The Republicans 'Southern Strategy' still works. Here's how liberals can counter it. [View all]

[applegrove]

The Republicans 'Southern Strategy' still works. Here's how liberals can counter it.

by Ian Reifowitz at Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/26/1301173/-The-Republicans-Southern-strategy-still-works-Here-s-how-liberals-can-counter-it

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The answer is simple; If Republicans benefit from dividing us by race and increasing white resentment, then we have to do whatever we can to build stronger and better relations across racial lines, in particular between whites and non-whites. How do we do this? There are two main categories of actions we take.

First, and most importantly, we emphasize the common economic interests of the overwhelming majority of people of every race. We emphasize that Republicans serve the interests of the 1 PERCENT, the economic elite, and that dividing us by race is how they distract us from seeing that. Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have long operated from the principle that racial resentment is the true opiate of the (white) masses, the delusion that keeps them in line, worried about dark-skinned "takers" while the elites pass laws designed to help them line their own pockets.

Second, we have to do what we can to help alleviate this white fear of being a minority, the fear that breeds the resentment and the conservatism. This is the part that might seem, at first, to be unnecessary or maybe even distasteful. After all, why shouldn't it be up to fearful whites to change their attitudes? First, it is up to them. Reducing fear and resentment requires action by all sides, not just one.

Second, let's remember that their fear is being ginned up by forces with a lot of money behind them, for a very specific reason. We can get on our moral high horse and cross our arms, or we can fight back by countering that fear with love, with American unity. That's how we win the battle, a battle whose prize is the ability to move our country's laws in a progressive direction, one that will bring about greater justice, prosperity and equality for all, of every race.



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