Yesterday, I mentioned the theory that racial conflicts were at the root of a lot of our political disputes even when they're not explicitly mentioned. Then later in the day strolling through the Atlantic's archives looking for something else, I came across Thomas Edsall's May 1991 article on race in politics and didn't really make the connection until I clicked back over to it just now. But there it is -- a classic statement of the thesis.
It's Really Race
26 Mar 2008 09:08 am
Comments (11)
Matt says water is wet and finds others agree with him!
pdp, Rob: He brought it up by saying "One thing many liberals believe..."
You read like housecats. Yglesias is going to need to find the verbal equivalent of shaking a set of keys.
If Matt is surprised that race is a subtext (if not "the root") of a lot of stuff, he didn't contemplate too deeply why his parents shelled out big bucks to send him to Dalton rather than letting him attend New York City's well financed public schools.
Here's a good piece exploring the subconscious racism and how it's being employed in the campaign. It's quite interesting:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=conservatives_hate_based_campaign_against_obama
"Governing Through Crime," by Jonathon Simon is a great book that discusses how Republicans' racist appeals helped destroy the New Deal coalition ... it's a more-scholarly "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
Doesn't mesh with the brouhaha over homosexuality and abortion. Not at all. Nor does it have much to say about anxiety over divorce and illegitimacy among whites. I take these issues at face value, not as codes for some other agenda.
Is race an important issue? Sure. Is it a one-variable explanation for everything? Hardly. And less so with every passing day.
Even looking specifically at crime and welfare, the two big issues from the 80s where there really was a serious racial subtext, it's hard to deny that the problems themselves were really there. Other countries have found themselves in similar binds even without racial divisions, so there seems to be something there in addition to race. Class, maybe?
Sarah Churchwell had a good article about this today in the Independent, also printed in the Seattle P-I editorial section.
The Democrats blew it and created a self-reinforcing loop leading to the results described in Matt's link.
For instance, in Seattle the solution should have been to make all the schools as good as those in the (white) north end. What actually happened was a huge investment in buses, and the busing of some black students to the north end, and some white students to the south end. Then the district continued to spend most of the money for schools on the schools in the north end, on the pretext that they had to be improved for the black students being bused in.
The schools in the south end, where most of the non-whites live, continued to get worse, which naturally infuriated parents of white students being bused from the north end.
In regards to drugs, it's even worse. Democrats bought in to the idea that 'curing' the drug user would solve the problems created by segregation, poor schools, bias in housing and employment, and disappearing low-skill jobs. What actually happened, of course, was that racially biased policing destroyed the black family by arresting black males.
Obama couldn't say this outright, but what needs to happen is to provide basic education to all students. The land-grant universities need to be expanded and funded to provide low-tuition or no-tuition schooling to everyone who qualifies for admission. Public housing, food, and medical care need to be provided to everyone, not just a 'means-tested' few who have been victimized by biased policing and poor schools into perpetual poverty.
Whether the Democrats or 'liberals' can figure out what's going on is an open question. There is no shortage of examples of societies that collapsed into a heap of smoking wreckage instead of making the changes that seemed hard to them.
Race is all about who your relatives are, and human beings are more likely to team up politically with their relatives than along any other dimension of identity.
I have to give Steve credit for saying possibly the stupidest thing ever. I'm guessing he has a mental age of about six, and never heard of parents screaming about hippies in bell bottoms.
But who knows. Maybe Steve really does feel this overpowering urge to vote like his old man did. Some people are like that.
in Seattle the solution should have been to make all the schools as good as those in the (white) north end
'Everybody has won, and all must have prizes!'
Why is it in whites' interests to spend more on education? From their point of view schools are fine, just need to cancel busing. When you have a color line that removes Rawls' "veil of ignorance", or basically our innate disposition of putting ourselves in other people's shoes, liberalism is going to have problems.
[Sailer] never heard of parents screaming about hippies in bell bottoms
Aren't the Boomers one of the most politically conservative generations? Maybe they were radical at the age of 20, but the urge to rebel against one's parents gets old very fast.
Comments closed April 09, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Hasn't Krugman also advanced this idea? In his last book?
Posted by pdp | March 26, 2008 9:23 AM