As a politician, how would you go before thousands of poor/working class white voters and say, "Even though most of you all don't have insurance or access to quality healthcare, I'm going to repeal and/or block any legislation which will help you to buy/purchase/receive quality medical care?"
How would you tell poor/working class white people, "Even though you are already struggling financially, I'm going to increase your taxes so that you pay even more while giving my campaign contributors, who may be your bosses, a tax break and they will pay taxes at a rate lower than yours?"
How would you tell poor/working class white people, "We need to start and fight endless wars, put boots on the ground all over this globe and use only your kids to do that?"
How would you tell poor and/or working class white people, "I know the economy is terrible, but I'm going to make it even more terrible by allowing our businesses to take more manufacturing jobs to China and everything in your house, from your toilet seat to your calendars to your forks and spoons to you television to your clothes to the mini-American flag which you are now waving will read, 'Made in China'?"
As a politician, how would you campaign on these things? Even though this is the reality of Republican politics and economic platforms, how do they win elections by saying these things to their majority-white voters? The answer is you don't. They use a smokescreen instead. And the favorite smokescreen of choice is Black people.
Since the beginning of the Republican primary process, politicians like Gingrich and Santorum have used that old reliable smokescreen of telling their poor/working class white audiences, in so many words, "Black people. Black people are the reason why this country is suffering...Black people with their food stamps and socialized medicine and single-parent homes are draining the wealth and resources of this country...Black people! Black people! Black people and not middle-age rich white guys like me who are actively shaping the real class warfare by redirecting wealth up to the richest 1% of the country. It's those damn Black people. They are the ones who are sucking up the resource while every white person in America, white people like us, is productive and working hard and taking advantage of the free enterprise system. We're not the ones accepting handouts. We're not the ones getting wealthy off tax breaks, it's only the Blacks."
As an African American who currently owes a gazillion dollars in student loans as I struggle to obtain a Ph.D., I should be outraged. I should be shouting to the top of my lungs, but I am not. I understand this: race is a Republican smokescreen. To play dog whistle politics, to employ the type of rhetoric which blames one group for the entire country's misfortune, is to deploy tactics which ensure that the public willing consents to their own exploitation. Playing dog whistle politics and securing plenty of votes by them is to assure the wealthiest 1% that their fortunes are safe, and they don't have to contribute their fair share. Playing dog whistle politics assures the warhawks that they can start not one, but two wars, and their children will be safe and secure, and won't be risking their lives. Let the working class children pull the country's load, as long as we keep saying, "The Blacks! The Blacks! The Blacks," They won't mind.
I'm just sitting back, observing it all, and wondering why more poor/working class whites aren't mad as Hell that their politicians are playing them like chumps or using scare tactics. It seems that, as poor/working class whites who sometimes have even less than their African/Latino American counterparts, they'd one day wake up and smell the smoke-filled coffee. But, maybe not soon. The scare tactic....the tendency of Republican candidates to yell, "The Blacks are coming! The Blacks are coming!" has been working since the days of Barry Goldwater. And it looks like it may work one more time.
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