From TPM - On Being "Bitter": Race and Class Warfare in America

[housewolf]

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/04/on-being-bitter-race-and-class.php


On Being "Bitter": Race and Class Warfare in America
By - April 12, 2008, 2:25PM

Yesterday the blogosphere erupted in another skirmish manufactured by a few of people on a few outlets. (Ben Smith of Politico, Mayhill Fowler of Huffington Post, Matt Drudge of DrudgeReport, and the boys and girls at First Read at MSNBC).

All about words. Just words. And the truth.

And once again, as has been the case time after time in this campaign cycle, "truth" is an early victim. She (the truth) gets wounded, yet rises again and again. And it will once again when we get to the end of this latest dust-up.

This time, it's a battle over "class." And in the U.S., "classism" includes racism. (To those of you ready pounce, let me suggest you read first, and fly into your rage at the end.)

We live in a country that thrives on separating, dividing, excluding, categorizing, pigeonholing, marginalizing, labeling and ignoring. (Mark Penn makes millions off of doing just that.) We have red and blue states, rich and poor, black and white, white collar and blue collar, upscale and downscale, evangelical and "heathens", urban and rural, old and young, gay and straight, patriotic and anti-American, elite snobs and common folk, educated and "dumb", native-born and immigrant, legal and illegal, anti-abortion and pro-choice, gun control and NRA members. The divisions go on and on.

We choose up sides: Native-born? You need to "hate" the immigrants, because they take your blue-collar jobs. Immigrants can only come in two flavors: the "legal" kind, who climbed on ships from Europe a few generations ago and pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps to "seize the 'American' Dream." The"other kind" in this current iteration are brown-skinned, speak Spanish and are shorthanded as "Mexicans." To properly "hate" the "Mexicans," you must be in favor of shipping them all home, building a big high fence to keep them out, and enforcing English-only policies.

Don't have a job? Blame the "Mexicans." If blaming them isn't enough, blame the "blacks" with their job-stealing, college education-stealing Affirmative Action plans. After all, they get jobs they don't deserve because they're underqualified and get special breaks. If jobs didn't go to the "blacks" and the "Mexicans" there would be plenty of work for you. Nevermind that most of the jobs in small towns across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and other "Rust Belt" states were overwhelming held by "white" people. When the steel mills and rubber factories and television manufacturers packed up and moved, remember these were companies owned by "white" people taking jobs away from other "white" people. But the "villains" here are non-"whites," so we are told to believe.

Your child wants to go to college. Her heart is set on the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. It's a "top-tier," "elite," school for the best of the best. But the university doesn't choose her. So, of course, the dashed dreams of your daughter were caused by the undeserving, underskilled, unqualified black kid from Detroit, right? If only he hadn't been selected, your child would have gotten in. It's that "reverse racisim." (Is it not amazing how we can pinpoint the one student out of student body of 50,000 that prevented your child from being admitted? And is it not amazing how that student is always a minority? Who, despite being "vetted" up and down by trained admissions professionals always gets in?)

When your roads are filled with potholes, bridges falling into rivers, gas prices skyrocketing, food prices spiraling upward, your paycheck dwindling, mortgage payments ballooning, blame the "gays" and their demands to get married, blame those "abortion-on-demand" demanding "feminists," blame those gun-control advocates who want to take away your right to bear arms. Don't blame politicians who can build bridges to nowhere in the middle of Alaska. Don't blame a government, an administration way to cozy with the oil industry subsidizing their multi-billion dollar profitmaking.

Are you bitter, angry and resentful? Absolutely. The only problem is that much of your anger is misdirected. You should be angry at polticians who promise you jobs while making sweetheart trade deals, who spout protectionist rhetoric, and "God Bless America, my friends" while leaving you in an endless war that drains all of our resources. You should be angy at politicians who insult your intelligence, who think you'll be swayed by dramatic stories of heart-stopping landings in war torn countries told with "Midnight Express" derring do. You should be angry politicians who will promise to deliver on promises they didn't keep the first time around. And you should be angry at politicians who call people arrogant and elitist. Because when they do, by extension, they're calling you names as well.

Let me digress one moment to say this: In the context in which it has been delivered, calling Barack Obama "arrogant" and "elitist" is akin to calling him an "uppity Negro" who doesn't know his place. It is not about his education. How can a multi-millionairess Wellesley and Yale Law grad be any less elite? How is the son and grandson of naval admirals, a graduate of Annapolis husband to wife with a multi-million dollar fortune be any less elite? They are not. They are, however, white. And that is the difference.

Barack Obama cut through the "Penn-isms" of slice and dice, wedge and divide politics to say he understands that there is a segment of white America that has been carefully taught and trained and groomed to distrust -- even hate -- the other segments that are not identical to them. And that he understands what fuels their resentments and anger and bitterness has forced them to embrace a politics of division. By facing that division, acknowledging their feelings are real, and showing them the root cause of anger, he can also provide the leadership needed to stop the endless cycle of promises made but never kept.

[babylonsister]

1. Recommend! nt

[housewolf]

2. Thanks!