Since the economic collapse in 2008 and the rise of the Obama candidacy, and then presidency, our nation has seen a significant increase in race baiting. This repugnance came to the forefront this week when Andrew Breitbart released a deceptively edited video purporting to show an African-American department of agriculture employee boasting to the NAACP about withholding services from a white farmer. Shirley Sherrod, the DoAg employee, was condemned by the NAACP, and forced to resign, by Sec. Vilsack, before her entire speech was reviewed. Upon review Sherrod’s speech showed that she had not withheld services and had, in fact, overcome personnel prejudices to go beyond her normal duties to help the white farmer save his property from foreclosure.
Breitbart’s heavily edited video was published with the title “Video Proof: The NAACP Awards Racism” in response to the NAACP’s call the previous week for Tea Party groups to repudiate racist elements in their midst. Breitbart’s “story” was then picked up by conservative and then mainstream media outlets (lead by Fox news), many of whom highlighted Sherrod’s racism and the double standards of the NAACP. In general, conservative groups and the media were all too willing to accept Breitbart’s narrative of Black on Whilte discrimination. It was a narrative, after all, that they had been propagating for the past year with hyperbolic stories about ACORN, Van Jones, the New Black Panther Party, et. al. All of these stories carried the subtext that African Americans are asserting control and gaming the system for their advantage at the expense of whites. This attitude not uncommon in writings of Tea Party supporters as well, who often claim they are not racist, but go on to suggest that African Americans are receiving government services and special treatment unavailable to whites, and that these ‘perks’ contribute to America’s economic ills and the size of its government. Of course, the majority conservatives and tea party activists carry no racial animus; however, they do seem to be particularly susceptible to arguments which strike a cord of racial division. This may simply be part of the nature of being a conservative which, as William F Buckley said, is “..someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop…”
As Rachael Maddow Pointed out this week, the ginning up of racial animus in order garner white votes is nothing new, and has been common in the Republican party since Richard Nixon employed the Southern Strategy in the late 1960’s. What Maddow, and many other commentators, fail to see or acknowledge is how this constant hyping of racial issues overlies our current economic problems. In the early days of the economic meltdown in 2008 several conservative commentators tried to blame minority lending for the collapse of the housing and credit markets. Shortly after President Obama’s inauguration many of these same commentators, followed by the Tea Party groups, began to rail against “redistribution of wealth”, “socialism,” and “communism” — though very few seem to have any idea of what these concepts entail. The cry against redistribution is a cry against the movement of services or capital from the wealthy to the poor. For many Americans, this suggests a movement of capital from white to black or hispanic Americans. The anti-redistribution crowd often site taxes as their real concern. But this is a ridiculous argument, as a glance at the historic tax rates show:
Top Marginal Tax Rates
| Year(s) | Tax Rate | Year(s) | Tax Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1950-51 | 91% | 1971-80 | 70% |
| 1952-53 | 92% | 1981 | 69.13% |
| 1954-63 | 91% | 1982-86 | 50% |
| 1964 | 77% | 1987 | 35.8% |
| 1965-67 | 70% | 1988-89 | 28% |
| 1968 | 75.25% | 1990-92 | 31% |
| 1969 | 77% | 1993-2000 | 39.6% |
| 1970 | 71.75% | 2003-09 | 35% |
As we can see the top marginal tax rates are presently near the lowest levels they have been at in the last 60 years. In fact arguments about redistribution and taxes are often diversions to obscure more fundamental economic problems: the loss of manufacturing and the climbing trade deficit, for instance, due to neo-liberal free-trade policies. Or the widening gap in our nation between rich and poor and the loss of the middle class. Race baiting allows these issues to be obscured in favor of a narrative that pits groups, often suffering the same economic hardships, against one another. This type of division almost always suits the status quo except, of course, is when the smoldering resentment, driven by the media, turns into a violent blaze, and people’s lives become endangered.
Many bloggers and commentators have pointed to the Sherrod incident as an example of the duplicity of Andrew Breitbart. While Breitbart’s manipulation of the facts to generate racial animus is contemptuous, it is not nearly as appalling as the media’s rush to repeat his narrative. Breitbart can be excused for simply being what he is — a partisan huckster selling any trope which brings him attention and his cause to power. Many in the mainstream media (CNN, CBS, FOX, and MSNBC), however, were all too happy to repeat the story without investigation. This alone shouldn’t come as a major surprise. The media, overall, has done an abysmal job at covering some of the most important stories of the past decade (ie. the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afganistan, the fianancial crisis and melltdown, healtcare and financial reform, etc). Again, the Sherrod story fit a particular narrative that the media was eager to exploit — one which divided Americans at a time of shared suffering, and helped maintain the status quo.
