Conservative Promotes Racial Divisions to Undermine Welfare State

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema crdbronx at erols.com
Fri Jul 20 09:23:14 PDT 2001


Having read Goldberg's article, I think we need to look at his distinction between the US and Europe more carefully. He is distinguishing European universalistic social welfare, where most services are not means-tested and are available to all, from the residualist American version, where the opposite is true and where services are stigmatized. Goldberg's comments like this get to this --


> In a sense skin color served as a dye-marker for the failures of the
> well-intentioned but disastrous policies of New Deal and Great Society
> liberalism. We spent trillions on the poor, who were disproportionately
> black, and there was very little to show for it. I'm not even sure people
> would have noticed if it weren't for the fact that it was apparent that the
> black underclass was actually getting worse because of, rather than in spite
> of, the erosion of the family and work ethics caused by welfare.
>

What Goldberg doesn't mention explicitly, and what this has discussion has missed up to now, is the presumption that the family is the default nurturer. This is the presumed alternative to universalistic social welfare as a way to assure that the society will meet human nurturant needs. Universalistic social welfare challenges that presumption, and thus is a more progressive approach that tends to grow out of class politics (absent in the US -- see the American exceptionalism theorists, like Hartz) and to create a broad class consensus for social policies that challenge ruling class privilege. Hence neoliberalism attacks social welfare as in Germany and England now.

In the US, the notion of the family as default nurturer gets much support from the cultural right partisans of "family values." Family values are inherently reactionary in the political-economic sense, and the religious groups that support them naturally form part of the conservative coalition that underlies the Republican Party. This is also why white racism so heavily depends on images of oversexed African-american women propagating out of wedlock. This is also why the right so strongly pushes legitimation of marriage. Goldberg obviously hopes to enlist the presumed family values and religious faith of immigrants to attack social welfare, and African-americans. The Republicans have been explicit in hoping to draw on anti-abortion sentiment and homophobia among hispanics to win them over. The religious right is not just an opponent of the democratic rights of women and gays, but it also is a key element in organizing mass support for conservative political-economic policy.

This is also why feminism and gay rights tend to gravitate to the left and are natural components of a left coalition that could work for universalistic social welfare. It is crucially important for the left to develop progressive proposals for family policy, social welfare, and the legal institutions of the family that promote universalism and challenge the presumption of the family as primary nurturer.

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema

Luke Benjamin Weiger wrote:


> Depressingly enough, I think Goldberg may be correct. If anyone has the
> time and inclination, read Martin Gilens' "Why American's Hate Welfare." He
> concludes that racism towards blacks is the single most powerful factor in
> shaping resistance to AFDC.
>
> -- Luke
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Chuck Grimes" <cgrimes at tsoft.com>
> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 10:39 PM
> Subject: Re: Conservative Promotes Racial Divisions to Undermine Welfare
> State
>
> >
> > An interesting little article arguing for conservatives to promote
> > multicultural divisions and immigration to undermine the welfare state,
> > since conservatives can count on racism to keep people from identifying
> with
> > the poor of other races. Nice sometimes to see racist strategy so clearly
> > expressed-- Nathan
> >
> > [fwd: "My Trial Balloon: Immigrants and socialism." Source: National
> Review
> > Online Published: 18 July 2001 Author: Jonah Goldberg]
> >
> > -------------
> >
> > Most of the time my loathing and murderous hatred of the US right,
> > their scum in public office and their court appointee, our official
> > idiot, Gorge the Impaler, seriously gets in the way of my thinking
> > about them rationally.
> >
> > After reading this article, however, I got the strangest thought in my
> > mind, that Goldberg's absurd idea formed an election trial balloon. It
> > lays out a crude logic of how the repugnants can create a new
> > double-think to suck in more ethnic and racial minorities to boost
> > their impending demise. I say impending demise because the
> > demographics on a national scale have got to be heading in the same
> > direction as California---toward a much more diverse and increasingly
> > important hispanic voting population that really will not buy into the
> > current repugnant encoded racist rhetoric. So they need to creat a new
> > rhetoric, if they are going to survive.
> >
> > Here is how I think their new double-think might work. And I think
> > Nathan is right about the racism---it depends on a strategy of divide
> > and conquer, separating out the newer hispanic and asian immigrants
> > from the established african american underclass.
> >
> > Socialism, welfare statism, and of course all the liberal agendas that
> > go with these commie and anti-american ideas, are all racist at
> > heart. In fact they are the origin of racism itself. The formula is,
> > liberal=>racism=>welfare-statism=>dependence=>anti-americanism.
> >
> > Once the liberals realized their government programs were not going to
> > develop more people like them, they contented themselves with
> > oppressing african americans by creating a permanent and dependent
> > underclass--so don't let this happen to you.
> >
> > Meanwhile, the new, true americans, all the freedom loving,
> > entrepreneurial immigrants who came here during the golden Reagan-Bush
> > years of open opportunity, to work and get ahead, didn't need their
> > anti-american dependency welfare anyway---and we the real republican
> > americans, are with you new americans all the way. We don't want it
> > either. It's all basically a racist, subservient, and dependence
> > enforcing system that flies in the face of an authentic and liberating
> > american spirit, you and we all share.
> >
> > We know welfare only breeds a slavish dependence and cripples the get
> > ahead american spirit---just look what it's done to african
> > americans. The little guy, all the new little brown and yellow guys
> > know better. They (the little guys) will never grow up to be big guys
> > like us (us, totally repugnant, fat old white bastards), as long as
> > they are deluded by these evil socialist, liberal, and anti-american
> > ideas, because these racist ideas are holding them back, keeping them
> > from becoming true americans. As soon as african americans get it
> > through their heads, they have been oppressed by these same bleeding
> > heart liberals, they can join us too.
> >
> > These `liberal' programs like welfare and bi-lingual education are
> > exclusionist, racist oppression incarnate. They deny our new americans
> > the right to become true and complete americans. These liberals, these
> > democrats are the ones that are pushing abortion to keep down your
> > numbers. They are the ones that are pushing these so-called liberation
> > movements for sex and pornography and so-called drug treatment that
> > are ruining your children. They are the ones pushing bi-lingual
> > education to keep you in a barrio of the mind. They are the ones who
> > are keeping you from competing on equal footing in our great american
> > system. They are the ones who have no faith in you, because of their
> > racist ideas. But we, on the other hand, are not racists, because we
> > believe and know you can make it on your own, just like we did. We
> > are with you all the way brothers and sisters, so vote for us....
> >
> > Something like this twisted up bullshit has to become the repugant
> > line. The big problem is getting enough hispanic and asian talking
> > heads to mouth this crap with young looking, sincere, well manicured
> > smiles on tv. Guess this is what all the money is for.
> >
> > Now, for the tv spot, story boards. Open on slow street level pan of
> > run down urban, mostly black neighborhood, trashed cars on the street,
> > young hoods on the corner, hopeless looking women holding babies on
> > broken down front porches. Voice over: this is what fifty years of
> > closed liberal social policies have produced (insert local democratic
> > candidate name here).
> >
> > Cut to: middle class suburban neighborhood, racially mixed, mostly
> > asian and hispanic families, men out cutting the lawn, women talking
> > over the fence, small children riding by on new scooters, new cars in
> > clean driveways. Next cut to same people entering new suburban
> > industrial park building from parking lot, going to work. Next, cut to
> > a small, probably not-public school, with same racial mixed
> > kids---little ones sharing on computers, older ones raising hands in
> > class to kindly looking teacher speaking perfect english. Voice over:
> > this is what our new economic spirit of open opportunity for all has
> > achieved and wants for you (insert bland repugnant drone's name
> > here).
> >
> > Since I think I can smell them before I see them, it must be racial.
> >
> > Chuck Grimes
> >
> >
> >



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