I have been reading, writing, and thinking a lot lately and I have come to some clarity about American politics over the course of my lifetime. The anti-government tendencies on display for the last forty years are nothing but a backlash against the civil rights movement.
Nationally it began with Reagan’s “welfare queens” and his “government is the problem” message. Even Democrats had to get in on the action, like president Clinton declaring that “the age of big government is over.” It has been a mainstay of American politics to this day, especially on the right.
It didn’t used to be like that. After the depression and World War II, Americans liked government and thought it had a distinct role in improving people’s lives. The government helped you get a mortgage. The government paid for you to go to college. The government did all kinds of things–for white Americans. People of color were routinely cut out of such benefits. But when civil rights legislation of the 1960s insisted that black Americans be included, white sentiment toward government changed.
Government had betrayed white Americans. And they wanted to make sure that it never again had money to spend on people, since “people” now included black people. Even if it meant forgoing things that would improve their own lives.
This is why we have shit healthcare. It’s why we have a shit minimum wage. It’s why we have shit childcare, family leave, retirement, unemployment and the rest of it. Heather McGhee is absolutely right when she suggests that White Americans would rather fill in the public pools than swim with their black neighbors.
Rivers of ink have been spilled on efforts to understand why white Americans so often vote against their own interests. I now think the questioners were not completely understanding what white Americans interests were. They failed to account for the fact that white Americans very much wanted to preserve a social order with white people on top and people of color below. Government action usually meant a step toward social, economic and political equality–and they did not want that. Sure, a lot of poor white people would be worse off. But by god no lazy, undeserving black people were going to receive that benefit.
Yes, I know. White Americans do not typically say that this is what they are doing. Most of them do not even think of it in those terms. But I’m convinced that’s what it is.
And despite progress made, we are very much still standing in the shadow of the civil rights era. What is Donald Trump if not a white backlash against having a black family in the White House for eight years? What characterized his candidacy more than his open championing of that white-on-top social order? He began his political career by trying to delegitimize the first black president. He began his candidacy by calling Mexican immigrants rapists. His signature campaign slogan was building a wall between us and them. And when he wasn’t being an open misogynist he was viciously attacking his opponent, the first woman to stand a very good chance of winning the presidency.
So, all of American politics over the course of my adult life, all of it, comes down to this: white resistance to racial equality. Is it really that simple? I have come to the conclusion that it is.