If there is anything true about the epithet 'sell-out' it is that it doesn't take much financial renumeration to pull former comrades heads out of the collective ass of the collective. I prefer the term 'pinche vendida', which is most appropriate to the drama of the petit bourgiosie.
There is a principle fallacy that I believe most Westerners adhere to and I am investigating it because of its many corruptions. Interestingly, it comes from a gut instinct I learned as a black nationalist in distrusting white liberals. The fallacy is that the middle class via political activism can make the poor into middle class. It ain't true, or at least it cannot be done without the sort of transfer of wealth on the pain of riots or similar legal fiat that I find reprehensible. At least some radicals have the honesty to say thier intent is to afflict the comfortable, another euphemism for "(fuc | soa)+k the rich". Understand that I find such honesty and aim to be an honorable calling, but make no mistake, I'm not on that side.
With this in mind one must qualify any political program whose honest goal is 'upward mobility' for the masses (read 'deserving poor'). For the socialist program there is that interesting matter of race, and this is where the histogram above comes into play. Notice the particularly long tail of the households doing more than $75k. This is something I believe to be uniquely American, but I'm open to dispute about that. Still the real meat of this graph is the purple part with the 60% of American households doing less than 57K in 2005 dollars. I boldly assert (and here's where you can dispute me again if you care to) that this is where the Left is focused and sniffing up the ass of that Left, the mainstream anti-racists of America. The reason is because it is in this realm that racism has its greatest effect on the fortunes of Americans.
As anyone with a racial agenda will quote you, there is a well-known economic statistic about the fortunes of the white high school grad vs the black collegian with two years of undergraduate studies under their belt. I would be happy to remind you that people with such educational prospects, by and large don't often get past the 60%. I would think it amply fair to say that those people are about average. So when, on average, the white dude with highschool and the black dude with college are compared and this is given as proof of how racist America is, you are likely to get a shrug from me. Why? Because that level of achievement is not something I find particularly inspiring. But let us give the Leftists their due. In fact let us stipulate that this is the core of economic racism in the United States.
Those of you familiar with the film Brazil and Orwell in general should understand quite well how much energy has been spent spelling out the effect of dystopic authoritarianism on the fate of the common man. It is of course reasonable that the Left and Right focus on that meaty part of the histogram in the context of democratic politics. So how much social mobility does the entire program of the socialist program get to the meat of the American public? I'm going to be hugely generous, and say 25% And I'll tell you why I'll say 25% - because it's outrageous to think the American public wouldn't vote themselves a 25% raise if they could, or that socialists would smack down the capitalists among us to foot the bill if they could. While I'm at it, let's take a look at what credit the Left gives itself. If you pile those 150 things on top of each other do they add up to a 25% raise? Go ahead and add them up - it's really a great list.
But I bet you that if you ask a black partisan how much of that benefit goes to their constituents they will still come back with a demand for the same half dozen things. Better education. Better jobs. Better healthcare. Better housing. Better policing. Better political representation. And they will tell you the bottom line is that right in the meat of that demographic a 25% raise would deliver all of that. Take a poll yourself. Ask a householder at 57K how much of that big list he'd give up for a $14,000 raise.
So what good does all the anti-racist agitation of the Left do their constituents? Very small marginal amounts that can only be measured in pyschic dimensions, which is about all the comfort I think they can give, because any marginal benefit to a middle aged householder in the meat(grinder) of the American economic demographic is good patronage. So if someone can be convinced that racism cost them a $2000 raise, well that's catastrophic economic structural racism - not really but you certainly have the attention of somebody in the the 57K demographic.
How racist is the American Left? It doesn't matter because it's all relative. Like the hunter who doesn't have to outrun the bear, the American Left only has to be less racist than the American Right, by whatever measure because in the middle it's a game of inches. One notch over on the histogram is world historic for the man in the middle, and it is quite simple to show the operation of simple bigotry as monumental to the man of modest means. Black kids locked out of a country club swimming pool in suburban Philadelphia? Huge for the man in the middle. Monstrous for the poor. Asset forfeiture for stop & frisk in a single corrupt police force. Tragic for the man in the middle. Obscene for the poor.
It doesn't matter whether the Left or socialists stop this bullcrap. It matters that they draw attention of their potential constituencies to these pint-sized atrocities. It matters that they will attempt to work on behalf of the poor who may not actually be beset by these problems, and that they will proclaim loudly that a $500 beef is RACIST!!!
It has been a long time since I've been interested in anti-racist activism, and I have despaired of any hope. I recognize that the rhetorical patronage delivered by race hustlers is all that gets delivered. And I also understand what they fear the most, which is that by and large Americans in the middle won't give a damn about race. But it doesn't take much racism at all to keep them in the victimology business.
Kinda makes me yearn for the days of black power.
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