A Question Corporate Fascist America Does Not Want You to Ask: Who Benefits from “White Privilege?"
Easy, right? White guys. Not so fast. So called “white privilege” is not really about rewarding people for their lack of melanin---although most of the folks who benefit from it are fairly deficient in skin pigment. Racial politics in America has very little to do with the way that your body absorbs the sun’s rays to create Vitamin D to prevent rickets and much more to do with corporate profits. And “white privilege” only works if a very large number of white folks are dirt poor and mad as hell—at the wrong people.
Way back in the 19th century, American capitalists learned that they could keep wages down, by pitting different groups of workers against each other. Most often that meant one immigrant group versus another immigrant group. Or one religious group against another. Any way you could divide people---by gender, age, skin color, language---the bosses could divide and conquer workers, employing the most oppressed, desperate group as scab labor to break the strikes of the slightly more empowered groups. If your Germans demanded an eight hour day, the factory owner could point out the Italians newly arrived on America’s shores. Rather than hating the bosses, the Germans turned their rage on the Italians.
After the “Levee Broke” in the 1920s and rural Black farmworkers fled the South for the North, Blacks became the low wage workers of choice for capitalists intent upon keeping salaries low. Now, it’s Latinos coming up from Mexico and Central and South America who are being presented as the villains who are “forcing” wages down.
The problem with this rotating immigrants game is that eventually, the latest wave of immigrants gets absorbed into American mainstream culture---and then there is no more divide and conquer. All the workers see each other as fellow Americans. They start looking out for each other’s best interests---you know, unions, universal health care. The 1% stops being massively insanely rich and is only ridiculously rich---and they can’t have that. They are too scared of what might happen if their own personal house of cards were to collapse. In the secret heart of every billionaire, there lurks the specter of Enron and Ken Lay. And so, they plot and scheme to do what capitalists have been doing since the dawn of industrial capitalism--- harness the state to prop them up. That’s what fascism is really all about. The tax coffers of the people laid at the feet of the factory owners, so that they need never fear going without foie gras . The people’s army ready to defend their financial interests in Nicaragua and Iraq.
What does “white privilege” have to do with fascism? Everything. Here’s a definition of fascism from Robert O. Paxton from the book Anatomy of Fascism:
Key characteristics
1.“At bottom is a passionate nationalism”
2.“a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions”
3.“the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external”
4.dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences”
5.“the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary”
The key word here is “decline.” Create a myth---a myth of an America in which every white man was once king of his castle. Never mind that up until the post WWII period, most workers of all colors labored long hours, died penniless and had no real power. Whisper into the ears of white folks “Hey, I know you’re just a working Joe, but you and I have something in common. We’re both REAL Americans. You know what I mean. Those unions want to take away your job. They want to give it to some ____. But because you’re like me, I’m going to look out for you. I’m going to protect you. As long as you stay out of that union.” When the issue of health care comes up, whisper into those same working class white ears “I know you really need that surgery, but we both know that those Mexicans down the street would just use this insurance to have more babies. And then, you’d be out of a job. Trust me. I have a plan to get rid of those Mexicans that are making me pay such low wages. Then, you can get your old job at the mill back with your old wage and your old benefits. Would I lie to you? Look at me? We’re alike, you and me. The same color.” When the subject gets around to the mortgage crisis and the banks “Hey, it wasn’t the bankers. It was all those dumb____ trying to buy houses they could not afford. That’s why you lost your house. I’d give you a house, except the ____s would have a fit. Just you wait. I have a secret plan. Once things get bad enough, we’ll get rid them of them. You just be sure you’re ready. Be sure you have plenty of guns and ammo. Because the president is one of them.”
Those who have been trying to engineer a corporate fascist coup in America are running out of time. Pretty soon, white folks will no longer be the majority. That’s why we see them resorting to desperate tactics, like Bush v. Gore and Citizens United. Their tactics are so extreme that they are likely to torpedo their own movement----Americans value their rugged individualism and it will be extremely difficult to get a majority of them to agree about anything, especially about a cause that demands that they “abandon democratic liberties”--aka goose step. Our ancestors left other countries precisely because we were so pissed at being told what to do. However, that will not stop the corporate fascists from trying---and from hurting a whole lot of folks, including a great many of their so called “privileged” white brothers and sisters, deliberately, in order to provoke them. And so, they engineered the Bush recession, the housing crisis, the unemployment crisis and they have all but shut down the government, knowing that the worse the economy gets and the more people suffer, the easier it will be to feed some folks their lies. Tens of thousands of people will die from their refusal to expand Medicaid in 24 states. This includes lots of so called "privileged" white folks. That's what they are hoping for. That is what they are counting on. That is the terrifying evil at the heart of corporate fascism---it treats real live human beings---including children--as commodities. It makes cannon fodder out of innocent babies. And the only hope any of these folks have is if they manage to resist the lure of the lie of "white privilege", turn off Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, get out there and make their real needs and wishes known.
"White privilege" is a poison, a lie, every bit as toxic as the myth of "frail femininity" that has kept women working for a fraction of what men make for centuries. It needs to be purged from our psyche and replaced with human values like kindness and compassion.
Tears for those who were martyred in Chicago in 1887 and those they left behind. Solidarity!
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