Politics

Our discussions in class have remained remarkably apolitical. Last week I raised the question as to whether or not people thought reactions to The New Jim Crow would be criticized by conservative families and more accepted by liberal families. This discussion was brief but one response was that the racial issues at hand are moral and not political. I am not saying that the issues are as simple as politics, or that every conservative is ignorant and racist and every liberal is open-minded and progressive. However, I absolutely believe that the majority of complaints would come from conservative parents due to the emphasis on "staying with tradition", which happens to be a tradition of white supremacy. As exemplified by republicans today, conservative Americans are generally open critics about affirmative action, immigration, welfare, and crime. Affirmative action is unfair and takes away from white opportunities- but all of the opportunities whites have taken away from minorities is not in question.  Immigration is clearly a racial issue, if more constituents are of the minority, the white "majority" is threatened. Welfare recipients are commonly criticized by the republican party for being lazy and the image of a black welfare mom is commonly evoked. Everyone needs to be "hard on crime" (this is the most bipartisan problematic issue mentioned here), so racial profiling, unjust sentencing, and minority oppression is OK as long as people are safe. I believe these problematic thoughts are predominantly republican rather than democratic, and that they should be addressed as racist issues. Not every republican is an overt bigot like Don Yelton, or David Duke. However, I believe the racist ideologies within the party are made very explicit with the Duke/Buchanan election. Duke and Buchanan shared "anger over affirmative action, crime, immigration, and welfare moms", but because Buchanan was not directly linked to Nazism or Klan membership, the ideologies weren't question as being racist. As Wise brings up in the following chapter, "A Duke victory would have made it more difficult to distance the party from the racism that had animated so much of its previous thirty years of political activity—from Goldwater’s opposition to civil rights legislation to Nixon’s exploitation of “law and order” themes so as to scare whites about big city crime to Reagan’s deft use of stories concerning mythical black “welfare queens” driving Cadillacs to the food stamp office." (166-167). There is a similar trend happening now, where the tea party was first embraced by many republicans, for being able to ignite more radically conservative ideas, they are now being criticized due to their growing disapproval and more overtly racist ideas.