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At Last Call, You Pay Your Tab
Sep. 25th, 2012 04:05 pmFrom "Fear of a Black President" in The Atlantic:
How did that never occur to me? How in all this time? That for all the whining about "we pay taxes to support them," which is only dubiously true (I can't count the number of "pulled myself up by my bootstraps with no help from anybody" stories which include not just a public education, but food stamps; and the number of times I've heard white people who were mothers on welfare talk disparagingly about "welfare mothers" makes it pretty clear "welfare mothers" is a code phrase), there was an unequivocally race-based reallocation of tax money for a century. That we are not just paying back slavery or colonialism or any of the other "god, that was two hundred years ago" stuff, but that this thing in living memory, segregation, was not just "separate is not equal" but was affirmative action and redistribution of non-white taxpayer money to white-people services?
How embarrassing not to have noticed this. In fairness, nobody pointed it out. But why in god's name did nobody point it out? Why did nobody say to conservatives: yes, I know this pisses you off, but we are repaying a literal and not metaphorical debt.
I can't help but think of all this as members of the Scott Brown campaign continue to hound Elizabeth Warren* because years ago on an application she said she might have some Native American heritage, hounding which I can't help but feel is less about Elizabeth Warren than about a blind certainty that race-based admissions and diversity-focused hiring are a con used by people who don't deserve it.
* I include this link specifically, because I think the form they chose to use (dancing around with tomahawks and war whoops; video at the link) for this most recent attack substantiates my feeling that this is not really about Warren. Although I suppose, in fairness, Republican campaigns have a history of thinking blackface falls into the category of "light ribbing" and "hijinks," so it is possible they mean nothing at all by it (she said with a completely straight face).
Edited to Add: Today is the anniversary of the Little Rock Nine attending their first full day of classes at Little Rock High School, escorted by the national guard. (That was 1957, 55 years ago. People in their 70s now would have been in high school then.) The following year, the voters of Little Rock opted to close all the high schools rather than integrate; everyone, black and white, instead took correspondence classes from home. We always remember that moment of them walking in, but it took another 15 years for Arkansas to integrate. It took until 1972.
The idea that blacks should hold no place of consequence in the American political future has affected every sector of American society, transforming whiteness itself into a monopoly on American possibilities. White people like Byrd and Buckley were raised in a time when, by law, they were assured of never having to compete with black people for the best of anything. Blacks used inÂferior public pools and inferior washrooms, attended inferior schools. The nicest restaurants turned them away. In large swaths of the country, blacks paid taxes but could neither attend the best universities nor exercise the right to vote. The best jobs, the richest neighborhoods, were giant set-asides for whites—universal affirmative action, with no pretense of restitution.
How did that never occur to me? How in all this time? That for all the whining about "we pay taxes to support them," which is only dubiously true (I can't count the number of "pulled myself up by my bootstraps with no help from anybody" stories which include not just a public education, but food stamps; and the number of times I've heard white people who were mothers on welfare talk disparagingly about "welfare mothers" makes it pretty clear "welfare mothers" is a code phrase), there was an unequivocally race-based reallocation of tax money for a century. That we are not just paying back slavery or colonialism or any of the other "god, that was two hundred years ago" stuff, but that this thing in living memory, segregation, was not just "separate is not equal" but was affirmative action and redistribution of non-white taxpayer money to white-people services?
How embarrassing not to have noticed this. In fairness, nobody pointed it out. But why in god's name did nobody point it out? Why did nobody say to conservatives: yes, I know this pisses you off, but we are repaying a literal and not metaphorical debt.
I can't help but think of all this as members of the Scott Brown campaign continue to hound Elizabeth Warren* because years ago on an application she said she might have some Native American heritage, hounding which I can't help but feel is less about Elizabeth Warren than about a blind certainty that race-based admissions and diversity-focused hiring are a con used by people who don't deserve it.
* I include this link specifically, because I think the form they chose to use (dancing around with tomahawks and war whoops; video at the link) for this most recent attack substantiates my feeling that this is not really about Warren. Although I suppose, in fairness, Republican campaigns have a history of thinking blackface falls into the category of "light ribbing" and "hijinks," so it is possible they mean nothing at all by it (she said with a completely straight face).
Edited to Add: Today is the anniversary of the Little Rock Nine attending their first full day of classes at Little Rock High School, escorted by the national guard. (That was 1957, 55 years ago. People in their 70s now would have been in high school then.) The following year, the voters of Little Rock opted to close all the high schools rather than integrate; everyone, black and white, instead took correspondence classes from home. We always remember that moment of them walking in, but it took another 15 years for Arkansas to integrate. It took until 1972.
