The End of Racism

One of the revisionist tales told by New Model Conservatives is that racism no longer exists in the U.S.. It goes something like this: Once upon a time a long, long ago time there were troubles with racism. No one knows how it got started, although it might have had something to do with slavery. But one day the Good Hearted American People awakened to the fact that non-white people were not being treated equally, even after Lincoln freed the slaves. Then sometime back in the 60s, virtually overnight, the People put an end to this bad behavior in American Society.

In this mendacious, soft-focus, self-congratulatory version of history, the real work of fixing the unfairness was accomplished in large part by the Good Hearted People who were actually always against racism and were always going to get around to stopping it. In this self-forgiving fairy tale, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks are mentioned as minor heroes whose contributions are limited to King making a speech about Freedom, and Parks being too tired to move to the back of a bus. The prodding from King and Parks merely moved things along a tad faster, that's all. It was mostly the Good Hearted American People who made sure non-white persons got their voting rights and ended segregation, because the People knew then and still know now that all people are supposed to be Free and Equal in America, even if they are not white.

What's particularly remarkable about this revisionist history is that by "ending" racism in America sometime in the 60s, the New Model Conservative could then put a stopwatch on the progress of of non-whites and immediately find them wanting. In their estimation, since people of color have had Equality for two generations then these non-whites have had more than enough time to pull themselves up by their bootstratps and become white and middle class. Since for the New Model Conservative moral character is almost entirely bound to economic deserts, poor non-whites now have no one to blame but themselves for their inability to achieve the American Dream. That most have not is taken as evidence their intransigence, their lack of discipline, their lack of moral character. For those who pay attention to such things, these descriptions of non-whites sound suspicously like the descriptions of non-whites from the olden times before racism ended.

I'm reading TULIA: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town. What's remarkable is the extent to which racism, often expressed in economic terms, lies just below the surface in everyday assumptions the town's whites make about the non-whites. For instance, the head of the Tulia Chamber of Commerce, Lena Barnett, speaking resentfully about county tax money being spent on court appointed attorneys for 35 African Americans accused of dealing drugs, said "If you can't afford insurance, then you don't go to the doctor... If you can't afford to hire a lawyer, then you go without" (page 183).

Blakeslee points out that while white Tulians resent their tax money being spent to defend the legal rights of blacks or on poverty programs used by African Americans, they conveniently forget the welfare programs in place mainly for white farm owners.

The total tax dollars invested in poverty programs in Swisher County, controversial thought it may be, is dwarfed by the subsidies the county receives through the various federal farm programs. In 1990, farm subsidies totaled $28.7 million for Swisher County. Much of that money subsidized cotton and wheat grown for the export market, where U.S. farmers would otherwise be unable to compete with low cost operations in Latin American and Asia. The farms that keep the county alive would likely be gone in a generation if the government checks ever stopped arriving, which means that almost everybody in Swisher County, regardless of race, relies on a handout of some kind, either directly or indirectly. Most American taxpayers are unaware of the extent of such programs; if they were it would be a hard pill to swallow. Indeed, critics of farm programs have observed that in some counties (including many in the panhandle), the government could simply buy out most of the farms in the county--land, buildings, and equipment--for roughly what it will spend on subsidies over a ten- to fifteen-year period. (page 188)

How unsurprising is it that the Good Hearted American People seem to be blind to the mostly hidden machinery that puts bread on their tables, and to be resentful of the few crumbs, scraps and sops that fall elsewhere.