2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: OK, I'm a Bernie supporter, but Hillary had a fine moment yesterday when she [View all]daybranch
(1,309 posts)I think as a white man, that my best education about what is going on now comes from W.E.B. DuBois book" Black Reconstruction" coupled with Howard Zinn's " A People]s History of The United States". The detail of Du Bois book is unmatched and clearly points out how racism was a weapon the rich applied with greater vehemence after the civil war creating wage slavery amongst the newly freed slaves and poor whites.
I am sure many Black people are more aware of these works than I am, but I believe truly that racism , and sexism are tools necessary for politicians to keep working people from uniting regardless of color or sex. Du Bois book is so illustrative of how much lies, and claims of white superiority can appeal to the naturally poor egos of southern poor whites trapping them like blacks in needy service to their new rich masters, a collaboration of former slave owners and rich northern industrialists wanting to exploit resources of the south.
Zinn's book while not nearly as outrage provoking ( a good thing I believe in this case), provides a longer term view of how this need to separate the poorer classes have been a constant for protection of control and oligarchy from before the revolution until today. Clearly racism and sexism does not serve the society at large, But they are institutionalized and attempts to rid this country of their most blatant and harmful impacts are shut down by the oligarchy controlled Congress and Supreme Court, who err most repeatedly today on the side of the oligarchy of Big Business.
So we white people who remind Black people of who marched with Martin Luther King are trying tomsasy in shorthand we still see abuse and support change. We cannot feel the black pain but we can see it, and we can resist criticizing black voices across a spectrum even as we believe that desire for greater and greater economic inequality in order to feed the greed of the already wealthy and powerful is the basic culprit. We align with black in your local struggles to call attention to police brutality and will help bandaid a system to prevent as much death and destruction as possible. I recognize it is hard to think ahead when you are up to your ass in aligators, butI believe in poisoning the pond is more effective than fighting the alligators one by one.