The idea I want to explore in this piece is whether identity politics and racial justice should be downplayed in an effort to reduce partisanship in the bottom half of the income distribution and encourage a common goal of reducing income and wealth inequality.
By any measure, the US is growing increasingly inegalitarian. The bottom half (50%) of US wage earners has only 1.5% of the total wealth in the nation, while the top 10% has 70%. This disparity grew very large in the late 1800’s – the Gilded Age – and then peaked in the late 1920’s. The depression and two world wars reduced the chasm significantly and the years of high taxation in the 50’s through the 70’s kept inequality at a much lower level. The top 10% had about 35% of the wealth during this period.
But the Reagan tax cuts, the double-income multiplier (https://rvgeiger.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-double-income-family-amplifier.html) , and the hyper-capitalism of the 1990’s to the present time catapulted the top third of the population into dizzying heights of wealth, while the average worker saw his or her inflation-adjusted earning power stagnate. We are now at a stage of wage and wealth disparity that rivals South America, Africa and the Middle East.
The stagnation of wages, loss of industrial middle-class jobs, and resultant decay of many small towns and rural areas created a populist movement that allowed Donald Trump to attain the presidency. This populist movement was able to frame the problem of decreasing economic opportunity in terms of nationalistic, racist and xenophobic tropes. The average white blue-collar worker, formerly a solid union supporter in Democratic ranks, fled in desperation to Trump, who promised to revitalize American industry, stop immigration and defy political correctness.
Instead of building a coalition to demand better infrastructure, free education, free healthcare and a bigger share of the financial pie, low-wage workers split into multiple ‘identity’ groups – African Americans, white, Hispanic – and found themselves at odds with one another over issues such as policing/BLM, systemic racism, crime, drugs and immigration. People of color went one direction and the white groups another.
Somehow, white voters in the bottom half of the wage spectrum have bought into the idea that America needs to have a wealthy superclass to drive the economy and that all blame for their own plight rests on the shoulders of ill-defined elites who greedily offshored our industrial power, and the huddled mass of poor and immigrants who supposedly lap up endless entitlements, crippling our economy.
Meanwhile, people of color, fed up with their long history of persecution and lack of opportunity, promote the BLM movement, historical analysis of structural racism, police defunding and Critical Race Theory (CRT), which would all be worthwhile topics for public discourse if there were any chance of a reasonable conversation.
However, the right wing gleefully takes these hot button items, along with the religious right’s top three of abortion, homosexuality and transgender issues, and employs them in a highly cynical and hysterical fear campaign to paint a picture of a violent, immoral and dystopian future that alienates the white working class from its brethren of color.
If the US tackled its most basic problem – grotesquely unequal financial benefits and services for ALL lower income people – many of the other issues would probably be addressed as well. At a minimum this would mean establishing free, quality education up through vocational or college years, subsidized childcare, better transportation systems and universal healthcare. These would be paid for by increased taxes (income and wealth) on the top 10%.
These basic but dramatic changes in social services and infrastructure would remedy many of the legacies of systemic racism. They would restore health to urban communities and begin the process of reducing policing dysfunction. They would provide a basis for revitalizing small towns and rural communities. Immigrants would be more successfully integrated into society.
The deeper, more complex challenges of a post-industrial and global economy will have to be attacked as well to ensure that dignified, satisfying employment is available for all who are capable of working. This will have to be accomplished with some level of social engineering, which is of course anathema to the free-market zealots whose belief in the ‘invisible hand’ remains unshaken.
The achievement of such a comprehensive political victory and its associated socioeconomic programs would require a combined popular movement of all the working class as well as the progressive side of the middle and upper classes. There is no chance for such a movement as long as the working class is bitterly divided over ideological red herrings. Taking an idealistic stand on such issues as systemic racism, immigration and BLM would be a noble act in a saner and less partisan society, but that is not the society where we find ourselves today. Taking a longer view and finding common ground where all can stand arm in arm is more likely to produce the desperately needed changes.
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