Younger People Are Fundamentally Less Concerned with Race, Putting the Republicans on the Defensive

[Jefferson23]

Why conservatives are shuddering with apocalyptic anxiety about generational trends.


June 11, 2010 |

I spent Memorial Day in New Orleans, where I watched a group of citizens lay a wreath at the foot of a statue of Jefferson Davis. It was a jarring reminder of how the South understands American history. Memorial Day was founded after the Civil War to honor Union soldiers. When Southerners choose to memorialize Confederate leaders, it is an act of subversive historical revision and an indication of the unresolved political and cultural anxieties that stir just below the surface of the "New South."

The white New Orleanians paying their respects to Davis made me nervous. Few things disgusted Confederates more than property-owning women, free blacks and evidence of miscegenation. I am all of these, so I feel the very legitimacy of my citizenship is challenged by their nostalgia. But I noticed that those gathered at the monument appeared to be mostly senior citizens. In contrast, young New Orleanians were hanging out in integrated groups in the park, listening to music, drinking beer and worrying about how the impending hurricane season would affect the BP oil disaster.

The generational divide in how these Southerners spent Memorial Day was jarring and instructive. In May, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill cutting state funding to schools that offer classes "designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group" or "advocating ethnic solidarity." The law aims to ban ethnic studies curriculums and implies that classes in African-American history or Latino literature are dangerous and discriminatory. Then the Texas State Board of Education voted to introduce a considerably more conservative slant to the social studies curriculum. In the revised Texas version of history, there is an increased emphasis on Phyllis Schlafly, segregationist George Wallace and the National Rifle Association, while the United Nations is presented as an enemy of American sovereignty and the separation of church and state is reduced to an ideological suggestion rather than a constitutional mandate.

The celebration of Confederate traitors as American heroes, the whitewash of school curriculums and the conservative reinterpretation of national history are weapons in America's decades-long culture war. These policies reflect an impulse similar to the Cultural Revolution of Communist China: an attempt to gain authority by controlling the very definitions of truth available to young people. After all, it is among young Americans that conservatives are losing this war, and if they are serious about taking back their country, the education of American youth is the critical terrain where they plan to make a stand.


in full: http://www.alternet.org/news/147171/younger_people_are_fundamentally_less_concerned_with_race%2C_putting_the_republicans_on_the_defensive/?page=entire

[The Magistrate]

1. Indeed, Sir: The Republican Party is Nothing More Than a Collection Of Bigots, Open And Otherwise

This has been quite clear since the transitional days of 1964 to 1968.

Votes cast for Republican candidates are simply expressions of allegiance to the ideals of white supremacy.

[Raschel]

2. I've been commenting on this regarding the teabaggers. There's a reason they're mostly older.

The people who respond to the tbagger and Paling dog whistles are bigots.

[Fuzz]

3. I've seen in here in my area of NJ. Can't speak of anywhere else though.

[TlalocW]

4. This essay makes several connection points

With another one I read earlier this year. The gist of that was the continued progressive march of the United States allows the republican party to survive. An example: no one in their "right mind" or "politically-right mind" would denounce women's suffrage. To the majority of Americans (and remember they're not as politically interested in things as we and our conservative counterparts are), it's almost beyond belief that women couldn't vote until the 1920s, and it would be absurd to say that we need to return to it. Another example given was Galileo's insistence that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way. Anyone promoting that idea now would be labeled nuts by most people. Yet the people fighting against women's suffrage, Galileo, and any number of further advances to humanity were conservatives. The inconceivability of people holding those opinions is what allows republicans to still be viable today because those people in the past might as well be aliens in most people's minds, not part of a long line of people who have always been with us trying to slow us down or send us into reverse.

Taking the gist of that article, I can understand why the right is, "shuddering with apocalyptic anxiety about generational trends." Like people who believe women don't deserve the same rights and benefits that men have, we'll always have racism, homophobia, etc., but it's getting to the point that the GOP will not be able to effectively use those traits to get themselves elected. Conservatives from the time this country began have run on things like not rebelling against the British, against abolishing slavery, against giving women rights, against civil rights for minorities, and against integration. They have lost out on issue after issue, and now they're not going to even be able to appeal to negative base instincts anymore. Their last hope of staying in power is homophobia, but like all the other issues before it, that one is showing signs of eroding.

What negative emotional issue will they have to run on in the future? Homophobia hasn't fully run its course yet, but it will, and I don't see anything on the horizon that can take its place - not even religious bigotry (though it will be tried).

TlalocW

[gratuitous]

5. I think there's another dimension, too

Whatever the system currently in place, it has its winners and losers. There are always be those winners who want to preserve their perceived advantage. Some men saw denying the vote to women as a threat in some way to how they had gotten to where they were. The same can be said for just about any other change you can name.

The percentage of winners in any society is small, and it has to be. What's the point of creating exclusive clubs and keeping track of money if you can't lord it over someone else? So, the winners need allies, people they can persuade that they're winners, too. Or who might be winners themselves someday. And then convince them to merge their own interest with the winners. When winners are wheeling and dealing their stocks, buying low early on and selling high to some sucker, they want to keep as much of what they "earned" as they can. But selling "I'm a greedy motherfucker, give me more" doesn't really resonate with the hoi polloi. Instead, sell it as capital gains taxes are too high! While the suckers are thinking about getting an extra five bucks when they sell their 18 shares of Widgets, Inc., the winners are counting their additional gains in the millions. But they couldn't have done it without the suckers adding their voice. Meanwhile, lower tax revenues means cutting school days or teachers, or leaving potholes unattended, or antiquated sewer systems working poorly for another decade.

Some of the old causes have run their course. New ones will come along for the winners to try to preserve. I think we're getting closer in some ways to the very fundamental disparities and cost externalizations of our economic system that screw over so many while greatly enriching a very few. I'm not sure how it will turn out, but a lot more people seem tuned into the privatization of wealth and the socialization of risk that winners depend on, for just one example. Right now, a lot of people feel powerless to do anything about it. There are some people - even on this board - who try to tell the losers that some things are just the way they are. Don't try to mess with the system because it could cost a lot of people who are just hanging on, scraping by, barely making it, to slip off the bottom rung of the ladder of success, so let's not anger the overlords or try to hurt them in any way. The arguments are dressed up in a variety of ways because "I'm a greedy motherfucker, give me more" just doesn't sell.

[Dawson Leery]

6. K/R

That is the plan alright!