Yesterday I spent a good part of the day on DKos, defending Jim Webb against all kinds of charges. The main reason I did it is that Webb has spent a good deal of time trying to get prison reform in this country. No politician would EVER take on prison reform just to get votes. The American people seem to want to lock everyone up and throw away the key. Webb's involvement in that project showed me that he is a stand-up guy. A stand-up guy with some weird/sick viewpoints (DADT!) but a sincere fellow nonetheless.
The insane level of hatred between poor whites and poor people of color in the US reminds me of stories my (Bengali) Indian friend at work told me about the British Empire in India. The British wanted to take as much good stuff from their colonies as they could. The best way to do that (they reasoned) was to keep the locals concentrating on their resentment against each other. That way, the locals would never rise up against the Brits.
So, they would help some Hindu guy assassinate some Muslim guy, and the resulting chaos would help the British cause. Some time later, they would do the opposite (helping a Muslim kill a Hindu), and the resulting chaos would help the British cause.
My Turkish friend told me that the Brits did the same thing in the Middle East (Shia vs. Sunni). This was a strategy --- no accident, for sure...
As many of us know, the modern Republican party came into power by exploiting the resentment of poor whites (particularly in the South), after the Civil Rights legislation of the middle 60s. Lyndon Johnson famously said "We have lost the South for a generation". He underestimated the period; it has now been 45 years.
But we know that the Republican party and many evangelical churches are doing the very same thing the British Empire did -- divide the poor by having them bicker over which group is getting what -- while the fat cats take the real goodies -- the equivalent of the tea the British loved so much.
Now, I find it hard to believe that anyone would argue with the gist of what I've said so far. We know this is happening but we are helpless to change it. In fact, based on the Webb diaries I've seen this weekend, a lot of people are happy with the buildup of mutual hatred among the poor of different colors. Some seem determined to punish poor whites for the crimes of their forebears. But, as Webb points out, only 5% of the Southern whites of the time owned slaves. According to the 1860 census, of 27 million whites in America in 1860, only 385,000 owned slaves. The south had ~8 million whites. [OBTW, leave me out of this. During slavery, my relatives were busy trying to stay alive as Czars would call for the occasional pogrom...]
I was appalled and amazed by some of the theories of "white privilege" that appeared in one of the diaries. The proponents cleverly point out some nasty ugly truths in America, and then let the reader make totally unwarranted conclusions. Yes, life is terrible for many black/colored people in this country; they are sometimes abused by police and they are feared and hated by many in the majority group. The unemployment rate for blacks is ~twice that of whites. The maldistribution of wealth in the USA is appalling.
And therefore....we should do what?
Does that mean life is worse for black doctors, lawyers and professors than it is for white coal miners? [yes, I'm including Henry Louis Gates]
Does that mean we should deny remedial reading courses for poor whites, so that poor blacks can get a greater share of our educational resources?
Does it mean we should we treat a 1st generation poor black immigrant better than a 5th generation poor white --- because of past discrimination & racism that this new immigrant never actually experienced [yet anyway]?
How far are Kossacks willing to take this white privilege theory?
I think theories of "white privilege" (as presented here) are psycho-babble. This is really about a legitimate fear that our government is incapable of fairly allocating resources to help poor people. That is, if government is off the hook for remedying the effects of past discrimination, the only poor people that will be helped are white poor people.
If that is what you are worried about --- say so! Stop with the grandiose theories. Based on history, that is a legitimate fear, especially if/when a Republican administration comes to power. That is a serious issue to be solved --- but...it isn't a good reason to keep poor whites as ignorant as possible.
I'm guessing that (as a Marine and) an educated man, Jim Webb has seen a lot of ignorance in his time. I'm guessing that he thinks having 10s of millions of poor whites voting against their own interests is bad for America. I think he knows that, by implementing affirmative action as we did in the 60s & 70s, we helped build the bizarre Republican coalition of poor whites with nothing and business fat cats with everything.
Frankly, I don't think anything we could have done would have prevented the drift of poor rural whites away from the Democrats. Civil rights legislation and desegregation alone (combined with intense racism) probably guaranteed that.
But (sort of speaking for Webb), what are we going to do moving forward? We have some choices to make. I guess we can just wait for demographics to help the Democrats win elections. And that very well may happen. But it is a BAD IDEA. Every day the Fox network, right-wing politicians, and so-called Christian leaders try to balkanize us more. An idiot Congressman from Tennessee called for secession the other day. Governor Rick Perry babbles about secession. As we know, people with nothing to lose tend to do horrible things -- sometimes to themselves (& each other) but more often to innocents who aren't members of their tribe.
Instead, we need to start making a concerted effort to educate the permanent white underclass. Ah, there's a phrase for you. Best case, (I hope & believe) we will find that college-educated poor whites will become less racist. At a very minimum, people with a chance for a good education might have more hope that their lives may improve. And we can begin to reverse the damage caused by glorifying ignorance for decades.
The obstacles are great, no doubt. The states that many of these people live in have terrible, underfunded public school systems. They have school boards that hate science, that want to convert the schools into Jesus factories.
But that shows how far gone these people are. Waiting 5 or 10 or more 20 years means that the Falwells of the world will have taken over large chunks of America --- permanently. Shouldn't we recognize this situation as an opportunity to make this a more progressive country over the long run?
Or should we apply a vengeance-based model apparently favored by so many Kossacks in comments and diaries?
- We've suffered at the hands of white elites for 400 years
- You are white (whether elite or not)
- Therefore you have caused my suffering
- Ergo, for the next 400 years I hope to make your people suffer as much as mine did
Jim Webb is nobody's idea of a liberal. Don't expect Virginians to be Bernie Sanders. But (as I read his editorial), he is struggling with the issue of how to prevent the permanent white underclass from following the Republican party off of a cliff -- destroying whatever unity America has left. As I read it, Webb suggests the best way to do this is to end school "diversity" goals which can be easily gamed. If you want a black or Hispanic student for your University, a poor one counts the same as a rich one. That is dumb. Chris Rock's children don't need assistance in getting into school. There is a black middle/upper class (albeit small) that is succeeding. Ignoring that is dumb. Chris' children have more in common with other wealthy children than they do with children stuck in the Ghetto. Are Sasha and Malia going to have trouble getting into a good school? Their mother is a legacy from Princeton, for crying out loud.
Poverty should be the number one determinant for affirmative action.
Because blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately poor, they will continue to benefit from such programs. But so will the white children of the coal miners. It will be good policy and good politics.
Where do we get the money to do all this? Tough question, in the middle of 2 wars and the Great Recession. We've got to get the hell out of Iraq and slow defense spending for sure. But how we get the money is less important than agreeing that this is a legitimate concern -- that Jim Webb is not evil incarnate, that it is to OUR benefit to have an educated population, that we have no chance of erasing the stain of racism without improved education for poor whites.
OBTW, I'll ignore any comments calling me a "cracker", so save your fingertips....