Economic fear is primarily what drives white backlash-not hate for hate's sake
Last edited Sat Mar 5, 2016, 05:43 PM - Edit history (3)
(NOTE: this is about grassroots racism. NOT institutional racism, which is a separate form of the problem).
This an explanation of white backlash...NOT a defense of it. To explain is not to justify
The white backlash that started in about 1965 and has still never quite ended was deliberately manipulated into being by the economic rulers of this country. They used economic manipulation to teach working-class whites, in particular, that if black people and other POC gained any ground, it would mean that working-class whites would lose everything they had gained in the post-World War II era.
This was particularly true in the way the real estate industry worked in large cities in the Sixties. In collusion with the corrupt local governments in places like Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, certain boroughs in NYC, and many other cities, they deliberately arranged to lower property values in neighborhoods that integrated. This had nothing to do with the conduct or character of any of the POC who moved into previously all-white neighborhoods, but it was done nonetheless. The realtor-industrial complex deliberately spread the toxic message to working-class and middle-class whites, people who had mainly built whatever economic security they had on the values of their homes, that the very presence of POC in "their" neighborhoods would drive property values down and cost working-class whites everything they thought they had. This then led to a lot of working-class whites selling out at a loss, which allowed the realtors to pick up these properties for a song and reselling them for a whole Ring Cycle.
At the same time, the industrial economy was already in the process of slowing down, and employers used the new laws requiring them to cease employment discrimination to put the blame for the beginnings of the downsizing/layoff process on POC rather than on the market economic system itself.
Things like that were used, by the economic rulers of this nation, to secure and enhance their power.
This was a massive, unforgiveable injustice to POC, who never deserved to be blamed for these machinations, and who had every right to be fighting for their proper and just place in this country.
The white backlash was wrong.
It was wrong for working-class whites to blame POC for these economic problems.
And criminally wrong for working-class whites to turn to violence in misdirecting that blame.
And every bit of rage felt by POC about what was and is done to them is fully justified, and shared by those of us who stand with them, in our imperfect ways, in the fight against bigotry.
But it matters that working-class whites were and are manipulated into these feelings and those actions...because that means that, with a cogent argument about how blaming and lashing out at POC didn't actually protect the economic position of working-class whites, it is possible to overcome that form of grassroots racism. Overcoming that is crucial, because until we do, any gains for POC, LGBTQ, women, and religious minorities in terms of rights and opportunity will always be at risk. Under capitalism, and under austerity, the potential for backlash is always with us. We are seeing that right now with the rise of Trumpism.
Economic justice will not, by itself, beget social justice. Nobody has ever said or thought that it would. But social justice(by which I think we are really talking about the defeat of prejudice and bigotry)cannot achieve a final victory as long as capitalism and austerity stoke the fear of want.
Everywhere in the world in which economic systems have become more capitalist, more austere, more unequal, and more precarious, bigotry and xenophobia have surged.
= new reply since forum marked as read
