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Neoliberals and Neocons: What’s the difference, and why should I care?

Too often in the world of social justice, we assume ours is the only movement at work. But there are always opposing movements, organizing and strategizing to advance right wing worldviews. When we don’t pay attention, we fail to see the power of these movements until it’s too late, in the “end-debates” of policy change when we’re in a defensive scramble.

In 1996 President Clinton enacted sweeping and punitive changes to welfare laws. In doing so, he fulfilled one of the core goals of the Contract With America. For those who don’t remember, that was the conservative agenda touted by … Read more “Neoliberals and Neocons: What’s the difference, and why should I care?”

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Not a Nation of Immigrants

It’s an often repeated mantra, that American is a “nation of immigrants.” Ever since the phrase was popularized by John F. Kennedy (who used it as the title of a New York Times editorial and a book), it has been used by those on the right and the left of the political spectrum, though with different goals in mind. On the left, the phrase is usually meant to subvert patriotism to the cause of immigrant rights. On the right, the notion is used to flatten out the rich textures of our diverse experiences of America, the wrinkles and creases … Read more “Not a Nation of Immigrants”

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Food Stamps Thanksgiving

I’ve gone on a rant about the short-sightedness of most criticism of programs like food stamps before. But, with Thanksgiving coming up it seemed to me appropriate to get back on my soap box.

About 45 million people in the U.S. receive food stamps. That’s about 14 percent of the American population. For 6 million Americans, food stamps is their only income. 55 percent of food stamp households include children. 14 percent include a disabled member. 9 percent include someone over the age of 60.  And if you don’t think this is a racial justice issue, a quarter of … Read more “Food Stamps Thanksgiving”

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The Obama Asian American Landslide

Last weekend on the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, Wade Henderson the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund said the following regarding the presidential election:

I found the interesting statistic to be the Asian American vote. Because the Asian American community doesn’t have the homogeneity, the cohesion that people have talked about. You’re talking about South Asian, Vietnamese and others. The fact that they gave 73% of their vote to the Obama presidency tells you that it really is about policies and not about demographics alone. They are … Read more “The Obama Asian American Landslide”

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Red, Blue, Slave, Free

The maps above (originally from PolitiComments.com) were cut and pasted into this post from the new Changelab report, Left or Right of the Colorline? Asian Americans and the Racial Justice Movement. The first one describes the Red-Blue electoral breakdown in 2004, and the second indicates in tan and red those territories that were once open to slavery. The chilling correspondence between these two maps used to feel like our unchangeable political destiny.

Forget the political parties. Both sides have had their day as the party of white supremacy. What we should remember is that whichever side racially sensitive whites … Read more “Red, Blue, Slave, Free”

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The Original Construction and Intent

According to Webster,  conservative can be defined as: tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions : traditional

I start with that definition because a few political colleagues have (gently) called me out for flipping back and forth between using the terms “conservative” and “right wing” to describe the faction of the right wing led by Republican, pro-corporate, anti-regulation, small government elites. They point to this faction’s participation in fomenting a backlash against civil rights laws and attacks on Roe v. Wade as indications that they’re radicals, not conservative; not “disposed to maintain[ing] existing views.”

I concede that … Read more “The Original Construction and Intent”

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Politics is a Battle for Position: More Thoughts on the Election

As relieved as I am about the outcome of the national elections, I can’t get the thought of how much we’ve lost in order to “win” out of out my mind. Something an old colleague of mine told me in the 1980s keeps popping into my head: politics is a battle for position.

What he meant by that, I think, is that political fights are won or lost based on how one is positioned vis a vis the public, and relative to one’s opponents. He told me that in order to help me wrap my then relatively inexperienced mind … Read more “Politics is a Battle for Position: More Thoughts on the Election”

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Thankgiving and the Conundrum of Cultural Racism

Every time I try to write about culture, I end up stuck with a lot of big words. For instance, the word conundrum. A conundrum is a problem for which the solution is a matter of conjecture. In other words, we can only guess at how to resolve a conundrum.

Our white supremacist culture is a conundrum. I’m not talking here about the culture of cross-burning and white sheet-wearing. I mean culture as in the collective racist beliefs of our society  reduced over generations to common sense.

Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines culture:

a : the integrated pattern of human … Read more “Thankgiving and the Conundrum of Cultural Racism”

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The Right, The Election, And What’s Next

A while back I wrote a post called “The Party of Lincoln.” In it, I said that the GOP,

[has] become the instrument of power of a right wing movement bent on resetting the social, political, and economic clock in America to a time when women were marginalized, the rich were beyond accountability, and overt racism and racial codes were business as usual…

The majority of the Republican activist base is made up of ideologically inflexible, overlapping rightist factions. They include the Tea Parties, the religious right, libertarians, white nationalists, anti-communist conspiracy theorists, and assorted more exotic white supremacists. That’s … Read more “The Right, The Election, And What’s Next”

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Race v. Class

One of the perennial debates among liberals is the one over which is the more powerful organizer of social and economic inequity – race or class. To those who believe that class is fundamental, racism may be important as a moral issue, but is only strategically significant because it gets in the way of working class unity across race.

Those folks, well-intentioned though they may be, are wrong. They’re wrong because they’ve bought into an interpretation of history that overlooks the structural dimensions of racism, and the roots of American capitalism in slavery and native genocide. Here’s what I mean.… Read more “Race v. Class”