Someone explain to me why the only group not accused of identity politics are, cis-gendered white males?
The male, so-called, white working class gets to criticize women’s sexual reproductive rights groups, Black Lives Matter, DACA, LGBTQ and other civil rights consortiums under the banner of economic anxiety. When challenged, they feign outrage, belittle the backlash, point a finger and yell, “IDENTITY POLITICS!”
From yelling commies in the 50’s, agitators in the 60’s, pinkos in the 70’s, bleeding hearts in the 80’s, race card players in the 90’s and now amnesty lovers, labels have always worked for the identity-less. Yes, that is a made-up word, and so is this notion that privilege in America is not being played out as a separate distinctiveness. With a group willing to embrace, egoism, racism, sexism and just plain, ‘I hate you-ism’ as a cause, the slow grind of pulverized decency from Reagan to Trump was predictable. The media has played its role in this farce as well. For reasons that are far too numerous to name here, corporatism being at the top of the list, we have accepted the depiction of false grievance as normal. Trump descended a golden escalator to denounce people of color and Reagan embraced the town[ Philadelphia, Mississippi] responsible for one of the most notorious racial hate crimes in American history.
If you believe this is an accident and not a strategy, think again…
I am developing a permanent grimace from being subjected to stories about the poor, economically anxiety riddled, downtrodden white man. In an article penned by Laura Shin, 2015 for Forbes she reported that the average wealth of a white-households is 16 times greater than that of black-households; Be still my bleeding heart for the white working-class guy. Yet the politics of grievance has so permeated the conservative culture that voting against their own self-interest is a badge of honor. At the beginning of former President Barack Obama’s second term, Republican states took more out of government coffers than Democratic states, “Republican states, on average, received $1.46 in federal spending for every tax dollar paid; Democratic states, on average, received $1.16.”(Dave Gilson, 2012) Mother Jones.
Included in these states are two of the poorest states in the Union, West Virginia and Mississippi both predominantly white. If you manufacture the weapons of your own demise do not complain when your neighbor shoots you. So, Southern states, midwestern bastions of conservatism, and pockets of the rust belt have now thrown their fortunes in with an alleged rich New Yorker (remember when Republicans labeled them useless elitist) and are waiting for their runoff share of the daily grift. Can you say “Trickle Down?”
The Trump family is now paying their legal bills with money raised by the RNC and its campaign donors. They have charged exorbitant rent for protection by the Secret Service for protecting two private properties of the Trump empire, Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower, that exceeded their budget.
The next time your drive by a Latino in a hard hat, a Black Man with a lunch pail, a pregnant woman with a bus transfer in hand or an immigrant student struggling to board a subway car, loaded down with books, slow down a bit, some of that economic anxiety may lessen.
