Thursday, February 25, 2010

The Perceived Hypocrisy of the Republican Party

In 1964, Barry Goldwater ran for president against Lyndon B. Johnson. Goldwater leaned heavily to the right of the Republican Party. He championed free enterprised and ranted against large government. He was a strict constitutionalist who also believed in the moral health of Americans. He was also a gun rights advocate. Many Southern and midwestern Democrats switched parties; thus, began the Goldwater Movement. It joined social conservativism and the Republican Party. The tenants of the Goldwater Movement were simple: socially, the followers were conservative; economically, the followers believed in free enterprise and libertarianism. Social conservatives and Economic liberals joined together under the same tent.
Though Goldwater did not win his bid for presidency, he opened the way for every Conservative's champion, Ronald Reagan, who gave a speech for Goldwater in the 1964 campaign. Today's GOP prides itself in being "The Party of Reagan." Ronald Reagan preached smaller government, lower taxes for corporations to spark job creation, deregulation of the banking and finance sectors, fewer dollars spent on social benefits, cuts to education spending and mental health services, looser gun laws, and individual responsibility for crime (tougher crime penalties). That was 1980-1988. Fastfoward to 2010.
The problem with the Republican Party is that it looks hypocritical. Young people, who are not well-versed in history or political theory and who have never heard of Barry Goldwater, were born after Ronald Reagan or even George Bush elder served, do not understand how social conservativism and economic liberalism can exist together. For instance, most conservatives are against abortion but support the death penalty and war. So, conservatives would save an unborn life but take away another's who they may not like or regard highly? So, when the rich have to pay more taxes to support social/infrastructure improvement project it is "redistribution of wealth," but giving the banks and other Fortune 500 companies a tax-payer funded bailouts is not? Medicare and a public option are forms of socialism and that's bad, but allowing a few private companies to determine who is worthy of healthcare, what kind of treatments they can receive, and whether someone lives or dies is not a form of tyranny or even terrible? So, people should be free to choose when it comes to healthcare and medical treatment, but gay couples are not free to choose to be married? If Sarah Palin were truly a Conservative woman, why isn't she supporing her husband in the background while he commands the spotlight?
To younger voters, it seems as if the Republicans want things both ways. It seems like mass hypocrisy to a younger generation. How do they remedy this? If they do not remedy this perception problem, the party will dissolve as old, white male voters die and leave confused and angry younger voters who see their ideals as hypocrisy.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

The Problem with the postBaby Boomer Generation




Detroit is in ruins. Unemployment amongst African Americans is well past that of other nationalities. Suicide rates amongst African American males between the ages of 18 and 35 is also increasing. Most people, who live inside Wayne County, have to drive an hour for fresh fruits and vegetables. Even on Black in America, it was revealed that it is easier to obtain a gun in some Black neighborhoods than a fresh tomato.
How did this happen? When did this happen? How could we just sit by and let it happen?
It has been my privilege to spend my days teaching and discussing African American/diasporic literature. For the past two semesters, I've been focusing on Black people and our quest to achieve the American Dream. First, I ask my students, who are normally between the ages of 20 and 60, what they think the American Dream is. The answers include: a nice home in the suburbs, plenty of designer clothes, and at least one luxury car. Next, I ask them if they think the myth of American prosperity is true. If my class consists of mostly middle class white students, the answer is overwhelmingly "no." If my class consists of mostly Black and poor white students, the answer is "yes." These students really and truly believe in the American Dream. And they believe that it is achievable, one way or the other.
The next sector consists of me teaching them several texts written by Black people that are related to the American Dream. My major text is "A Raisin in the Sun," the groundbreaking play by the late Lorrain Hansberry. Here's the thing about their answers and the play that disturbs me the most, and these notes are also part of my lecture to the students.
I notice that in their answers, nobody said anything about getting a better education. Nobody says anything about having more time to properly raise their children. The answers were solely materialistic and having the ability to buy bigger and better material goods. "A Raisin in the Sun" also has an interesting subplot. There is a generational/geographical shift between the mother, Lena Younger, and her children, Walter and Beneatha. Lena Younger and her husband, Walter Younger Sr. migrated from the South to one of our Northern industrial centers. Like the millions of African Americans to do so during the Great Migrations I and II, they were filled with hope and joy at the prospect of earning fair wages. But like so many, their hopes turned into the nightmare embodied by the ghetto in which they lived. Walter Younger, Sr. had to die in order for his family to earn enough money to even think of leaving that ghetto. I notice that, in the play, neither one of the children mourned their father. They were totally focused on that $10000 pay check, and what it meant for them individually. Lena sees this tendency in her children, but cannot quite articulate the trouble with them. Asaigi, the African boyfriend of Beneatha, did. He, like so many readers of the play, found it odd that the children argued over money that their father died for, with no mention or thanks to him.
Here's where I come in. With the Great Migration II, African Americans became mostly urban people for the first time in history. People were glad to get away from the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta and the sugar cane farms of Louisiana. I cannot blame them. Share cropping is another name for volunteer slavery. These people took with them horror tales of white supremacy, Blues, jazz, quilting, church, spirituals, hair braiding, soul food, and jive. They told their children stories of how they were so poor that they could not afford new shoes and clothes; how they could not get their hair pressed every week; how they did not even have enough to eat most days. Suddenly, it became fashionable to poor and Black from Mississippi. Children, once seen as sources of wealth because added hands meant added labor for the farm, became an inconvenience. Women, like Ruth Younger, did not want added mouths to feed because they had to think about the children that were already here. Abortions became a blessing, and not a taboo.
What these people failed to take with them was family history. Yes, Jim Crowism was bad, but what about the uncle that always outsmarted the white man or the passive aggressive aunt that told her white woman employer, "I don't know about this strike Ms. Dorothy, but I'm gone stay off them buses until this mess get straightened out." What these people failed to take with them was a sense of pride and dignity. Yes, people were share croppers, but walking with your shoulders rounded is not worth anything man can offer. No, people did not have the best houses or the trendiest clothes. But the houses and the clothes that they had were kept clean and neat. Being poor does not give us a reason to live like animals. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
So the thing that came down between Lena Younger and her children was a lack of teaching and too much teaching. The South was bad. Mississippi was everybody's nightmare, but being next to the soil taught survival skills, dignity, family unity, and pride. The Baby Boomer generation, most of them having grown up in the South, or least visited with their grandparents from the summer, still have some of these skills. In the name of "progress," or in the name of achieving the ever-elusive American Dream, either wanted to forget these things or failed to pass them on. And look at what the forgetfulness, the lack of teaching has wrought. Look at Detroit. Look at Chicago. Look at Memphis. Look at New Orleans. Look at Houston. Look at Richmond. Look at Oakland. The next time a Baby Boomer asks, "What's wrong with the young people?" Look in the mirror.
In breaking the glass ceiling, in becoming the first this and the first that, in becoming middle class, in achieving the American dream, in racing to be my competition because you do not want to retire and become irrelevant, have you failed to teach me, my elder?