Originally,
this was to be a commentary on the plight of the white
middle class, but that demographic no longer exists in
America.� So, let�s talk about the swindling of the white
working class.
And although it has all come to a head in the past few years,
it is a story that is years in the making.� If Stockholm
Syndrome relates to the feeling of empathy that kidnap
victims have with their captors, then certainly what we
are witnessing today is a Stockholm Syndrome of those
on the losing end of American capitalism.
To single out white working people is not to assume that
others are immune from identifying with those who would
exploit them financially - their own economic kidnappers,
if you will.� At the same time, it was white working folks
who made a deal with the devil a long time ago.� And now
they�ve been sent the invoice from that Faustian bargain.�
Allow me to explain.
American capitalism has promoted the mythology of the �American
Dream,� the notion that everyone has a chance to get rich.�
In pursuit of that dream, poor and working white Americans
chose their enemy years ago.� They made a conscious decision
to side with the �1 percenters� whose feet were firmly
placed on their neck, rather than with similarly situated
black and brown common folk.� They decided it was those
of a darker hue whose progress stood in the way of their
own movement up the ladder.
Generation after generation, they fought and died in wars,
someone else�s beef, designed to protect the interests
of the 1 percent.�
They opposed social programs that had any chance of helping
blacks, even if they stood to benefit from the programs
themselves.� And ultimately they failed to join forces
with workers of color to build a strong labor movement.�
As a result of that fatal decision, the jobs moved offshore
to where the labor costs were cheapest.� Chinese slave
laborers are now making our iPhones, iPads, X-Boxes and
other toys, and now even Chinese workers are becoming
too expensive.
The most impoverished European immigrant had neither a pot
nor a window to throw it out of.� But at least he or she
was not black, and thus could be considered a real American.�
Though poor whites had far more in common with their poor
black-, Latino-, Asian- and Native-American counterparts
than with some Wall Street banker or fat cat industrialist,
nonetheless they viewed racial minority groups and others
as the enemy.� That�s how scapegoats are created.�
So, the blame is not placed where it should, which is the
�ber-wealthy sucking the lifeblood out of democracy.�
Rather the problem is identified as affirmative action,
or welfare queens, or undocumented Mexican immigrants.�
Solutions to the nation�s woes are offered in the form
of mass incarceration and the death penalty.� Tighter
social controls are introduced in the form of bans on
Sharia law and Latino studies, voter ID, draconian anti-immigrant
legislation and prohibitions on same-sex marriage.�
Culture wars are the ultimate shell game, a cheap parlor
trick of smoke and mirrors to mask the wide scale corporate
theft taking place.� These cultural issues - which also
include gun proliferation and the war against a woman�s
reproductive rights, including contraception - will do
nothing to improve anyone�s station in life.� Yet these
time-tested culture wars are fought because someone is
betting that the common folk will take the bait.� And
usually, such is the case.
Meanwhile, the sanctimonious and self-righteous rightwing
among us, a morals police and Christian Taliban of sorts,
would distract us with fertilized egg personhood and mandatory
sonograms for women seeking an abortion.� But in the face
of injustice, like the white clergy in Martin Luther King�s
Letter from Birmingham Jail, they �have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent
behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.���
King called the contemporary
church �a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound.�
So often it is an archdefender of the status quo.� Far
from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the
power structure of the average community is consoled by
the church's silent - and often even vocal - sanction
of things as they are.�
So, those who obsess over the sex lives of private citizens
have said little about our national scourge of economic
inequality or the suffering of the poor - you know, the
stuff Jesus talked about.� Preoccupied as they are with
birth control bans and zygote rights, they were conspicuously
silent when the living among them suffered and the innocent
died.� Last year, when the state of Georgia killed Troy
Davis, an innocent black man, they said nothing.� And
they had remained silent seven years earlier, when the
state of Texas wrongfully executed Cameron Todd Willingham,
an innocent white man.
Yet, there is hope that for their own sake, people will not
fall for the shell game forever.� There is a chance that
citizens are waking up, resisting the Stockholm Syndrome,
and refusing to act against their economic self-interests.�
The spirit of the Occupy movement has liberated the public
discourse, an alternative to the neo-segregationist Tea
Party and its reliance on racial scapegoats.
David A. Love wrote this commentary as the Executive Director
of Witness to Innocence, a
national nonprofit organization that empowers exonerated
death row prisoners and their family members to become
effective leaders in the movement to abolish the death
penalty.
BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, David
A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate
based in Philadelphia, is a graduate of Harvard College and the University
of Pennsylvania Law School. and a contributor to The Huffington
Post, the Grio, The Progressive
Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service,
In These
Times and Philadelphia
Independent Media Center. He also blogs at davidalove.com, NewsOne, Daily Kos, and Open Salon. Click here to contact Mr. Love.
