Trump's First 100 Days

[*bfine32*]

(02-18-2017, 01:00 PM)Dill Wrote: LOL, he is not going to "review" that comment, Hollo, but I might clear up the mystery for you.

It has been a feature of U.S. political discourse since 1865 that right wingers oppose any diversion of tax money into programs that help minorities--especially African-Americans. 

This opens them to charges of racism of course. They didn't care back in the '50-60s, when they were still openly fighting for segregation, but in the '70s, the charge became a liability, so they developed ways of deflecting it--mostly by reversing the charge, insisting that somehow liberals and Democrats were the "real" racists because they assume blacks could not help themselves. Think here of George H.W. Bush's reference to "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

In the mid '70s, an additional feature was added to this "reverse racism," namely that Democrats wanted to keep blacks on public assistance to get their votes. As the Latino vote became important in the 1980s and '90s, they too were added to the mix of supposed "government dependent" voters aligned with the Democrats. No wonder Dems protect illegals and are lax on immigration--more future Democratic voters!

So the claim becomes Democrats WANT to keep minorities poor and dependent upon government--supposedly the purpose of housing and welfare programs--so they will keep voting Democrat, and you can see how analogy is constructed--Dems are like planation owners who want to keep minorities ignorant and under their control. Thus the people who sought consistently to create a level playing field for African-Americans become the "real racists" while the people who deny structural racism continues in U.S. institutions and the economy become "post-racist"--lampooned by Stephen Cobert's bit, in which he would ask plainly black people to identify their race because, as he put it, "I can't see race."

This does not fool the majority of African-Americans who still vote 90% Dem and it probably does not fool many whites, either, but it offers some plausible deniability regarding support for the party which has, since the 1970s,  subsidized farmers and corporations, while doing its best to reduce money targeting minorities.

Final point--this is a "bubble" argument. You hear it on Fox and Talk radio. Outside of the bubble it has no traction. It is not part of any serious policy debate in universities or respectable think tanks.

It's almost like the Dems pushed the Civil Rights Act. Nah, that wasn't them as they already had the right to vote before that.

But stand by for: "The parties switched". Even though a republican has never gotten more than 40% of the Black vote since they started keep stats (1930s)