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citationsneededpodcast

Ep. 11, Part II: The Deficits Racket -- Racist Media as Barrier to Government Spending

Added 2017-10-04 14:14:14 +0000 UTC

If broad government programs are so popular why don’t we just vote them into existence? One of the primary barriers to democratic socialism--or spending in general--is racist media coverage and racist attitudes about how government programs are administered. In this episode we explore how racism and means-tested nickel-and-diming makes radical change that much more difficult.

Show Notes

Racism Has Shaped U.S. Welfare Policy Since 1935

Alma Carten | August 22, 2016 | The Conversation

Study: Trump fans are much angrier about housing assistance when they see an image of a black man

German Lopez | September 8 2017 | Vox

Black Women: Supporting Their Families—With Few Resources

Gillian B White | June 12, 2017 | The Atlantic

How Racism Tears Apart Social Democracy

Sean McElwee | January 23, 2014 | Huffington Post

Lashing Out at ‘Identity Politics,’ Pundits Blame Trump on Those Most Vulnerable to Trump

Adam Johnson | November 20, 2016 | FAIR

Where's the empathy for black poverty and pain?

Tanzina Vega | May 5 2017 | CNN

U.S. Opens Spigot After Farmers Claim Discrimination

Sharon LaFraniere | April 25, 2013 | New York Times

Racism undermines support for government spending

Sean McElwee | February 16, 2016 | Al Jazeera

Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America's Poor

Noel A. Cazenave Kenneth J. Neubeck | Routledge

Guests

Sean McElwee is a Policy Analyst at Demos and researcher and frequent contributor to The Nation

Dr. Noel Cazenave is a Professor of Sociology at University of Connecticut and the author of “Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America's Poor”

Ep. 11, Part II: The Deficits Racket -- Racist Media as Barrier to Government Spending

Comments

You discussed Bernie Sanders at the end of the episode. I think it is important to remember that Bernie started his activist/political career protesting against segregation at UI Chicago. I would hope that we have all by now seen the photos of him at a sit-in and of him being arrested whilst chained to a black woman. I believe that Bernie's anti-racist views were first formed by MLK's activism in creating the Poor People's Campaign. This was King's last campaign, and we should all remember that he was shot while working with striking sanitation workers in Memphis who were being mistreated. In developing his Poor People's Campaign, King proclaimed: “One America is flowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of equality,” King said. “That America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, freedom and human dignity for their spirits. . . . But as we assemble here tonight, I’m sure that each of us is painfully aware of the fact that there is another America, and that other America has a daily ugliness about it that transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair.” I believe this resonated with the young Sanders, who was obviously interested in socialism and economic justice. I believe that King's embrace of socialism and economic issues as a means to combat institutional racism was what animated Bernie at that point. Let us not forget that King was the one who prophetically pronounced: “This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.” I believe that Bernie believes, as King did, that economic justice was a way to neutralise racism, and that a rising economic tide would, in a way, lift all boats, including those of African Americans. ALL THAT SAID, Bernie did have his eyes opened over the course of his campaign. Here is an excerpt from an interview with The Nation. The Nation: What did you learn from the Black Lives Matter movement? Sanders: I talked to a lot of Black Lives activists in various states. What I learned is that the relationship of police departments around the country with the black community is far, far more severe and awful than I had originally known. The intimidation on the part of the police, the shooting of unarmed people, the outrage of people being killed in cold blood, is an issue which prompted us to come up with what I believe was the strongest set of proposals of any candidate in terms of the need for real criminal-justice reform. “But I also believe what Martin Luther King Jr. believed. You remember what the title of the March on Washington was? “Jobs and Freedom.” What King understood is that you have to deal with the economic issues as well as the political issues and the civil-rights issues. Throughout this campaign, what we talked about is that, in community after community, there are unemployment rates among young African Americans of 30 to 40 percent. Thirty to 40 percent! Kids have no jobs, they have no future. That is an issue that has got to be dealt with simultaneously as we deal with police brutality, voter suppression, and the other attacks that are taking place on the African-American community.”

2017-10-15 18:17:43 +0000 UTC

I have to disagree with the idea that white Americans, or any Americans, aren't racist. And I don't mean some reverse racism bullshit, I mean all Americans regardless of race, indeed all people encultured in a western/colonialist society, regardless of race, are white supremacists. There is ample experimental evidence to support this, most of which I'm taking from Cordelia Fine's Mind of It's Own: How Our Brains Distort and Deceive, specifically the chapter Bigoted Brain so I encourage anyone interested to check that book out (Cordelia Fine is amazing, please get her on the podcast for an episode on gender!). To summarize, whenever we think of or perceive something, our brains don't only call up that single entity but all of the concepts, traits and stereotypes that our culture has taught us to associate with it. We then require conscious knowledge of these stereotypes and the exertion of mental effort in order to dismiss them in our thinking, even for those of us who consider ourselves non-bigoted. Indeed, by considering ourselves non-bigoted we can actually increase the likelihood of making bigoted judgements by letting down our guard(1). Not only that, but if we're distracted or tired we will also make bigoted judgements without realizing it because we lack the capacity to exert the effort required to overcome our default way of thinking(2). This even applies to those that are the victims; there are experiments showing women perform worse on Math exams after being told (wrongly) that there's evidence women are inherently worse at Math(3), while <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_and_Mamie_Clark#Doll_experiments" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">The Franklin Doll experiments</a> showed that negative stereotypes of black Americans are internalized even by black children. <i>Everyone</i> is white supremacist and misogynist because western society is white supremacist and misogynist. This brings me to how to I deal with the problem of racism (or sexism) in organizing. I find that the biggest obstacle is the liberal conception of racism as an individual/moral problem rather than as societal/cultural one. It causes people to wrongly think that they can somehow opt-out of their social conditioning, and moreover encourages them to mistakenly believe that they've done this lest they be forced to consider themselves a bad person. We have to accept that everyone in our shitty society is racist so that we can work together to make it less shitty. This means that, when organizing, we must allow for people to have racist thoughts and even say racist things without being immediately labelled 'a racist'. This isn't to suggest we should accept outright fascism, nor does it mean we should let people say racist things without educating them, but it does mean that we--and I mean white leftists here because we're the ones who should be educating white people--need to have a patience and, frankly, a humility that we often lack. To borrow from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dQjsil6vl8" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">I Like Killing Flies</a>, I think we need to realize that we--just like the rest of the working class--aren't perfect and that that's okay. 1. Monin, B., and D.T. Miller. 2001. Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 81:5-16 2. Monteith, M.J., and C. I. Voils. 1998. Proneness to prejudiced responses: Towards understanding the authenticity of self-reported discrepancies. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 75:901-16 3. Spencer, S. J., C. M. Steele, and D. M. Quinn. 1999. Stereotype threat and women's math performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 35:4-28

2017-10-07 02:59:48 +0000 UTC

and the guest constantly referring to white Americans as European Americans was awesome and amusing. Lovely. Bring that gent back, guys

2017-10-05 16:56:14 +0000 UTC

Nice concern troll. Literally one google search would yield results from Dr. Sandy Darity on this subject.

2017-10-05 14:07:47 +0000 UTC

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