WHY THE RICH LOVE ANTIRACISM

 

Today’s avatars of this sort of politics include California governor Gavin Newsom, a former business mogul turned politician … During his tenure as governor, Newsom has continued to burnish his credentials as a blue-state cultural warrior through championing various gender and racial equity initiatives… But behind this progressive pageantry is the fact that California remains one of the most unaffordable and economically unequal states in the country and in recent years has held the highest poverty rate of any state in the union 15

p.15-16

Especially at a time of heightened attention to race, this perhaps explains some progressives’ venom for working-class whites.  But the eagerness to exchange at least part of the working class for a professional-class constituency has been a pet project of Democratic leaders since the Clinton era, when the New Democrats – the ruthless, business-savvy alliance that reoriented the party towards policies like financial deregulation and public-private partnerships – aggressively courted affluent, white collar workers while also making plain they considered organized labor a relic of a bygone industrial era.  In 2016, of course, this gamble went up in flames spectacularly.

p.102-3

Jennifer C Pan’s Selling $ocial Justi©e: Why The Rich Love Antiracism tellingly gets at the heart of where Anti-Racism foci and DEI commonly better result in controlling non-wealthy people.  Such efforts often perpetuate the very things many of us are seeking to systemically end.

Quoting Barbara Ehrenreich, Pan states:

“The working class became, for many middle-class liberals, a psychic dumping ground for such unstylish sentiments as racism, male chauvinism, and crude materialism: a rearguard population that loved white bread and hated black people,” she wrote in Fear of Falling. 12

In googling relevant issues, I found the following quote from The American Bar Association:

Over the past five decades, growing wage inequality has been one of the defining features of the American economy. Since the late 1970s, inflation-adjusted pay for most U.S. workers has largely stagnated, while pay for the country’s highest earners has skyrocketed. This sluggish wage growth for middle-income Americans has been widely acknowledged and recognized by economists and politicians across the political spectrum. Yet, the root causes of these trends have frequently been wrongly attributed as an unfortunate result of apolitical market forces that one neither can nor would want to alter, such as automation and globalization. In fact, disappointing wage growth for most workers in the U.S. economy was not an unintended consequence—it was the intentional outcome of legislative, regulatory, and corporate policies deliberately implemented to constrain labor costs, decisions made on behalf of the rich and corporations and validated by many economists.

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-rights/archive/americas-vast-pay-inequality-story-unequal-power/#:~:text=Since%20the%20late%201970s%2C%20inflation,politicians%20across%20the%20political%20spectrum.

Back to this book:

This notion of working class whites as a reactionary and irredeemable force was revived with remarkable bloodlust in the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 victory. (p.101)

By the 2024 election, the fissures in the party’s base had widened enough to deliver for Trump not only the electoral college, for a second time, but also the popular vote.   In a year of high inflation and continued public pessimism over the state of the economy, Kamala Harris – whose campaign flashily garnered support from celebrities and billionaires but for working people offered little more than tepid promises of “opportunity economy” – lost every swing state.  (p.105)

As one might gather from the quotes above, Jennifer C Pan, is an “equal opportunity” evaluator of the systemic weaknesses of our political system.   This book is an excellent read for those who care about the norms of diversity, equity and inclusion.   It effectively notes the weaknesses we face in wishing to end racism.   It clearly shows how we generally are on a wrong, wrong path!

The author effectively shows how we’ve not completed “the work” to end racism, as we;; as some clear reasons why we are floundering.  

Since the book was published, Donald Trump (“on steroids”), his willing accomplices, the Republican politicians in power, as well as the ineffective Democratic Party leadership and its largely “mainstream” fellow Congresspeople, have kept us moving further and further downward.

I hope that more of us will deeply take in Jennifer Pan’s insights, which can help many, if not most, of us in significant ways!   I hope that far more of us who purport to be “Anti-Racist”, will apply such lessons in our work today, tomorrow and into the future.   BIPOC aren’t waiting for us, however its extremely unlikely they will succeed without our Deep Support.   Pan also clearly shows us how our poorer “white brethren” are (also) hurting, and acting rationally in not (erroneously) “supporting us”.