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.
