What is the Fight Over Voting Rights and Gerrymandering About?

The Fight is About Class, Not Race 

The fight over voting rights and gerrymandering seems to be about race, but it is really about class. It is about preserving the control of our government by great wealth. It is about sacrificing the well-being of working Americans of all races to preserve the wealth and power of a few extremely wealthy people.

The Fight is About Preserving Republican Power

The Republicans are pushing gerrymandering and  restrictions on voting rights because they believe that, without such restrictions, they will not be able to win national elections in the future. So, we can see what this fight is about by examining the Republicans’ legislative priorities. The record shows that Republicans want low taxes and minimal regulation of business. Republican candidates run on cultural issues like abortion or gun rights that animate elements of our working class, but once in office, the Republicans do very little about those issues. Instead, they pass a big tax cut, gut environmental regulations and oppose programs like affordable child care, free post-secondary education or national health care that might actually benefit the working-class voters who put them in office.

The Fight is About the Well-Being of Ordinary Americans of All Races

Why do Republicans oppose such programs? They do it because they know that such programs will have to be paid for by raising taxes and by (choke, gasp) collecting the taxes that are owed. Republicans oppose such programs because they know that much of the money to pay for them will come out of the pockets of the party’s wealthy donors who use their power to make sure that the party’s priorities continue to be low taxes and minimal regulation of business.

The fight over voting rights is really about preserving the wealth and power of wealthy donors to the Republican Party. The fight is really about preventing our country from enacting programs to benefit members of the working class of all races.  The fight over voting rights is really about the well-being of ordinary Americans of all races. Do we want to have a decent national health care system? Do we want to preserve our Social Security system? Do we want a system in which young people are not saddled with crushing educational debts? Do we want affordable child care? If we want any of these things, we have to fight to preserve everyone’s right to vote. That is what this fight is about.

What Should We Do About the Tulsa Massacre?

The Memory of Tulsa Should Drive Us to Act

Recently, the news has been full of stories about the horrendous massacre and destructive race riot that occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma 100 years ago this weekend. That event was among the worst and most shocking in the long, tragic history of racism in the United States. In a prosperous and peaceful neighborhood, hundreds of black people were killed, and millions of dollars of property was destroyed by a white mob. Families saw their children killed. Family wealth that was the product of years of struggle and labor was wiped out in a few hours.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should remember these tragic events, but we should also remember the words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address because they apply to us now just as much as they applied to his audience in 1863:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us … that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

The work of building a just and equitable society in our country is far from finished. There is much still remaining to be done. The racism of the past has produced inequities in the present. We cannot go back and undo what was done in the past, but we can work to reduce or eliminate the inequities of the present, and remembering the events of Memorial Day Weekend in 1921 should reinforce our commitment to that task.

What Should We Do?

In his book, How to be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi shows us what that means.  He tells us that the job of an anti-racist is to reduce and ultimately eliminate “racial inequity.” And what is racial inequity?

Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. Here’s an example of racial inequity: 71 percent of white families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to … 41 percent of black families.

The job of antiracists is to work to eliminate inequities of this kind. Two approaches to this work have been proposed. One is to focus on reparations. In this approach, payments are made to black people to counterbalance the effects of past racism. Pres. Biden’s proposal for payments to black farmers is an example of this approach. Ta-Nehisi Coates discussion of reparations for black Americans is a broader example.

The other approach to eliminating the inequities of our society is to focus on broad, redistributive policies that are not directed explicitly at black people but that reduce the racial wealth gap because black people fall disproportionately into the groups that are benefited by such policies. William Darity’s proposal for a publicly funded trust fund for every child is an example. Forgiving students’ debts is another example. It would reduce the racial wealth gap because black people carry more debt on average than white people do.

Both of these approaches are valid, and each of them has its place. Both require action, and we must act. As we remember the horror of the Tulsa Massacre, we must find in it a motive to act to reduce the inequities of our own time. It is not enough for us white people to recognize and accept that our prosperity has been built in part on such events. It is not enough to be “woke.” Ringing our hands and bowing our heads in shame will not do anything to reduce the wealth gap between black and white Americans. Purging our hearts of the sin of racism is good, but it is not the goal. The goal is to build a just society.

To do that, we must act, and our actions must be political. We must support policies like those mentioned above that deal with the inequities of our time. We cannot erase the injustices of our past, but we can make our society more just now, and that is what we must do as we remember the Tulsa Massacre.

Saving the Planet and Social Justice: the Logic of President Biden's Plan

 Is There a Connection?

How is the fight to against climate change connected to the fight for social justice? The answer is not obvious, and indeed, the two could conflict with one another. After all, if climate change is truly a threat to the survival of our society and economy, perhaps we shouldn’t worry right now about social justice. Perhaps, we should focus all of our attention on saving ourselves from the imminent destruction that Greta Thunberg and others have been warning us about, and later, when we have the leisure to do so, we can worry about making our society better.

From this point of view, the coal miners in West Virginia and the oil field workers in Louisiana are collateral damage in the fight to save our planet. It is unfortunate that they should suffer, but their suffering is for the greater good. By the same token, this is not the time to be worrying about racial justice. Of course, black lives matter, but right now, we cannot divert resources from saving the planet to retraining our police. Of course, we need to provide a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants, but right now, we have more pressing problems to deal with.

Why is this wrong? Why do we need to worry about social justice now? Why can’t we put off the difficult and frustrating fight for social justice until we have saved our planet?

Maybe, We Need a Revolution

There are two ways to answer this question. One is based on a fundamental critique of our society. That critique says that our environmental problems are merely the latest symptoms of our real problem, which is that our capitalist system is so exploitative at its heart that it can never provide either social justice or a solution to the problem of climate change. Holders of this view say that capitalism is based on an ideology of greed and short-term thinking, and unless we can replace capitalism with a better system, we are kidding ourselves if with think that we can save our planet. In effect, this approach says that we cannot solve the problem of climate change without a revolution.

Maybe, We Need a Coalition

The second answer to the question of why we should worry now about social justice accepts our system as it is and focuses on the need to build a political coalition to support solving the climate change problem. The fight to save our planet will demand much of our political system. Big changes will be required, and they cannot take place unless they are demanded by a strong political coalition. From this point of view, the problem is to design a solution to the climate problem that not only solves the problem but also provides immediate, tangible benefits to all of the groups that join the coalition. In effect, this approach says that we can save our planet without a revolution but only if we do it in a way that increases social justice in our society.

President Biden's American Jobs Plan

The recognition of the need to build a coalition underlies Pres. Biden’s American Jobs Plan.  He has presented it not as a solution to the climate crisis but as a plan to stimulate the American economy. Under this plan, thousands of companies will profit; millions of workers will get good jobs; clean water will be provided to communities now suffering from water that is contaminated with lead; women and minorities will benefit from increased wages in home health services; displaced workers, members of minority groups and other workers will benefit from free post-secondary education; and oh, by the way, we will mitigate the effects of climate change by improving public transportation, supporting the development of electric cars and expanding the production and transmission of green energy.

I don’t know whether Pres. Biden’s effort will succeed, but I believe that he is right in principle. We cannot separate the fight to save our planet from the fight for social justice. We cannot save our planet unless we do so in a way that increases social justice by providing benefits for most of our people.

This is Our Chance

 We Can Overcome Hyper-Partisanship

We have a chance now to overcome the extreme partisanship that has poisoned our politics for decades. We can turn away from blind partisanship and toward a practical politics that is focused on doing what is right for the American people. Congress has recently passed the American Rescue Plan (ARP), which is very popular among the American people. It is of course supported by most Democrats, but it is also supported by a majority of Republicans according to a recent survey. In spite of the act’s popularity among Republican voters, it passed Congress without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. Why did Republican senators and representatives vote against a bill that was so popular with their constituents?

The Radical Right is Vulnerable

The answer is that Republican politicians are afraid that if they break partisan ranks to vote for a measure like the American Rescue Plan, their party’s radical right will mount primary challenges against them. It doesn’t matter that the ARP is supported by most Republican voters. As long as it is supported by Democrats, it will be opposed by the radical rightists, and they will keep the Republican legislators in line. Now, however, the radical rightists are vulnerable. They have found no coherent way to oppose the American Rescue Plan, and their only hope is to divert our attention to other issues.

Keep the Focus on the American Rescue Plan

We must do all we can to prevent that. We must make sure that the ARP remains front and center in our political conversations. If we can do that, we may be able to overcome the barrier of hyper-partisanship. Pres. Biden has embarked on a national speaking tour to explain the ARP to the American People and to build on their support for it. If he is successful, he may be able to open a space in which Republican politicians can again act in the interest of their constituents instead of bending to the will of the radical right, which has always been a minority of Republicans.

We must do our part. We must engage in conversations with our friends and neighbors about the contents of the ARP. We must help them to see the ways in which in benefits them. We must not allow the radical right to divert attention to other issues, to personalities or to purely partisan matters. If we want our country to return to a reasonable politics of interest and compassion, this is our chance. If we want to turn away from hyper-partisanship, this is our chance.

Caste and Class in American Politics

A Masterful Work

Isabel Wilkerson’s recent book Caste is a masterful exploration of the meaning and ubiquity of caste divisions in American society. The author’s comparisons of our caste system with those of India and Nazi Germany are telling and accurate. Her descriptions of the horrors that have been visited on members of her caste are harrowing, and her recounting of her own experiences in pushing the boundaries of caste are authoritative in the way that only first-person experiences can be.

An Incomplete View of the Role of Caste

However, her discussion of the role of caste in American politics is incomplete because it fails to take account of the role of money and of the people who provide it. In Wilkerson’s view, issues of caste are the main drivers of political divisions in American politics. She sees the contemporary Republican Party as driven by the status anxiety of the members of the dominant caste. Speaking of the presidential campaign of 2016, she says (p. 6)

The campaign had become … an existential fight for primacy in a country whose demographics had been shifting beneath us all. People whose … ancestry traced back to Europe had been the dominant racial caste in an unspoken hierarchy since before the beginning of the republic. But …, in the summer of 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau announced its projection that by 2042, … whites would no longer be the majority ….

Then, that fall … an African-American … was elected president of the United States.

The effect of all this was to produce anger and anxiety among working class white people. As Wilkerson puts it (p. 183),

If a lower-caste person manages actually to rise above an upper-caste person, the natural human response from someone weaned on their caste’s inherent superiority is to perceive a threat to their existence, a heightened sense of unease, of displacement, of fear for their very survival. “If the things that I have believed are not true, then might I not be who I thought I was?” The disaffection is more than economic. The malaise is spiritual, psychological, emotional. Who are you if there is no one to be better than?

For Wilkerson, this spiritual malaise and insecurity accounts for the strength of working-class support for Donald Trump in 2016 and for the victory of the Republican Party that year. She is correct as far as she goes, but her explanation is incomplete because it fails to account for the financial cost of turning widespread malaise and insecurity into a political movement.

It Takes Money and the Support of People Who Have It

The rallies that Trump held during his campaign had to be paid for. The propaganda that links “welfare” to the "laziness" of black people has to be paid for. The propaganda telling us that Mexican immigrants are gangsters and rapists has to be paid for. The people who spread racist propaganda on Fox News and talk radio earn six-figure salaries, and they have to be paid. 

The money for these things comes from people at the top of our society. The Koch brothers’ political action committee has contributed millions of dollars to Republican political campaigns, and the Kochs along with other wealthy people and corporations have also made large donations to the American Legislative Exchange Council. Betsy DeVos’s family has made millions of dollars of contributions to Republican political campaigns. Their contributions and the contributions of others like them supported the effort to build a movement based on racist fears. Why do people like these donate money to support such a movement?

Why Rich People Support Racist Politics

They don’t do it because of status anxiety. It is ludicrous to say that the likes of Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos or Rupert Murdoch act politically because they are suffering from status anxiety. Great wealth always confers high social status in the United States. Rich people are admired for their wealth. Our white billionaires are not threatened by the election of Barack Obama as president or by the fact that Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry are also billionaires. So, why do American billionaires support racist politics?

The short answer is that they do it to keep wages low, taxes low, the working class docile and government safely in the hands of people like themselves. They do it to divide the working class and thereby keep its members from joining together to act in their own interest.

Class and Caste in India and Nazi Germany

This was true in the past as it is today. Let us look at the cases that Wilkerson uses for comparison to our caste system. She mentions the Indian caste system. In Indian villages, the major landowners belong to the higher castes, while the tenant farmers and landless laborers are lower caste people and Dalits. Thus, the caste system bolsters the control that the wealthy exercise over the lives of the poor. It prevents the Shudras (members of the lowest caste) from allying with the Dalits (untouchables). The system provides divine legitimation for an oppressive class system.

Wilkerson also compares our system to that of Nazi Germany. In understanding the rise of the Nazi Party, we should remember that in the early nineteen thirties, the German capitalists were desperately afraid of communism. A successful communist revolution had taken place just next door in Russia only a few years earlier, and the German communist party was large and well organized. German capitalists supported Hitler and the Nazis as a bulwark against communism. For the wealthy, the Nazi caste system was a price they were willing to pay to maintain their wealth and power.

Caste and Class in American Politics

The same kinds of motives underlie upper class support of racist politics in American History. In the late nineteenth century, the planter class in the South promoted racial divisions not only to keep black people in line but also to prevent poor black and white people from joining together in the populist movement of that period. The restrictions on voting that were put in place eliminated millions of poor white voters along with the black voters, and the planters maintained their control in a region where they were a small minority of the total, white population.

Racial divisions in the United States have also been exploited to break strikes and to prevent the development of labor unions in many parts of our country, and racial divisions continue to be used that way today.

People like Robert Koch, Betsy DeVos or Rupert Murdoch exploit the racial fears of the working class in order to maintain their own wealth and power. They support racist politics to bring in votes for candidates who will pass right-to-work laws, oppose higher taxes, prevent environmental regulation and prevent the creation of a decent national health care system. They support racist politics not because they are worried about their caste positions but to advance their economic agendas. Rupert Murdoch has even turned supporting racist politics into a profitable business in Fox News.

We can see the outcome of this kind of cynical politics in the legislative actions of the Trump administration. It did very little to advance a racist agenda, but it succeeded in passing an enormous tax cut that benefits mainly rich people, and it rolled back many environmental regulations. The administration also succeeded in appointing judges who will limit voting rights in order to maintain the power of the rich. Above all, the racist politics of the Republican Party kept the members of the working class from getting together to advance their shared interests.

Isabel Wilkerson is right when she says that caste plays a huge role in American politics, but the Republican political movement based on caste did not spring spontaneously from the soil of American culture and history.  It cannot be explained solely as an expression of the American caste system. The movement was created and nurtured deliberately and cynically to split the working class and to prevent the emergence of a strong, working class political movement dedicated to improving life for all Americans and not just for the wealthy few.

Ibram Kendi is not Robin DiAngelo

 DiAngelo's Approach is Conservative

White people in America often confront racism in a conservative way by treating the confrontation as an occasion for personal growth rather than social conflict. One source of this attitude is Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility, which I have argued is a profoundly conservative book because it leads its readers to treat racism as a private sin rather than a social issue just as popular, Protestantism has frequently done. I said,

Protestant Christianity generally focuses on salvation from sin through faith in Jesus Christ, but what is sin?  We can divide sins into two categories. There are public sins like oppression of the poor or corruption in public business, and there are private sins like fornication, gambling or drinking. American Protestantism has recognized both, but popular Protestant religiosity has focused much more on private sin than on public sin. Those like the 19^th century abolitionists who have insisted on social justice have faced widespread opposition from religious groups. 

 

The focus on private sin encourages individuals to work for personal development, self-understanding, psychological growth and repentance rather than to engage in social action, and White Fragility fits neatly into this tradition.  Just as Protestantism insists that sin is the inescapable condition of mankind, so White Fragility insists that racism is the inescapable condition of our society. Just as Protestantism says that we should look into our hearts, find the sin there and turn away from it, so, White Fragility says that we should look into our hearts, find the racism there and turn away from it. In both cases, “salvation” comes from personal improvement, not from social action.

 

Kendi is Different

How to be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi is quite different. Kendi insists that racism begins with racist policies that are adopted out of economic or political self-interest. Racist ideas and attitudes are developed and promulgated later to justify the policies. Moreover, Kendi says that changes in attitudes follow rather than precede changes in policies. Therefore, antiracists work directly to change policies. They do not worry much about what is in people’s hearts, because changes in beliefs and attitudes follow policy changes.

What is a “racist policy” in Kendi’s view? He says,

A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations and guidelines that govern people.

Racist policies may exist at any level of society. For example, “redlining” was a racist policy that existed at a societal level and was supported by major political and economic institutions, but racist policies may also be local. For example, a private business in a particular community might recruit its managers from among members of the church to which the owner of the business belongs. Since churches in our society are highly segregated by race, the effect would be to exclude anyone who is not of the same race as the owner.

Then, there are subtle, cultural “policies” that can have the effect of making people from a different culture uncomfortable in a certain group.  For example, an organization’s members might talk to one another in the style of a certain social class, and that might make people of a different social class feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.

Kendi Demands Political Action

Such local practices might be characterized as racist policies, but they are not the focus of Kendi’s interest. Kendi is interested in the policies that create “racial inequity,” which he defines as follows,

Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. Here’s an example of racial inequity: 71 percent of white families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to … 41 percent of black families.

We can see here that Kendi is interested mainly in policies like redlining that have the effect of creating substantial racial inequity. In his view, the job of antiracists is to work to eliminate that inequity. Thus, antiracism for Kendi is fundamentally political. It demands social struggle and political action. However, because of the breadth of Kendi’s definition of “policy,” it is possible for his readers to avoid political action and focus instead on changing their own, individual behavior and on changing the processes in the local organizations to which they belong. People taking this approach can work on “inclusion” rather than equity. This approach is convenient because it avoids social conflict, and in addition it fits well with the ideas advanced in White Fragility. Racism becomes again a private rather than a public sin, and in this reading the book demands not political struggle but personal growth.

I think, however, that this approach misreads Kendi’s intent. Ibram Kendi is not Robin DiAngelo, and How to be an Antiracist is not White Fragility. To be antiracists in Kendi’s sense, we must really support policies that reduce the gap that Kendi calls “racial inequity.” Being more “inclusive” is not enough.

Why is Watching Hallmark Movies Like Going to Church?

Going to Church

People who go to “church” regularly receive the satisfaction of having their identities as well as their moral and institutional commitments confirmed. I use the word “church” here as a shorthand for “religious services,” and what I have to say applies equally well to services in synagogues, mosques or temples. 

The confirmation that churchgoers receive comes both from the form of the service and from its content. A church service has a standard form, and those who attend regularly know it well. Typically, there is a ceremonial beginning, which may be an opening blessing. Then, there is a series of prayers that affirm the core beliefs and values of the church’s religious denomination. There is usually a reading from a religious text, and the reading is followed by a sermon that expounds on the meaning of the text. Finally, there is a closing blessing. At regular points during the service, there may be music. In some churches, the music consists of songs sung by the congregation, and it may also include instrumental accompaniment.

The familiar form of the service envelops the congregants. As they repeat familiar words and sing familiar songs, they feel at home among people like them in a place that is theirs. The unchanging form of the service gives them identity and belonging. In a changing and uncertain world, it gives them stability.

The content of the service supplements the form. The words affirm traditional beliefs and values, and in the context of the service, each congregant reaffirms his/her commitment to them. The congregant does this even though he/she may in fact have serious doubts about their validity. This is hypocritical if you like, but it is very human. It gives the congregants a sense of sharing a tradition with deep roots in the past. It tells them who they are.

A religious service also has a “happy ending.” Our religions tell us that the world is ultimately a just place ruled by a just God or perhaps by an impersonal karma. People will get what they deserve. The good will surely be rewarded, and the bad will be punished. The moral books will be balanced in an afterlife, in what Judaism calls “the world to come,” or in a subsequent life for those who believe in reincarnation. Of course, many churchgoers doubt the truth of such teachings, but they suspend their disbelief just as playgoers enter into the spirit of a play by suspending their disbelief in its reality.

Watching Hallmark

Watching a Hallmark movie is a similar kind of experience. The movie has a formulaic plot with standard characters. It takes place in a familiar setting. People who watch Hallmark movies regularly know exactly what to expect. Just as in a familiar religious service, they are enveloped in a familiar environment in which they can feel at home. They know that they are sharing the experience with many other people, and that gives them a sense of belonging and community.

Hallmark movies, like religious services, affirm traditional values: family, home, romantic love, rural living, second chances. During the movie, the viewer accepts those values even though he/she may not really believe in them. A person firmly committed to a busy career in a big city can, for a moment, believe that life in a small town in the Rocky Mountains is more authentic and more humane. A person going through his/her second divorce can for a moment believe that his/her true love is waiting somewhere. Finally, a Hallmark movie always has a happy ending. As the characters often say, “Things have a way of working themselves out.” The lovers find each other; the conflicts are resolved; true love wins out; and the audience turns off the TV feeling good about themselves and about the world.