CNN's John Blake spends an awful lot of screen column inches exploring the question of
whites as an oppressed minority in America in 2011 and I just shake my head. The piece is very informative however as far as seeing how the divide and conquer strategy is working wonderfully for Republicans.
The notion that many white Americans feel anxious about their race is not new. Today, however, economic anxieties are feeding those racial fears, says Tim Wise, author of "White Like Me."
Wise says the recession hit blue-collar, white Americans hard, financially and psychologically.
Many white Americans have lived under the assumption that if they worked hard, they would be rewarded. Now more white Americans are sharing unemployment lines with "those people" -- black and brown, Wise says.
"For the first time since the Great Depression, white Americans have been confronted with a level of economic insecurity that we're not used to," he says. "It's not so new for black and brown folks, but for white folks, this is something we haven't seen since the Depression."
Economic insecurity is what Colby Bohannan says convinced him to form the "Former Majority Association for Equality." The association is awarding $500 scholarships to five deserving white men because they aren't eligible for scholarships reserved for women and minorities, he says.
"Living in America, you hear about this minority or that minority, but it's never been used in the same sense for Caucasian Americans," Bohannan says. "There was no one for white males until we came around."
Bohannan says the formation of his group was not motivated by racism, nor will it accept donations from hate groups.
"We're not trying to promote racial bigotry," Bohannan says. "All we're about is helping college students trying to better their lives who happen to be white males."
Some white Americans not only feel ignored in higher education; they feel excluded by popular culture.
The face of America is changing, says Wise, author of "White Like Me." American culture has become so multicultural that many of the nation's icons -- including celebrities, sports heroes, and other leaders -- are people of color.
"The very definition of being an American is going through a profound change," Wise says. "We can no longer take it for granted that we (whites) are the dictionary definition of an American."
Indeed, nearly half of whites (44%) view themselves as an oppressed people these days, the victims of discrimination and bigotry, including some 61% of Tea Party voters.
To which the rest of America is going "Effing
really?"
And if you're wondering how the hell the Tea Party took over the GOP, you have your answer. Scapegoating minority groups during times of economic tension is a proud and storied tradition in the United States, and it seems every generation or so there's a new group of "them" coming for "our" jobs and economic freedom. The election of Barack Obama only solidified the new "them", everyone who isn't white.
It explains how Republicans have been able to so easily cleave working-class whites away from the Democratic party and the unions that supported them traditionally. Dressing up full-out class warfare as racial tension isn't new either, but the combination of the nations first African-American President and the worst recession in 80 years has formed a nasty malignancy and backlash.
And the Republicans have exploited it beautifully despite their own incompetence. We now live in an era where police, teachers, and firefighters making $50k a year are regularly vilified by people making five million a year as lavish wastrels living off the public dole while the "regular Joe" millionaires are treated like royalty. Indeed, a person's contribution to society is measured by their net worth, the richer they are, the more moral they must be.
And since the big guys own and run every aspect of our corporate and government society, of course we believe them when they say the answer is to cut taxes for the super-rich so that they can "create more jobs" while the average American has gotten nothing but poorer since 1980.
That class anxiety is being diverted into racial anxiety. The true believers think their rewards will be coming just as soon as we remove all the power from the "welfare queens" and the "union thugs" and the "pointy elitists", all the while finding out much too late the long knives are aimed at their own throats by the corporate overlords that truly have all the power.
The folks taking away the power from working class whites aren't working class Latinos, or African-Americans, or Asian-Americans, but the new class enshrined by the Supreme Court: the Corporate American.
And they're quite happy to watch the other 99% of us kill each other. More resources for them. They don't quite have them all yet, you see.
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