It's a
well-documented fact of history that
for the past half-century at least, conservatives have used race
resentment as a way of cutting the safety net in order to further enrich
the already well-to-do. If the objective is to cut Medicaid or food
stamps, bring up stories of lazy (black/brown) ne'er-do-wells, young
bucks and welfare queens in the to steel the minds of white voters and
fool them into destroying their own safety net. It's been a remarkably
successful tactic, and one that is still being used with frequency to
this day.
One
of the keys to the race-baiting attack has been to take the social
malaise that develops in economically depressed communities and
attribute that malaise to some in-born defect of the people of the
communities themselves. By blaming poor outcomes on genetic and cultural
moral lassitude rather than pre-existing economic oppression, it
becomes much easier to deny social services to those communities while
lower taxes on wealthy white "producers."
Throw
in some hippie-punching and a blame campaign waged against the
cosmopolitan values of the post-60s to account for everything else wrong
with America that can be fixed with economic libertarianism mixed with
strict religion-based social controls, and you have the basic political
and economic program of the Right. It has been very effective.
But
that program is now becoming a victim of its own success. As economic
libertarianism has dragged down middle-class wages and benefits,
suddenly the social malaise that has long gripped minority communities
is starting to make itself felt across the entirety of America,
including among working-class whites.
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