The Price of Race Privilege
Weekend Edition June 5-7, 2015
The White Squeeze (Part Two)
The Price of Race Privilege
by DAVID ROSEN
Americans are being squeezed. The mounting crisis caused by global economic restructuring and the Great Recession is taking its toll on all Americans, especially people of color, African-Americans, Hispanics and Native-Americans. However, too often overlooked in analyses of the deepening crisis is its effect on a growing number of the traditionally more privileged white populations. They too are being squeezed.
Part I of this two-part story focused on four economic issues affecting the nation’s white majority — wealth, income & poverty, bankruptcy and education.
This part focuses on four more personal issues affecting white Americans – drug addiction, suicide, obesity and homelessness.
Racism is America’s great shame, endemic to the body politic, social life and personal relations. For nearly a half-century, Republican politicians have exploited racial divisions by promoting the Southern strategy, playing the “race card” to win elections. The strategy has long been successful and will likely be played out yet again in the upcoming 2016 campaign.
However, given the changes since the ‘60s, old-fashioned terms of racial stereotyping like “nigger” and “wet back” can no longer be publically uttered. They have, however, been replaced by equally coded terms like “inner city rioter,” “welfare cheat” and “undocumented.” No matter the rhetorical obfuscation, everyone knows what the coded expressions mean.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/05/the-price-of-race-privilege/
