Who’s An Elite Exploiter? It Ain’t You, Babe.
Contrary to one line of liberal doxology, it is not the case that we have only ourselves to blame for the economic ruin of the poor, working poor, and middle-classes. A little history shows the Truth and the Way.
1.The economic ruin of the lower 98% of the US is the direct result of specific public policies. For one and only one example, NAFTA was proposed by Bill Clinton and enacted by the 1992 Congress, and it did facilitate (but did not begin) the flight of capital and manufacturing jobs out of the US. The trend of capital flight began in resource extraction shortly after World War II. You might recall an early 1960's Bob Dylan lyric: “It’s much cheaper down in the South American towns, where the miners work almost for nothing.” That is accurate.
The Rust Belt began de-industrializing in the early 1960’s, even as it appeared to be expanding. Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, St. Louis. Why? Moving jobs west. Moving jobs to other countries. Automation. Decline of US steel, copper, and coal, fewer jobs in those fields due to automation, outsourcing to cheaper sources. Moving jobs to the southeast, much cheaper labor because less unionization.
But remember please that the war between labor — that’s blue collar workers, like coal miners, farmers, cowboys –and capital has been going on in the US since Euro’s got here. The rise and demise of unions– is US history. In this country, capital kills workers, be they men, women, children. Did you ever read about the sugar strike at Crockett, California? And you know about Harry Bridges and the Longshoremen’s strikes. Did you know about the 1946 Oakland general strike?
Other policies and events leading directly to the demise of the working class: the Nixon Southern Strategy. The Powell Memorandum, the Citizens United decision. Loss of resources to extract. Overpopulation. Looking at a subset of Americans born generally between 1945 and 1955, here is what we did about the inequities: We went into VISTA, volunteers in service to America. We taught at Head Start. We went into the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements, the Women’s Movement, the environmental movement. We read and learned things that contradicted the history taught us in mainstream public schools. We read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. We mingled freely with blue collar boys and girls at rock concerts, in the streets. Some of us listened to Country western music, an outgrowth of white mountain music and gospel. You didn’t have to be an evangelical to love the music of the Carter Family, the Blue Sky Boys, the Watson Family. We worked in clinics, taught in rural schools, learned and listened. We went into law and filed suit on behalf of people with black lung and brown lung disease, people exposed to asbestos, lead — working people. We went into epidemiology, journalism, research. Maybe some of us did not do these things. If you didn’t, there’s no time like the present.
2. It is not the case that racism is a product of ignorance. Racism is a worldwide phenomenon. Aristotle wrote that Greeks were naturally free but Barbarians were more suited for slavery. Racism, ethnocentrism — today, the Buddhist Bhutanese practice racism against Nepalis. Racism in the US is an outgrowth of the social and financial benefits of seeing white people as superior to all others, of scientific racism, of pre-civil rights era social and economic structures. You would not call Thomas Jefferson ignorant, but you would call him a racist. Ditto General Robert E. Lee. Ditto a huge number of white southern and northern academics, jurors, and scientists. They refused to think outside their boxes but they were not ignorant. The white racism of today has its uses to its believers. One way to change it is to employ the dominant and subdominant males of racist families in facilities that separate them from their clans, surround them with people of other colors, and strictly enforce tolerance.
3. Several times in US history, there have been alliances among poor people of different races/cultures. Some of those alliances have achieved, others have not. You might remember that Jimmy Hoffa integrated the Teamsters. You might have heard of the Green Corn Rebellion. Maybe you remember the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the achievements — the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was poor people, black and white, and middle class people, mostly white, students, teachers, elders — who made these alliances.
4. What can be done now to create the better world we want, restore those alliances with poor white people: see number 3 above. And what else: start kicking that question around. That is a fundamental necessity.
