Since the majority of White Dems (including here on DU) voted to end Welfare & Pub Housing,

[Leopolds Ghost]

And constantly declare the New Deal dead, "industrial age" and unlamented,

Does that mean white people should be blamed for the destruction of public housing and the mathematicized, rationalized (cap rates) and scientifically administered ethnic cleansing of urban poor by the Democratic Party in New Orleans, New York, DC, San Francisco, Boston, LA, etc.?

Especially in New Orleans where people were evicted by the storm and not allowed back, not even to retrieve their posessions.

But it's ok because public housing and welfare is full of "social pathology", right?

Teh Black!

How is that any different than accusing gay people of being socially pathological?

Answer: It's not. White racism is rampant in this country, especially in Blue America where it can be easily masked.

[Leopolds Ghost]

1. bump

for awareness of how many upscale whites voted to end welfare, public housing, and industrial policy. :hi:

[amdezurik]

2. stop the spam

[AndyTiedye]

3. We Did? I Don't Remember Ever Being Asked to Vote On Those Issues

What are you talking about?

[bobbolink]

8. Allowing it to happen.

Look around you, right here on DU...

Look at all the lists of "priorities" for the new administration.

How many can you find that even list POVERTY, let alone low-income housing.

The silence is deafening.

Allowing it to happen is just as bad as voting for it.

[frogcycle]

4. if there is any logic whatsoever in this post

I sure as hell can't find it

[JJ]

5. I remember that being part of Gingrich's...

Contract on America, and Clinton compromises.


Though I'm not clear at all on what point you are trying to make.

[TahitiNut]

6. Blame straight white males.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/TahitiNut/563

:eyes:

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bobbolink]

9. Thank you for bringing up the truth. You'll get nail holes for it...

Those of us who live at the bottom of the ladder KNOW it's all being allowed to happen...

Ostriches.

[maryf]

11. K&R nt

[Ani Yun Wiya]

10. Would that be why...

We heard nothing along the lines of "a chicken in every pot" ?

[JeffR]

12. Complicity is not a topic that draws much discussion here

unless it's the standard off-the-rack carping about "those goddamn Congressional Vichy Dems" or some such "convenient other".

I'd like to see a discussion about this that didn't seem to draw instant negative reactions and a failure to engage in the exchange of honest thoughts, and perhaps the OP was couched in such a way that it didn't seem to invite such a conversation. Nonetheless, the subject calls for a meeting of minds, not an immediate entrenchment behind mental barricades.

I don't know if true and complete social justice is possible, though anyone who self-identifies as progressive, liberal, leftist or Democrat ought to be convinced at heart that striving toward it is our duty as citizens and human beings. That includes social justice for all, and most urgently for those who are, too often, invisible.

[SweetieD]

13. Yeah I'm kind of shocked by the comments I see here by so called liberal progressives. idk.

[McCamy Taylor]

14. Unrepentent Edwards supporter here whose NUMBER ONE issue is poverty.

But that is because I am a family physician/Master Public Health, so I know that wealth disparity is the number one unaddressed health problem this country faces, and if some people are allowed to suffer, we all suffer in a literal as well as a moral and spiritual sense.

Re: who voted for what, people of all colors voted for Dems (and Republicans, too, hard as it is to believe) so be careful about making blanket statements. Race is not always the marker for economic status in this country that people think, and it is economics that rules the world. Race is often used to disguise the fact that Americans are really engaged in a class struggle, workers versus bosses, with the workers divided along artificial lines (race, religion, language, gender) that allow employers to pay one group scab labor wages as long as the other group uses its voting power to encourage the government to systematically oppress the underpaid group.

Right now, we are seeing the bosses engaged in an attempt to encourage African-Americans to despise Latinos, for exactly the same reason that we once saw them encourage German-Americans to despise Italian-Americans---because it will keep wages low.

However, workers from south of the border are very quick to join unions, so I am hoping that they will speed up our progression to a western European style socialist democracy.

And how can The New Deal be "dead" when we have Social Security and the SEC and all the good things that came from it? The Heritage Society are the neanderthals who want to take the country back to the days of Hoover. You need to go find one of their message boards if you want to talk to Heritage Society people. New Federalists. No one here wants to privatize Social Security.

This is an very odd OP.

[IndianaJones]

15. I blame white people for the state of racial minorities in this country. nt.

[McCamy Taylor]

16. What about poor whites?

It is the bosses, the elite capital owning class that is to blame. The poor are all equally victimized. Poor whites in some parts of the country are told "You can not vote for your own economic self interest. That would make you weak. If you are poor, it is because God does not love you."

No kidding. That is the puritan ethic. Read Max Weber. Some of those Baptists can be real asses.

[IndianaJones]

17. poor whites treated my mom like crap more than rich whites. nt.

[McCamy Taylor]

19. I am sure they did. That is because poor whites were full of self loathing.

They were told that all white folks were blessed by God and that all white folks were His chosen. And since they had eyes and they could see that they were poor and dumb and going nowhere in their life, and because they were members of a puritan religion which preached that you could tell whether or not God had saved your soul by looking for signs of his favor in this world like material success, their poverty meant that they were inferior. They were Cain.

When someone is told all his life "You are no good" that person will act no good. And he will act out against someone whom they think is vulnerable---that means he does not rebel against the white bosses who have kept him down, not unless an outside union organizer or communist manages to get some of the puritan dogma out of his heads. No, he beats the shit out of a drunk or a woman or a kid or a minority member.

Because not only is he insecure and full of self loathing. He is also desperate for the approval of the boss man.

Income disparity must be corrected if the problems of this country are to be fixed. No one should have to grow up wondering why they do not have enough to eat or clothes to wear or money for utilities. Not in a society like ours that teaches that wealth is a marker of self worth.

[Two Americas]

20. they are victims as well

Of course. Divide and conquer.

The OP is talking about the polite racism, and the pathologizing of poverty, among those in "progressive" circles.

The poor, however, are not all equally victimized. It is a modern thing - quite recent - to hear so many Democrats suggesting that it is. People of color, GLBT people, and women are more likely to be in poverty in the first place and suffer worse when they are. This is not controversial, or certainly should not be.

[maryf]

23. Sad day when the truth becomes controversy

and I hear that children are the fastest growing group of abject poor in this country...

[bobbolink]

31. BUT, it's easier to care about children... and the current fad is "The Working Poor"

which means that those of us who are adults, and unable to work are shit outta luck.

Too bad for us.

[Two Americas]

18. gentrification

The Democratic party has become increasingly gentrified, and this is the one area that has become a "third rail" and cannot be discussed calmly.

Racism is a feature of this gentrification, a peculiar modern variation on tokenism, that tolerates a certain number of people of color into the inner circle providing they embrace and promote the ideas, attitudes, language and behavior of the dominant and successful group. Since these ideas are presumed to be "liberal" or "progressive" there is no questioning of them to be permitted and we all must be coerced onto compliance. When this relatively small group of successful progressives win, we are told that we all have won, despite and abundance of objective evidence to the contrary.

Before the election, any and all critics of the gentrification of the party, any expressing the traditional principles and ideals of the Democratic party, were shouted down, on the pretext that "we need to win the election" and with the promise, sometimes implied sometimes overtly expressed, that after the election theses issues could be discussed. Now the election is over, and the people have spoken. They have rejected the free market libertarian ideas, rejected being dominated and ruled by an aristocracy. They did not vote for a new "progressive" aristocracy. Yet now that "we" have "won" the demand that critics be silent has grown.

The recent electoral victory could only have happened because many people who had been voting Republican, in desperation and disgust, turned to the Democrats. What I heard in the week leading up to the election, in the farmer coops and feed stores, in the packing plants and fields was "we need another New Deal." People did not vote for upscale "progressive" Puget Sound suburban nirvana.

If this mandate from the people, this massive and historic turning away from the free market ideology and the culture of greed and "success" - status and credentials and security as opposed to achievement and production - is hijacked by the relatively upscale and gentrified few, for the purpose of advancing their prejudices and desires, the people will turn away from the Democratic party faster than they did from the Republican party.

[Occam Bandage]

21. I don't recall voting on that. Must have missed that referendum.

[Pastiche423]

22. I din't vote for it

Where are you getting "the majority"?

And if I was asked to vote, I would vote no.

Hell, I live in public housing.

So, if you can't come up w/some evidence of the majority of /White Dems/DUers voting for it, then STFU.

[struggle4progress]

24. Huh? We fought what of the rollback we could fight, given the political climate

[curse of greyface]

25. Try putting section 8 residents in a middle class black neighborhood.

You will quickly find your racist assumptions showing.

Most welfare goes to poor whites.

Middle class whites don't want them around their kids.

And here is the kicker Middle class blacks don't want the either

It's class not race.

They don't like the poor. the color of a poor persons skin is quite secondary.

People will vote for Obama but they spend lots of money not to live near poor people of any color.

Race isn't the deciding factor.

[bobbolink]

33. "People will vote for Obama but they spend lots of money not to live near poor people of any color."

Amen.

Sadly, you have this exactly right.

Yet, what big movement do you see among "progressives" to change this???

Yes, that's right.... we are invisible, and of no concern.

As Elie Wiesel said, INDIFFERENCE is a killer...

And many of us are dying...

[Juche]

26. ZOMG CONGRADULATIONZ!!!!!

THIS IS HUGH!

[busybl]

27. wtf are you babbling about?

[readmoreoften]

28. Fuck yes they should.

[Tom Kitten]

29. Fuck off

Sick and tired of hearing bullshit such as this, don't blame me for your problems, offer me a job so I can I can kep a roof over my head instead.

[bobbolink]

32. That's a very good reply....

Taken straight from the RW play book.

Congratulations!

[Dogmudgeon]

30. What is this about, really?

:shrug:

--p!

[curse of greyface]

34. I think the OP is trying to reboot white guilt.

Which has been on life support this week and is fading fast.

[bobbolink]

35. Riiiight... heaven forbid you should actually CARE about poor people!!

After all, poverty is no longer a part of the "progressive" agenda...

[curse of greyface]

36. If The Op was really about the poor why was race even mentioned? nt

[bobbolink]

37. I'm sure you can figure it out....

[curse of greyface]

38. I can and the op isn't helping poor people by resorting to racist stereotypes. nt

[bobbolink]

39. OMG...... please reread... the OP isn't "resorting to racist stereotypes"...

THE MEDIA DOES THAT!

What do you think all the footage of Katrina did???? It just reinforced that poor folk can be safely ignored, because they aren't "like us".