I am so damn mad this morning

[jwirr]

28. Racism. That is the problem. What to do with it is another. We were close to some of the answers

in the 60s or we thought we were. We made some laws, stopped some of the blatant name calling, integrated some people of color into the mainstream, made some things accessible. There seemed to be hope that this would continue.

So what happened? I think the first thing that happened was the election of Reagan. He stepped up to defend racism in order to win the south. He went to Germany and visited the gravesite of one of Hitler's key advisers. He sent all the right dog whistles to set the progress on racism back decades.

It was also at this time that the Rs started dismantling both the New Deal and LBJ's war on poverty. They used propaganda to insist that the "users and takers" were the black people and though that was not true the white population wanted to believe that. The hatred was allowed to resurface in order to achieve political goals. And is still the main means of getting rid of social programs. Every goal the Rs have seems to have something to do with hating people of color. But I think that is just the lies used to achieve their goals not the actual intent of the Rs. The hatred that has led to such horrible violence is a side effect of their political tools.

Now the teabaggers are a different matter. They are the haters and that is their goal. They think they are fighting to preserve the white culture and in that they have allied with the white supremacist groups that have always been with us keeping the hate simmering underneath the 60s change. This group is dangerous in that they put racism and hatred into action. They are politically strong enough to field candidates who will follow their dictates. Just look at the list of candidates in the R party. Back in the 60s we recognized they were there but we had hoped that eventually they would die out. Unfortunately racism and hatred are learned behaviors.

And another nail in the coffin of the attempt to end racism and hatred is the churches. In the 60s many mainstream churches (at least in the north - don't know about the south) supported the civil rights movement even if it was in a more or less passive way. With the propaganda of the 80s many of these churches turned totally around and became the teachers of hate (see the TV preachers of the time). The spread their hate message as actual biblical truth. And unfortunately the MSM churches who do not agree with them remain silent thus allowing their own members to agree with what ever they want to agree with. Lack of leadership in churches on this issue is the main problem. I applaud Pope Francis for finally standing up.

There are many more institutional changes that helped to bring us to this point. But the thing we need to know is how to turn these haters around.

One thing that we saw in 2008 that could continue to bring the fight back into focus is the election of a black president. Yes his election brought the rats out of hiding but something else happened in that election - people of color voted. And that is the beginning of the end of hate politics.

And this is a perfect time for Christians to approach their church bodies and insist that they stand up for the true message of Christ - love. It can no longer set by and allow the kind of police violence against black men and children like we are seeing now. It can no longer set around and ignore either social or economic justice like we are seeing now. It can no longer set by and watch hate become the message of the church. If it does then it will lose its members because its message is totally useless.

We can also work like DU had done to end the reign of hate mongers on tv and radio. Glenn Beck is not longer mainstream, Limbaugh is finally losing his clout. We need to keep working to end this but unfortunately we are not winning in this fight. We have lost a lot of our progressive sources of information in the last years and this has got to stop. I am not sure what can be done but something has to be done.

IMO these are the some of the things that support racism and hatred and if we do not talk about them we are not going to be able to even control the situation let alone stop it.