Obama: if you were fine with big government until it served black people, rethink your biases.

[.99center]

http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/13/13935884/obama-government-race-ta-nehisi-coates

Here’s some real talk from President Barack Obama, taken from his conversations with Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic:

" I’m careful not to attribute any particular resistance or slight or opposition to race. But what I do believe is that if somebody didn’t have a problem with their daddy being employed by the federal government, and didn’t have a problem with the Tennessee Valley Authority electrifying certain communities, and didn’t have a problem with the interstate highway system being built, and didn’t have a problem with the GI Bill, and didn’t have a problem with the [Federal Housing Administration] subsidizing the suburbanization of America, and that all helped you build wealth and create a middle class — and then suddenly as soon as African Americans or Latinos are interested in availing themselves of those same mechanisms as ladders into the middle class, you now have a violent opposition to them — then I think you at least have to ask yourself the question of how consistent you are, and what’s different, and what’s changed."

Obama’s basic argument: If you didn’t have a problem with big federal government services until black and brown people began clearly to benefit from them, maybe it’s time to rethink your biases.

This isn’t a straw man drawn up from nowhere. When sociologist Arlie Hochschild went to the Deep South to, as she has called it, “scale the empathy wall” and understand Tea Party voters for her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, this was a theme that popped up again and again. Many of the Tea Party voters she talked to didn’t mind using government services for themselves. (As one man told Hochschild, “If the programs are there, why not use them?”) But when it came to other people getting government services — with heavy racial undertones implied — it was seen more as the government taking the hard-working person’s tax money and giving it to the undeserving.

[Cha]

1. K&R.. as President Obama has said.. he was for neither big or

or small gov.. but a Smart Government.

Thank you, .99

[JI7]

2. this is THE BIGGEST reason for many people opposing social programs

otherwise the parties would not be so divided by race.

it's why white southerners voted for FDR and other democrats BEFORE civil rights.

[lunasun]

3. Yep I agree

[Dawson Leery]

5. Strange how so many became "libertarian" or "self reliant"

as soon as minorities were given the invite to participate in society....isn't it...

[mcar]

4. So well said!

Of course.

[Wellstone ruled]

6. So true.

[oasis]

7. Exactly right. nt

[bravenak]

8. Glad he said it

He can say whatever comes to mind now, and I'm glad

[BlancheSplanchnik]

9. President Obama and Ta-Nehisi Coates!

❤️ Must read article ! Thanks!! Hope my brain cells can keep up!

[Quayblue]

10. Indeed: K&R

[betsuni]

11. K&R

[Buckeye_Democrat]

12. I certainly don't mind if AA's benefit from such programs, but I have a question.

Is there a perception among AA voters that Democratic candidates who focus on the plights of the "working class" are excluding minorities somehow?

Jerry Brown didn't fare well with his blue-collar message in 1992 either.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/09/opinion/the-myth-of-the-black-vote.html

Jerry Brown, the former California Governor, never exceeded 10 percent among blacks in the South. In Connecticut, however, he won 30 percent of the black vote. In New York he improved that showing somewhat, to 37 percent.

http://africanamericanvoterrep.org/aavrep-poll/

Seventy-one percent (71%) of black voters indicate support for Hillary Clinton, compared to Bernie Sanders, who garners 16% of the vote.

If it takes an African American candidate to preach a pro-working class message in order to win, it's fine by me! I'd prefer to have nothing but minority and female candidates from now until the end of civilization if that is what's required to get more progressive policies to help everyone who's struggling.

[JI7]

14. California has a low black population

democrats from states with larger black populations have more connections to the black community.

[elmac]

13. It pretty much started with racist Reagan

using the welfare queen stereotype in his campaign speeches and his war on welfare. He also started his 1980 campaign by delivering a speech in a small town in the Deep South that just by coincidence happened to be the national headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan. He started what has become the racist, fascist GOP of today.

[erpowers]

17. Three Civil Rights Workers Killed in that Town

Is that the town where the three civil rights workers were killed? I thought sure I was told that Ronald Reagan launched one of his campaigns in the same town where the three civil rights workers were killed.

[elmac]

18. His Campaign stop was in Philadelphia, Mississippi

I think the three civil rights workers were killed outside of Meridian, Mississippi . They started there for a reason. It was a message to all the white racists that he was there man.

[bettyellen]

19. Trumps son hosted his first rally in that town too. They courted the KKK from the beginning

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

15. Another example of how the "don't call them racist" crowd is

so very far off base.

[Starry Messenger]

16. K&R