Beyond the fact that most of the general economic political rhetoric used to scare folks about recent reform is identical to the discourse around every major move toward equity in the 20th Century, it is worth noting that the racist echoes, too, have a clear genealogy.  Class anxiety can be very usefully channelled into racial anxiety when momentum for the reform of the wealthy becomes too great to ignore. If poor Whites can be made to feel the the threat of the “racial other” in the midst of financial insecurity, the legitimate anger can be successfully redirected at an illegitimate target. Take for instance the following editorial from a Jackson, MS newspaper in opposition to Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1935:

“The average Mississippian can not imagine himself chipping in to pay for the pensions of able-bodied Negroes to sit around in idleness on front galleries while cotton and corn crops are crying for workers”

In other words, Social Security will be a transfer of wealth not from the haves to the have nots, but from White to Black. By successfully reframing the issue into a racial one, many of the policies greatest natural allies become its most hostile opponents. Two examples of very recent invocations of exactly the same kind of rhetorical misdirection:

“Reparations by way of health care reform?

Still believe in post-racial politics? Read the health care bill. It’s affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color. President Obama is on the record as being officially opposed to reparations for slavery. But as with other issues, you have to sift through his eloquent rhetoric and go beyond the teleprompter to get at what he really means.” -FoxNation Online July, 2009

And this from Rush Limbaugh:

“As the economy performs worse than expected, the deficit for the 2010 budget year beginning in October will worsen by $87 billion to $1.3 trillion. The deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps. But in the Oval Office of the White House none of this is a problem. This is the objective. The objective is unemployment. The objective is more food stamp benefits. The objective is more unemployment benefits. The objective is an expanding welfare state. And the objective is to take the nation’s wealth and return to it to the nation’s quote, “rightful owners.” Think reparations. Think forced reparations here if you want to understand what actually is going on.” – Rush Limbaugh’s Radio Program – May 2009

The relative poverty, the extreme inequality of wealth and income -and lack of opportunity for poor Whites in the Southeastern United States demonstrate clearly  the impact of this kind of false consciousness.  The acceptance of this way of seeing change is not just bad for people of color, it’s been devastating for poor Whites, too.

It’s not just that what Pat Robertson said is heartless, mean-spirited and hateful. It’s not that it is totally historically inaccurate, and it’s not that it is a nearly unprecedented example of blaming the victim. It’s also worth noting, however briefly, that it is terribly racist as well.

Robertson, and I suspect millions for whom he is a guiding light, has a hard time explaining how it was that people of African and Native American descent threw off the chains of imperialism so long ago without the help of a some supernatural force.  Yes, long before much of the rest of the hemisphere had emerged from colonization and subjugation, proud group of people of color- led by revolutionary Toussaint L’ouverture- crushed  the mighty French empire. So invested is Robertson in his own whiteness, that he cannot imagine a situation in which black folks might get the better of white folks without the help of the Devil. Robertson’s quirky theory is not just about his usual God-on-our-side attribution of disaster (see his comments about 9/11 and Katrina)- this time it is a clear representation of his racial politics.

This vision of the Haitian people and their history also absolves people of European descent- especially those from the United States- of any complicity in the degradation and overwhelming poverty suffered by the Haitian people for so long. No market reforms, no amount of economic or humanitarian aid will make a difference- these people are cursed and doomed to their fate. This kind of supernatural attribution, then, serves both to rob black folks of their agency and proud history of resistance while obscuring the role of the rest of the world in creating a situation in which Haitians (even without natural disasters) live and have lived for so long.

As with any comment like this one, it is not so shocking that an individual holds such a worldview. What warrants attention is that Robertson’s choice to publicly endorse such a position suggests that there are millions who share this way of seeing the world. And that, not unlike the earthquake that destroyed thousands of human lives, is a true disaster.

INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS DONATIONS

I was just listening to an interview with folks involved in the making of the movie  The Big Fan and something occurred to me. For most folks, being a true sports fan is about having strong opinions- to be filled with certainty about a team’s personnel decisions or what factors might cause a team to do well or to do badly.

I offer an alternative: in sports analysis, like political analysis, being truly engaged is about seeing things from multiple points of view, understanding that things have many causes, and that solutions are seldom simple. To be clear, this kind of understanding- this kind of orientation to the situation- is not mutually exclusive with strong opinions or strong engagement. I submit that perhaps the opposite is true. One can only truly arrive at a strongly held perspective when one understands the full complexity of the issue at hand- including evidence to the contrary of that strongly held perspective.

A big part of our problem, it seems to me, is that this kind of analysis is (so they tell me)  not good TV. So we have Jim Rome and Glenn Beck. But once again, I stand astride the the disappointment of today and am hopeful for tomorrow. I am a Chicago Cubs fan, after all.

In the flurry of reaction to Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s comparison of conservative resistance to passing health care reform to historical instances of conservative resistance to change, one is taken back a bit. It’s true that Reid’s argument was stiff and awkward, but the substance of his point is not really a historical controversy whatsoever: political conservatives have resisted change throughout the history of these United States.

We would do well not to confuse or conflate the conservative political philosophy with the Republican party- especially in historical terns. Contemporary conservative Republicans – especially in the South- have often (if deceptively) pointed out that it was the Democratic Party that resisted Civil Rights in much of the South from the 1890s to the 1960s. What this rhetorical slight of hand ignores is that those Southern Democrats were unambiguously philosophically conservative. Every major advance toward a more just society in the history of these United States has been opposed by conservatives. The record is clear. Below is but a sample of the changes and advances that were opposed political conservatives (whatever their party)  at the time of of the change (whether through legislation, legal precedent, or general practice).

• Extension of the franchise to landless (poor) White men.
• Publicly funded education for all male citizens.
• Abolition of the Slave trade and limitation to its practice in established zones.
• Abolition of the practice of slavery.
• Extension of the franchise to all non-whites and women.
• An end to child labor.
• The 8-hour work day & worker’s compensation.
• Establishment of Social Security and a basic Social Safety Net.
• Glass-Stegall Act- establishment of the FDIC and regulation of the financial sector.
• Passage of the GI Bill and the Fair Housing Act
• Creation of the FDA, EPA, Department of Labor, and other Worker and Consumer Protections
• Brown vs. Board of Education- desegregation.
• Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts.
• Passage of Minimum Wage Laws.
• Loving vs. Virginia (an end to bans on interracial marriage)
• Higher Education Act- creation of the Pell Grant and Loan Programs
• Establishment of National Parks and land set-aside for non-commercial use.
• The Equal Rights Amendment (not passed)
• Clayton Act – Trustbusting and other regulation of commercial interests
• Establishment of Miranda Rights
• Establishment of Medicare & Medicaid

Very, very few folks who identify themselves as conservatives in the modern political environment would argue agains the existence of any of these rights and institutions. One wonders- on the one hand, why do so many conservatives ignore their own ideological genealogy- and on the other, how many issues currently debated will be as shocking to the conscience of future generations as the idea of debate over the moral imperative of the above issues is to our own.

I’ll save the long preface and contextualization and cut to the point with some facts.

1. The wealthier a state in the US is, the more likely that state is to be a “blue state,” though the wealthiest individuals in that state are most likely to be conservative.
2. The wealthier a nation is, the less likely that nation is to be a religious one (The US is a big outlier here). Further, the less religious a nation is, the more likely it will be, on average, one in which its citizens report high levels of satisfaction and happiness- though, paradoxically, the more religious individuals in those societies are the happiest among them.

The point here is a simple one and one that echoes the theme below: regardless of your personal experience, there is something about the social milleu in which you live that sets the bounds of your sense of what is possible, your identity, your values and your interests. Social structure and environment are important, yo. Just a reminder.

There is an issue that has long bothered me and about which I have often in the past referred: the attempt to co-opt the legacy of Dr. King. Such have been the efforts for some time, and somehow today the ideological (and often biological) ancestors of those who called King a Communist and decried his ” subversive influence” are today insisting that the reverend doctor would agree with them. Yes, apparently, were he alive today, King would (among other things) be a Republican who would reject Affirmative Action and support tax cuts on capital gains. Beyond a reckless misinterpretation of King’s use of allegedly “colorblind” rhetoric, there is a more ugly effort underway. Those who savaged him and his movement in life have attempted to cloak themselves in his hard earned grace and dignity now that he is gone- an collective act which is as reprehensible as it is cowardly.

The latest incarnation of this attempt to colonize and co-opt the radical legacy of MLK has taken an interesting form. The King Memorial, to be erected in Washington, D.C. (the model image of which is above) strikes some viewers as “too confrontational”. This interpretation of the statue -indeed of the memory of King- reveals a sinister way in which the legacy of King has already been eroded and partially colonized by those unarguably hostile to that very legacy. Many folks have chosen to forget the sacrifice and the pain with which the relatively modest gains of the movement were earned. Many have chosen to remember King only as an antidote to Malcolm X- a more palatable figure who urged moderation. We should not, however, confuse the means with the goals. King was in every respect a radical, in particular in his final days. A watered-down vision of the man and his legacy would be a deep disservice to a nation badly in need of a real examination of the balance of the DREAM yet unrealized.

What’s wrong with the above picture? The quick answer, of course, is that elitism is NEVER justified. While I am not a fan of NASCAR and I would not make this particular grooming choice, my education and personal taste do not make me better than anyone else. The conservative movement has successfully been able to court folks out in the Red States and convince them that their misfortune and frustration originate from the latte-sipping, disconnected limousine liberals precisely because of the snobbery this image evokes. All people need to be challenged on their prejudices and encouraged to support equality, but mocking the the ostensible lack of refinement and choice of sport of others gets us nowhere.

The boondoggle of poor (mostly white) folk who overwhelmingly support policies that are their ruin cannot be blamed only on those folks or on the conservative movement that gains so greatly from it. The great cultural backlash that favors regressive economic policy and a widening gap between the haves and have-nots is possible, at least in part, because of the snobbery of the upper-middle class educated left. If a progressive movement is to succeed, it must be first and foremost the province of working people, a lesson that we on the left need to always to remember.