The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II

[JCanete]

27. you obviously can't have economic justice without it itself including people of color. Anything that

Last edited Tue Sep 12, 2017, 11:02 PM - Edit history (1)

doesn't do so has hardly even achieved that single milestone.

the New Deal is what should be inspiration for how we go forward regarding the social works programs and the more aggressive tax on those with money to pay for dearly needed things for the commons. We should take from it the huge impact of social security in improving people's lives, the same kind of positive that we can aim for in implementing a single payer system.

This is the honest truth, I have no idea who the people are who are suggesting that we don't touch social issues as we push for economic justice. I do consistently see posts about why we can't promote one economics issue or another, "because Trump", and before that, "because the GOP." Few people are on Sanders jock more than TYT and they do far more coverage of police brutality against people of color than the corporate media does. It's such a sickeningly rampant condition that they nearly have a story daily. Sanders himself didn't mince words about whether or not Black Lives Matter. Nobody I know of wants to brush under the rug the issues of our prison state, which as bad as it is, is far worse and disproportionate in its charging and sentencing of people of color.

But in a society so blatantly unfair, you will have to explain to me how offering free education for all, a minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour, and medicare for all won't all benefit the people most commonly and systemically left out of the American dream. Doing some of these things takes away at least some of the debilitating stress the poverty and or economic instability has on people's health and mental capacity. It will give people back just a little bit so that they can turn that into more activism and civic involvement, to say nothing of more money and access to higher ed, both of which make them a group to be ignored by politicians at their own peril.

Of course economic justice can't account for everything, and it is the social roadblocks that will undeniably stand in the way of economic justice for all people, and we'll have to deal with those roadblocks every step of the way. But good luck getting there by pushing off the economic justice component. It will not happen. Those economic pressures on our dumbed down America will only intensify the power of the scapegoating. Going after the dumbed down public rather than the people who have helped to create that ignorance will only intensify that divide between us.

Connecting with those people by offering them something they dearly need that we ALL dearly need is not pandering or placating. It isn't abandoning a damn thing. It isn't subsuming our goals for social justice just to attract these independent and republican voters. It isn't sacrificing our own voters to try to find something that will get these people to vote in their own damn self-interest. It isn't getting them to vote against the best interests of people of color or immigrants or LGBQT or Muslims, etc. and in fact, the opposite.

AND...we take away their reasons to be afraid of people of color and immigrants, etc.. We give them a different boogie man that is making their lives shit. This goes hand in hand with who continues to spread racist rhetoric at the highest levels and why. Do that and they have far less investment in holding onto their prejudices, and may even start to see them as the arsenic they've been being fed for their whole lives. Hell no, their racism won't magically be gone. Hell yes, there are those who have made their hatred of others too much of their identity to abandon it.

But you can't tackle a person's dogmas and core beliefs if they believe they desperately need to hold onto them for their own safety. If they really believe that it is black people on welfare(yes, ridiculous) and immigrants(ridiculous) who are impacting the quality of their lives, telling them they are racists is pointless. They have wrapped themselves in this bullshit because it gives them a tangible problem, and thus, conceivable solutions to that problem, which are all varying degrees of monstrous.

What is the downside to not abandoning the economic justice angle? That's what I want to know.