire to cut off our noses in spite? Why, in the words of a greater writer, is there all this fear and loathing?
On the whole, the History of America is that of one oppression after another: Native Americans, Africans (later African-Americans), Mexican Americans, Chinese laborers, Jewish people, the Irish, Eastern Europeans, and basically all women. Most people deep down would, one would hope, at least like to do good and be thought of as good. We, if nothing else, understand on a subconscious level just how badly we (or our progenitors) have treated others -- or on a very conscious level understand how we have been mistreated.
It cuts a person up inside. But we also don't like to feel bad about ourselves, so all that self-loathing has to go somewhere. We have the hardest time forgiving those we've wronged for having been wronged in the first place and making us feel so badly.
Back to Ryan's 30 and 70%. Was the Congressman consciously speaking about minorities when he said, "30% of Americans want their welfare state"? Perhaps, perhaps not. But when your party has a recent history of pandering to the very worst natures in people and actively attempting to prevent minorities from voting in state after state, it's hard to brush it off as mere coincidence.
*And more recently, Hispanics, although this has never been Republicans' principle boogieman.