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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe New Racism - This is how the civil rights movement ends
The thing about racism in America that I find hardest to relate to is that these people would rather live in a 3rd world of their own making than build nice things and live with the thought that non-white people might benefit from them. It's damned depressing, because it clearly drives a lot of American politics, and not just in the old south. And it's been going on since before the Civil War.
But in 1877, the Republican Party agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South in exchange for putting its presidential candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, in the White House, and the period of biracial democratic government came to an end. White Redeemers, as they were known, undid all the Reconstruction-era reforms they could. They shuttered the new schools and charities; they stopped building bridges and funding ferries. Spend nothing unless absolutely necessary, Floridas new Democratic governor instructed his legislature in 1877. Most crucially, they designed laws to eliminate the black vote and enforced those laws with waves of vigilante violence. A mere dozen years after it began, the First Reconstruction was over.
The end of the Second Reconstruction will not be so dramatic. But the systematic way in which Republican majorities in Southern statehouses are undoing so many of the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement suggests that the end is nigh. Whether its by imposing new voter-ID laws, slashing public assistance, refusing Medicaid expansion, or repealing progressive legislation like North Carolinas Racial Justice Act, the GOP-controlled governments of Southern states are behaving in ways that are at times as hostile to the interests of their African American citizens as Jim Crow Democrats were half a century ago. As David Bositis told me, Black people in the South have less political power now than at any time since the start of the civil rights movement.
Of course, that flies in the face of the newly popular notion that Southern blacks have never enjoyed more political clout. Whether it was black Mississippians helping Senator Thad Cochran win the Republican run-off in Mississippi in June or the potential for African American voters in North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana to carry Democratic Senate candidates in those states to victory this November, black voters, Nate Cohn recently wrote in The New York Times, are poised to play a pivotal role in this years midterm elections. But these will likely be pyrrhic victories. At the state level, Republicans can continue to win by catering exclusively to white voters, pushing the parties even further apart and making state laws ever more extreme. The fact that black people in the South still have the right to vote, and theyre still able to elect black politicians at the state and local levels, is what makes the end of the Second Reconstruction so much more insidious than the end of the First. Lacking white politicians to build coalitions with, those black politicians are rendered powerless. As Kareem Crayton, a University of North Carolina law professor, told me, The situation today has the semblance of what representation looks like without very much ability to actually exercise it.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119019/civil-rights-movement-going-reverse-alabama
RadicalGeek
(344 posts)And how it may be time for a 3rd Reconstuction.
I could see it, but it would have to be this "Fusion Movement" I keep hearing about.
That has issues too; a "cult of machmiso" among African-Americans and Latinos may make building bridges between the Feminist and LGBT community difficult. There have long been divides between urban POC and the greens, as well as betweens greens and labor.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)millions of people who are members of more than one community. Posts like this seem to suggest that both LGBT and Feminist = 'White People' and that's just bullshit. The homophobia of Straight folks is pretty much consistent across all groups. The Black and Latin people don't have a 'cult' of macho anymore than white straights do.
I don't think there is enough of a Green Party presence in the US to have 'divides' between them and any nonpolitical group, most people don't even know they exist.
In short, and with all apologies and respect, I find your comment to be a load of horseshit flavored with homophobic and racist stereotyping.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)to keep us apart.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)All you said ... And more, the "Cult of Machismo" within the African-American community ignores the fact that the African-American political class is "over-represented" female.
It's no accident that the "Cult of Machismo" was first applied across racial/ethnic demographic groups (rather than exclusively referring to a mythic Hispanic cultural element) was during the Proposition 8 fight in California. Granted exit polling showed African-Americans, as a group voted in support of Prop. 8, looking at that number in isolation is an over-simplification of what occurred ... specifically, the primary determinant of support/opposition was not race; but rather, religiosity.
"What the exit polls say is that religion trumps party affiliation when it comes to social issues," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll. The exit poll was done by Edison Media Research.
It also trumped racial identification. While Obama publicly backed the "No on Prop. 8" effort, African American voters had no trouble voting overwhelmingly for the man who will be the nation's first black president and then voting 70 percent in favor of Prop. 8, exit polls showed.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Many-Obama-supporters-also-backed-Prop-8-3186289.php
RadicalGeek
(344 posts)More than anything, and trying to point out obstacles.
I see the mention of religion, as African-Americans are some of the BEST examples of embracing religious progressiveness out there (IMO) as an example of the disdain for faith that may keep folks out of many progressive coalitions.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)You are walking a very thin racist line. African-American religiosity is no different from any other demographic grouping.
RadicalGeek
(344 posts)To me, it seems a bit more progressive than say what you'd see in the "Bible Belt". I'm thinking of folks like Evers, King, and the afformentioned Rev Barber.
That is not to say that there is not a progressive tradition among other groups; The Berrigans, etc.
(I do this ALL the time on FB, end up sticking my foot in my mouth )
YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)nt
Romulox
(25,960 posts)A broader coalition is not possible as long as economic populism is off the table, (i.e., a disavowal of the top-down economic policies that have characterized both Republican and Democratic policy since the Carter era.)
Bragi
(7,650 posts)That's a very interesting analysis. In particular:
The fact that black people in the South still have the right to vote, and theyre still able to elect black politicians at the state and local levels, is what makes the end of the Second Reconstruction so much more insidious than the end of the First. Lacking white politicians to build coalitions with, those black politicians are rendered powerless.
This is similar to what has happened with most of the efforts to "export" western-style democracy abroad. People get to cast ballots in elections, but their votes are largely meaningless because a) few of the candidates represent real change from the status quo, and b) any candidates who want real change and do get elected have no-one with whom to work after they get elected.
I sense that we are now moving towards what is will be seen as a "post-democratic" era in the U.S and elsewhere in the west.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)At least, I'm not going back.....
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Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)VA_Jill
(9,854 posts)All this "voter ID" and "vote fraud" crap? All this district redrawing? It's meant to shut down the black and Latino vote in northern cities, too. Look at Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania if you don't believe me.
RadicalGeek
(344 posts)The GOP knows their support is mainly in rural, homogeneous areas, they need to make sure they are over represented.
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)For example, there were Jim crow laws in every single state. The myth of racism bring confined to the south is just that...a complete fantasy.