Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity

The Economist has a great review (behind a paywall) of a new upcoming book entitled "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity" which looks at the systemic racism in American Christianity, especially among Southern Baptists and white evangelicals. The book bears out my view that the rise of racism within the Republican Party directly correlates to the rise of evangelicals and "conservative Christians" within the party base.   A piece at CNN also looks at the book to be released next month and has an overview which many white Christians - especially those in the South - will find uncomfortable to face even though the author uses numerous surveys and studies to document the book's damning conclusions.  Here are excerpts from CNN (sadly, those who most need to read the book will likely not do so):

Growing up in the South, Robert P. Jones attended Southern Baptist churches, Sunday schools, even a Southern Baptist college.

But it was only in seminary, in his mid-20s, that Jones says he learned the full truth about Southern Baptists' white supremacist roots. The denomination was founded to defend slavery and did not formally rebuke its past until 1995, when Southern Baptists voted to apologize for their history of racism.

"White Christian churches have not just been complacent; they have not only been complicit," he writes in his book, "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," publishing next month.  "Rather, as the dominant cultural power in America, they have been responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect White supremacy and resist Black equality," he writes. "This project has framed the entire American story."

In the book Jones, CEO and founder of Public Religion Research Institute, blends church history, memoir and contemporary public opinion surveys. Together, they make a clear and compelling case for why White American Christians need to reckon with their past.
 But American Christianity's past is only part of the problem. In survey after survey, said Jones, contemporary white Christians repeatedly deny that structural racism is a problem, that shootings of unarmed Blacks are not isolated incidents, or even that African Americans still face racism and discrimination.
 One of the challenges, historically, has been that the Christian theology developed in White churches intentionally blinds White Christians to racial injustice. White Christians are nearly twice as likely as non-religious Americans to say police shootings of unarmed black men are isolated incidents. That is a moral and theological problem. As long as White supremacy has a hold on our culture, it's pretty comfortable for White Christian churches to say their theology is about personal salvation and personal lives. Theology has been constricted to be only about personal piety, disconnected from claims of social justice. Everything outside of salvation has been labeled "politics."

It's a self-protective move. If you read sermons in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s you would have no idea that there was a Civil Rights movement. It was a lulling of white consciences to sleep.
 I see the last four years as a moment of reckoning for White Christians. The election of President Trump, who has put White supremacy front and center, has brought these issues from just barely below the surface into plain view. Charlottesville changed things. Charleston changed things. Dylan Roof was a confirmed Lutheran, who, in his journal while imprisoned has been drawing crosses and white Jesus and is completely unrepentant. White Christians have inherited a worldview that has Christians on top of other religions, men over women, Whites over Blacks. There is a top-down authoritarian structure to it. 

Donald Trump Has Been a Mirror, Held Up to Us Americans

Several friends posted about an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer  by a former career member of the U.S. military who comes from a military family.  At first glance given its headline the piece is upsetting since it appears to be a thank you to Donald Trump.  However, reading the column,  the piece is in reality a condemnation of Trump and those who created the pathway for his election.  Put simply, Trump embodies what is wrong with America and has made the nation's shortcomings painfully obvious to anyone not living under a rock or who is not a white supremacist and/or evangelical extremist.  Thus, the piece thanks Trump for making it clear what needs to be done to undo the stain he and principally the Republican Party have done to harm so many Americans and to usher in a national decline.  Between the GOP efforts to bring about a new Gilded Age and and its and Trump's attacks on science and objective facts, America faces not only racial strife but also a class struggle against the greed driven very wealthy.  Here are column highlights:

Of my 57 years drawing breath, I’ve spent 51 of them directly or indirectly serving this once great nation. So, as you might imagine, I found myself on Nov. 8, 2016, more than a little dismayed at the news we had elevated Donald J. Trump to the nation’s highest office — a man so clearly unfit to lead America.

But over time I’ve come to appreciate Trump in ways I did not expect. Now, I am thankful that we elected Trump. Because Donald Trump is exactly what America needed. Trump is a mirror, a warning, and ultimately a catalyst for change. Reflected in Trump is all that is wrong with the United States: the injustice of our broken social contract, the crassness of our politics, and the cruelty of our economy. Trump is also the shock that a mature democracy needs for action. To use a timely metaphor, Trump and his supporters are a virus, and they have activated our democratic antibodies. What we are seeing in the streets is the body fighting the infection.

What we are seeing in our current moment is not only a race war but a class war. America must confront systemic racism to move forward, but it also must acknowledge that we have created a permanent underclass of all colors (though mostly Black and brown). We are a society where your melanin content and your zip code determine your future.

Beginning with Newt Gingrich in 1994, Republicans stopped trying to govern and instead began accumulating power. McKay Coppins writes in his profile of Gingrich in the Atlantic, “… few figures in modern history have done more than Gingrich to lay the groundwork for Trump’s rise.” Effective governance requires compromise, trust, and mutual respect. Gingrich’s new version of Republican had no interest in that. He destroyed the bipartisan structures for governing and even resorted to name-calling and conspiracy theories — over the line at the time, but in hindsight presaging Trumpism.

A straight line can be drawn from Gingrich’s “Contract with America” to the tea party in 2009. Another outsider movement characterized by distrust of government, expertise, and experience, the tea party helped elect a rogues’ gallery of loathsome lawmakers — I’m looking at you, Rand Paul (Ky.) and Ted Cruz (Texas). Trump’s dystopian vision of America is the ultimate flowering of the outsider, populist, anti-government thinking that has metastasized in the Republican Party over the past decades.

Under both political parties, America has rolled back regulatory guardrails and created a volatile economy that values the wrong things. . . . Over the same period, we dismantled the meager social safety net we had. We have reduced access to food aid, job training, and unemployment insurance. Meanwhile, the cost of health care and higher education has skyrocketed, placing both out of reach for many Americans.

Now for the good news.

Everything wrong with America is manifested in Trump. The hunger for power, the vile derision of people who don’t look like you, the cruelty, the privilege, the gleeful ignorance, and mendacious narcissism. Our revulsion at Trump is causing Americans to ask: How did we get to this place? And how do we get out? That will take time and hard work by well-intentioned people from every corner of American society.

What is happening in our streets is how open, progressive societies improve — fitfully, imperfectly, frustratingly, sometimes tragically. But we do improve. So, thank you, President Trump. Thank you for showing us what we were becoming and helping us find the courage to confront it. We are going to be OK.

Col. Curtis Milam served 26 years on active duty and has over 4,000 flight hours in the C-130. He has served tours at the Pentagon, NATO HQ, and the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, Hungary.

The Trump virus must be exterminated and his supporters must be marginalized to the point where they can do no more damage..

Bigotry Dominates the GOP and Fox News

Early in her career, Kay Cole James - now head of the Heritage Foundation - was involved in Virginia politics and we met back in my days of Republican activism.  For the most part she always came across as calm and level headed and nowhere near as strident as some in what was then considered the conservative wing of the GOP. Thus, it was interesting to see her statements after the death of George Floyd given that she has remained involved in a political party that is increasingly open in its racism, especially with an open white supremacist in the White House.  Of equal interest was the way in which her views and statements were basically trashed by Tucker Carlson - a vile individual in my view -  and many of the other talking heads on the network's propaganda channel not to mention across much of the GOP.  Michael Gerson (a former Republican) calls out Tucker and the GOP in a column in the Washington Post.  Here are excerpts: 

On the theory that decency and sanity are rare enough these days that they should be recognized, let us praise Kay Coles James, the president of the Heritage Foundation.

James — the first African American and the first woman to head the conservative think tank — reacted to the “horrific and needless death” of George Floyd in Minneapolis by recalling the reality of racism in her own story, in a Facebook post that appeared directly after the killing.

“When your family has had crosses burned on their front lawns,” she said, “when your own children have been stopped and harassed by police because they were driving through a white neighborhood . . . when you sit up at night with all the normal fears any parent would have when their kids are out, but have to add to that worry that they may not make it home just because they are Black males.”

James asked, “How many more black people must die, and how many more times will statements of sympathy have to be issued? . . . How many more committees will have to be formed until America admits that racism is still a problem in this country? . . . It’s time America takes responsibility and expands human flourishing to all of its citizens — not just the majority of them.”

Carlson attacked James’s article as a “long scream denouncing America as an irredeemably racist nation” and urged his listeners to stop sending funds to Heritage. This is what happens when the main media platform of American conservatism is dominated by bigotry.

James felt compelled to make her points because she is woman of faith and character. For a glimpse of what the total absence of faith and character looks like, see the Republican Party of Texas. In the aftermath of Floyd’s death, a dozen elected leaders of the GOP wrote or retweeted racist memes and conspiracy theories. Comal County Republican Party Chair Sue Gafford Piner propagated the idea that philanthropist George Soros is funding a race war. Bexar County GOP Chair Cynthia Brehm suggested that Floyd’s death was staged to hurt President Trump’s reelection chances. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller wrote that the civil rights protesters are “domestic terrorists who were organized and paid for by George Soros.”

This is not the rejection of “political correctness”; it is the success of white supremacy in the Texas Republican Party. The GOP, in many places, has become an institution where leaders are elevated and groomed for cruelty and bigotry. This is what happens when the president of the United States normalizes racism and mainstreams ideological madness.

These habits of prejudice took root easily in the GOP, indicating a broad, preexisting disposition. If Republicans are ever to recover their moral balance, they will need to dispose of three pervasive assumptions.

[E]very abuser of rights is dismissed as one of a few bad apples — even when it is clear that some institutions (say, police forces or the Trump GOP) are engaged in the mass production of rotting fruit.

The second is the assumption of personal innocence — the belief that because an individual is not personally at fault for segregation, redlining and police abuses, he or she is not obligated to address their legacy. This amounts to a selfish rejection of the common good, as well as a denial of the Golden Rule.

The third is the assumption of historical irrelevance — the belief that if subjugation did not take place this morning, it is morally extraneous. This is a particularly absurd view for conservatives, given their traditional belief that the past has a powerful hold on the present. . . . this does not even start to cover the legacy of stolen labor, educational inequality and disenfranchisement.

There are many horrors in American racial history but also some powerful inspiration. It is extraordinary that a group of people who came to our country in chains came to understand the essence of Christianity and the essence of our country far better than their oppressors. You might even call it providential. And this should lead to an enduring lesson: America often sees itself more clearly through the eyes of the harassed and oppressed.

When one is black, Hispanic, gay or non-Christian, one must more more fully analyze and focus on what America should be given the reality that you cannot sit back and enjoy the level of societal privilege that goes with being white and heterosexual.  Your rights and safety are always at risk.

The Issue of Race Continues to Haunt American Politics

Donald Trump uses perhaps the most openly racist calls to racial bigotry seen since the days of the segregationists in the late 1950's and 1960's.  He has been aided in his racist propaganda by white supremacists and white evangelical Christians - a group that hates everyone other than themselves - lead by charlatans and scamvangelists who have used racial resentment and manufactured dangers to gain political power for themselves and, just as importantly, to line their own pockets with money.  The question for Democrats and truly moral people is how to counter hate and racism and persuade a large segment of voters that racism and Trump's divide and conquer agenda does not truly further their interests or well-being.  A lengthy column in the New York Times looks at this difficult issue and the difficulty in finding a counter argument that will convince the "presuadables" that toxic racism is bad for America.  Here are highlights:

Stung by the success of Trump’s anti-immigrant, racist campaign themes in 2016, left-of-center advocacy groups — think tanks, unions, progressive academics and Democratic consultants — are developing tools this year to counter the continuing Republican assault on liberal values, based on the optimistic assumption that the reservoir of white animosity is not so deep that Trump is assured re-election.

These efforts on the left challenge the long history of Republican success in exploiting race . . . . That history points to the relentless power of racial resentment in American politics. Despite polling that shows greater acceptance of racial equality, this issue is as potent a source of political strength for Trump today as it was for Nixon a half century ago.

There are myriad studies, as I have noted (along with many others) that show the continuing effectiveness of race and immigration as wedge issues. These studies continue to appear at an alarming rate.

Take “The Trump Effect: An Experimental Investigation of the Emboldening Effect of Racially Inflammatory Elite Communication” published earlier this month by four political scientists:

We find that exposure to racially inflammatory statements by Trump caused those with high levels of prejudice to be more likely to perceive engagement in prejudiced behavior as socially acceptable.

In other words, if the president of the United States denigrates Muslims, or Hispanics, or African-Americans, then anyone can.

A forthcoming paper by Desmond King and Rogers M. Smith, political scientists at Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania, “White Protectionism in America,” makes a strong case that Trump, unlike his Republican predecessors in the White House, has gone far beyond rhetoric and token gestures to substantively address the concerns of his anti-immigrant and socially conservative supporters.

Now let’s look at some of the Democratic and liberal thinking focused on undermining Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy.

The authors, Simon Greer, founder of Cambridge Health Ventures, and Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the foundation, note that

Working-class Americans do not want to be lectured about what their motivations are, and ascribing misogyny or racial animus to any group of potential voters is not a winning strategy for building a coalition.

One of the authors’ central arguments is that liberals have ceded to conservatives a monopoly on such themes and values as faith, family, country and law and order. They have done so because Republicans have “added a meanspirited twist to these mainstream values” as a way of attacking women’s and gay rights, blacks, antiwar protesters and single mothers.

[A] paper that was published last year, that voters are less concerned with candidates’ specific policies than with the values they espouse:

We found that a presidential candidate who framed his progressive economic platform to be consistent with more conservative value concerns like patriotism, family, and respect for tradition — as opposed to more liberal value concerns like equality and social justice — was supported significantly more by conservatives and, unexpectedly, by moderates as well.

Voelkel and Willer conclude by citing the “progressive paradox,” that Americans “support many core progressive economic policies at high levels, yet rarely elect progressive candidates, a paradox widely discussed in academic and popular literature.”

The Race-Class project . . . . . according to the report, these middle ground voters “have concerns about ‘reverse racism’ and discrimination against whites;” a sizable majority agree “focusing on race doesn’t fix anything and may even make things worse;” and “persuadable adults believe that people of color who cannot get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition.”

In other words, these persuadable voters provide fertile ground for conservative appeals to racial resentment.

The most effective liberal-Democratic message read:

America’s strength comes from our ability to work together — to knit together a landscape of people from different places and of different races into one nation. For this to be a place of freedom for all, we cannot let the greedy few and the politicians they pay for turn what you look like, where you come from or how much money you have into reasons some of us matter and others don’t. It’s time to stand up for each other and come together. It is time for us to pick leaders who reflect the very best of every kind of American. Together, we can make this a place where freedom is for everyone, no exceptions.

For the Democratic Party, race and immigration remain crucially important in terms of both values and policy. The key question is whether the party is structurally capable — under an extraordinary barrage of hostility directed by Republicans at African-Americans and immigrants — of finding politically effective ways of addressing race and immigration. Has the left wing of the party become so discouraged, so defensive — and so embattled — that it now perceives a critical mass of whites as intractably hardened and unswervingly opposed to minority interests? If moderates and progressives are locked in on either side of such a chasm, what will it take to make peace?

Sadly, Bernie Sanders' "my way or the highway" message does not telegraph the most effective liberal messaging. In a different manner, he is almost as divisive as Trump. 

"Conservative" Religion Is Fueling Hate and the Partisan Divide

As regular readers know, I view religion as one of the most poisonous forces throughout human history that has fueled hatred, violence, and mass murder over and over again over the centuries with any beneficial side effects some argue religion provides being far out weighed by the negatives. Religion has time and time again been used to label others as "other" and/or worthy of death, be it in India and Pakistan, the Middle East, 17th century France, or Northern Ireland.  In the age of Trump, religion - in this case "conservative" Christianity is repeating religion's toxic impact on society and fueling political partisanship and a willingness on the part of Republicans to destroy America's democracy in order to cling to power. In my view, no true follower of Christ can be a Trump supporter or Republican nowadays and those who do so put their hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy on open display as they support the caging of children, white supremacy and a man who is the personification of the seven deadly sins.  A lengthy piece at CNN looks at religion's toxic role in dividing American society.  The good news is that over the long term, conservative Christianity is dying in America.  It's death cannot come soon enough in my opinion.  Here are article excerpts:

The religious and cultural divide between Democratic and Republican voters is widening, pointing toward even greater partisan polarization and social tension as the nation careens into a possible impeachment vote against President Donald Trump and potential record turnout in the 2020 presidential election.

An extensive national study released Monday by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute showed that voters in each party now hold antithetical views not only on issues that dominate the immediate political debate -- such as health care and impeachment -- but also on deeper changes in the nation's demography, culture, race relations and gender roles, according to detailed results the institute provided to CNN. While whites who identify as Christians still represent about two-thirds of all Republicans, they now compose only one-fourth of Democrats, according to results provided by the Pew Research Center from a new study it released last week. Americans unaffiliated with any religion, and racial minorities who identify as Christians, now each make up a bigger share of the Democratic coalition than white Christians do, Pew found. Both groups remain only relatively minor components of the GOP coalition.

On the religious front, just as in those other arenas, the groups that favor Democrats are clearly growing. Not only have the religiously unaffiliated expanded since 2009 from about 1 in 6 to 1 in 4 adults, but the share of Americans who ascribe to non-Christian faiths, a group that also leans strongly Democratic, has edged up from 5% to 7% of the population over that time, Pew found. Simultaneously, white Christians have fallen as a share of all American adults -- from just over half in 2009, according to Pew and other data, to around two-fifths today.

The challenge for Democrats is that their potential gains from the growing groups are being muted by an increasing tilt toward the GOP among the groups that are shrinking, in this case whites who identify as Christian. (The same dynamic is evident among other contracting groups such as whites without college degrees.)

Trump has accelerated the trends on both sides of that equation, consolidating the GOP's position among blue-collar, older, non-urban and evangelical whites at the price of sparking intense resistance among younger, white-collar, nonwhite and metropolitan voters.

[E]ven as white Christians have declined as a share of the population, more of that shrinking group is aligning with Republicans. In 2009, Pew found 51% of white Christians identified as Republicans, while 37% considered themselves Democrats (the rest were independents). Today that 14-point partisan gap has more than doubled: In the latest Pew results, 63% of white Christians identify as Republicans, compared with 30% who identify as Democrats. The movement has been even sharper among white evangelical Protestants. Their share of the overall population is also shrinking: It fell to 16% in the latest Pew results, down from 19% in 2009. In 2009, they were about twice as likely to identify as Republicans (61%) as Democrats (30%), according to figures provided by Gregory Smith, Pew's associate director of research. Today 75% of white evangelicals call themselves Republicans, while just 19% identify as Democrats, a ratio of nearly 4 to 1.

Democrats rely on voters who reflect the nation's growing racial and religious diversity, while the contracting population of white Christians -- especially white evangelical Protestants -- tilt more toward the GOP as a vehicle to protect values and a vision of America that they believe is under siege from the forces of change. Across the key changes reshaping American culture, the two groups rendered almost inverse verdicts. On gender, roughly three-fifths of adults who approve of Trump agreed that "these days society seems to punish men just for acting like men." Three-fourths of adults who disapprove of Trump disagreed. The divide between the two sides was even more pronounced on issues relating to race. Fully 68% of those who approve of Trump agreed that "Today, discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities." Three-fourths of those who disapprove of Trump disagreed with that sentiment. At the heart of these contrasts are the inimical views of white evangelical Protestants and religiously unaffiliated Americans (of all races), which now arguably represent the core of each party's coalition. While two-thirds of white evangelicals, for instance, say discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against minorities, more than 7 in 10 among the religiously unaffiliated disagree. Two-thirds of white evangelicals say immigrants are "invading" America; three-fourths of the religiously unaffiliated disagree. Three-fourths of white evangelicals say socialists have taken over the Democratic Party; two-thirds of the unaffiliated say racists now control the Republican Party. [T]he long-run threat to Republicans clearly emerges from these new studies: The party, especially as defined by Trump, faces huge resistance among the groups that are growing in society, while the groups most drawn to his racial nationalism -- such as white evangelicals -- are shrinking. Given that pace of change, it's an open question how long Republicans can rely on the Trump strategy of squeezing bigger margins from shrinking groups. On most key measures, from racial diversity to the shift away from Christian faiths, the changes reshaping America are more pronounced among the youngest generations. Among adults younger than 30, only 1 in 4 are white Christians, the Public Religion Research Institute found, with the religiously unaffiliated and those who practice non-Christian faiths accounting for nearly half and non-white Christians making up the remaining fourth.

This wave of new data on religion and partisan allegiance underscores the broader conclusion that American politics in 2020, and likely for years beyond, promises an epic collision between what America has been and what it is becoming.

LGBT Discrimination Keeps Close Company with Racism

Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has faced flake from some in the black community for making the statement that being gay allows him to empathize with the discrimination suffered by members of the black community. To some, sadly, they seemingly believe that they alone have a monopoly on being the victims of discrimination. I disagree with this mindset and, as a gay man who lost his job for being gay and who is still the victim of bigotry by the "godly" far right Christian crowd and the 12th century "natural law" of the Roman Catholic Church, I disagree that one who is a member of a minority group targeted for discrimination cannot feel special empathy for other groups and individuals who likewise face discrimination and bigotry.  Columnist Colbert King makes this argument in a column in the Washington Post that draws parallel's between homophobia and racism.  Here are column excerpts:

Mayor Pete Buttigieg has taken flak from some African Americans for suggesting that being gay helps him relate to the struggles of African Americans. Buttigieg, his critics say, is appropriating the black experience for his own selfish political agenda.

I’ll let them sort that out. But this I know: Being black causes me to feel empathy with the LGBTQ community and others who are victimized by bigotry.

Two situations cited in a column I wrote on discrimination nearly 30 years ago helped shape my feelings.

From the first: “Men on board ship live in particularly close association; in their messes, one man sits beside another; their hammocks or bunks are close together; in their common tasks they work side by side; and in particular tasks such as those of a gun’s crew, they form a closely knit highly coordinated team.

“How many white men would choose, of their own accord, that their closest associates in sleeping quarters, at mess, and in a gun’s crew should be of another race? How many would accept such conditions, if required to do so, without resentment and just as a matter of course?” 

These were not the musings of a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but the official statement of the chairman of the General Board of the Navy to the secretary of the Navy, Jan. 16, 1942. The subject: “Enlistment of men of colored race in other than messman branch.”

As to the question “how many white men would choose” associations with blacks, the General Board chairman said “the answer is ‘few, if any’ and . . . if the issue were forced, there would be a lowering of contentment, teamwork and discipline in the service.”

That view prevailed until July 26, 1948, when President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order that led to the end of racial segregation in the armed forces.

Then came this, 40 years after the Navy’s General Board spoke: “Homosexuality is incompatible with military service. . . . The presence of such members adversely affects the ability of the Military Services to maintain discipline, good order, and morale; to foster mutual trust and confidence among servicemembers . . . to facilitate assignment and worldwide deployment of servicemembers who frequently must live and work under close conditions affording minimal privacy.” — Defense Department Directive 1332.14, Jan. 28, 1982.

That pernicious Defense Department regulation against gays relied on the same stereotyping and myths that undergirded the military’s bias against African Americans.

The regulation was cited by U.S. District Judge Oliver Gasch in his Dec. 9, 1991, decision to uphold the Navy’s right to expel a gay midshipman from the U.S. Naval Academy.

The midshipman was within months of graduating in the top 10 percent of his class. He was on tap for a prestigious postgraduate assignment on a nuclear submarine. His talents as a singer enabled him to sing the national anthem before the Army-Navy game on nationwide TV during his senior year. He simply told a classmate he was gay. Once he said he was gay, he became unfit to associate with his classmates.

The Defense Department was judging men and women not on the basis of their ability to perform as sailors, soldiers or Marines or serve in the Air Force, but solely because of a distinction that should have been irrelevant: race in the first case, sexual orientation in the second.

Last year, President Trump imposed policies restricting Obama’s 2016 directive allowing transgender service members to serve openly.

Simply stated, LGBTQ discrimination keeps close company with racism.

So, yes, because I have been and am on the receiving end of racial prejudice, I can relate to others who fall victim to bigotry.

That may explain why I share, in a special way, the revulsion, pain and anger felt by many Jewish community members over the profane and viciously anti-Semitic seven-second Snapchat video recently recorded by two George Washington University students.

And why I recoil at the sight of torch-wielding white nationalists in Charlottesville marching and chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Change one word, and they are railing against me.

Yes, I can relate to the struggle of other groups. To feel otherwise is to be as callous as those who look the other way when blacks are in the bull’s eye.  Maybe that’s what Mayor Pete was trying to say.

Very well said.

Red and Blue Economies Are Heading in Sharply Different Directions

I have long maintained that part of the economic problems facing "red states" and red rural areas is that their social reactionary nature and hostility towards non-whites, non-straights and non-Christians makes them unattractive to the business of the 21st century and the future.  Here in Virginia, Southwest Virginia is a prime example.  That region continues to demand that state monies be used to turn around the region economically yet the residents (and, yes, there are exceptions) continue to embrace social, religious and political views that are anathema to the economic change they claim to want.  Now a study, as reported in the New York Times looks at the diverging paths of so-called blue economies associated with rising urban areas and those of red economies associated with rural and reactionary regions.  And yes, the red areas tend to be far more white and perhaps more racist.  Here are article highlights:

At a quick glance, red and blue metropolitan areas are performing equally well on average in the most watched indicators of labor market health. . . . Silicon Valley (blue) is booming. So is Provo, Utah (red).

But below the surface, red and blue local economies are worlds apart on enduring, fundamental measures that determine their future prospects and their biggest economic challenges.

The correlations between deeper economic measures and how the contrasting metro areas voted in 2016 are striking.

In bluer metros, more residents have college degrees: The 10 large metros with the highest educational attainment each voted for Hillary Clinton by at least a 10-point margin. Median household incomes are higher in bluer metros even after adjusting for the cost of living, which is higher in bluer metros as well. (Metro area is a better measure for a local labor market than a neighborhood, city, county or state.)

And bluer metros have a more favorable job mix for the future, with fewer manufacturing jobs, a higher share of harder-to-automate “non-routine” jobs, and a higher share of jobs in occupations projected to grow faster.

These measures — education, household income, cost of living, non-routine jobs and projected job growth — are highly correlated with one another, and with voting Democratic.

Other economic measures are less strongly correlated with partisanship but still show a pattern. Bluer metros have less year-to-year volatility of job growth. In part that’s because goods-related sectors like manufacturing and mining are more volatile and are clustered in Republican-leaning areas.

Home values have risen more in bluer metros than in redder ones. And blue metros have a higher prime-age employment-population ratio, even though the unemployment rate varies little by partisanship. That’s because red metros have a higher share of prime-age adults who are not in the labor force and therefore aren’t counted in the unemployment rate.

But there are a few places that vote differently than you’d expect from their local economic fundamentals. Colorado Springs and the Provo-Orem area, for instance, have education levels and an occupation mix more typical of blue metros but voted for Donald J. Trump in 2016 by a wide margin. On the flip side, Stockton, Calif., and El Paso look more like red metros economically but voted for Mrs. Clinton.

Why do some metros vote differently than their economics might suggest they would? Race, ethnicity and religion. Metros that vote Democratic despite having lower education and a job mix more typical of redder metros tend to have large Hispanic populations, including many in inland California and on the Texas border. Metros that vote more Republican despite having higher education and a blue-metro job mix tend to be whiter.

[I]ncome inequality — and all the social and political challenges that come with it — tends to be lower in redder metros. And while cost-of-living-adjusted household incomes are higher in bluer metros, cost-of-living-adjusted salaries for a given occupation are typically higher in redder metros.

There’s a reason for this difference: Bluer metros tend to have higher-paying occupations and fewer prime-age adults out of the labor force, which increases household incomes. But if you move from a bluer to a redder metro and find a job in the same occupation, you’re likely to get an increase in salary after taking living costs into account.

The economic challenges of blue metros — unaffordability and inequality — are different than those of red metros, which face lower living standards and greater risks of job loss. Even if the economy takes a back seat in the 2020 election to health care, immigration and President Trump’s record, these economic differences won’t be far from the surface. And if national economic conditions soften, these differences will become more reason for partisan disagreement on urgent policy priorities.

If the places that moved left between 2012 and 2016 continue getting bluer — and the places that swung Obama-to-Trump keep getting redder — the local economies of red and blue America will keep growing further apart.

Innovation and progressive thinking gravitates to blue regions while "conservatism," closed mindedness and an unwelcoming atmosphere toward those who are different concentrates in red regions. Both bring economic consequences. 

Poquoson: Home of Trump Supporters and Something Ugly

Locally, one of the bastions of Trump supporters is the small city of Poquoson which sits eastward of Hampton and York County.  Ironically, Poquoson faces the largest threat of any local city from rising sea levels, yet strongly backs a man and political party that denies the existence of climate change.  A recent even involving the Poquoson High School football team suggest the root of Trump's appeal: racism.  Two videos leaked of members of the team using racial slurs and foul language - seemingly directed at black members of a rival football team. Thankfully, the school division - likely the most lily white in the region - did the right think and forfeited the game to the rival school and an investigation is ongoing.  The Virginian Pilot looks at the incident which, I suspect to many, is not surprising.  Here are story excerpts:

Poquoson High School’s football team forfeited its upcoming game against York High School after online videos surfaced of students at the school using a racial slur and foul language.

The two videos were posted to Snapchat, then quickly began to spread to Twitter and other online platforms Thursday. The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press obtained copies of the videos after they were reposted by others.

Poquoson School Superintendent Jennifer Parish said some of the students in the videos are members of the football team. Parish said the videos were recorded at a party off school property, and it appeared to be a club room.

Both videos are less than 30 seconds long. In one, a boy, who is white, threatens to beat up someone, repeatedly using a racial slur. In the background, students are gathered around a table.

He puts his middle finger up in the camera, and another boy comes up behind him and says “If you’re from York County and you want some, come get some.”

In the other video, another teenager appears to be challenging other teens from York County, and repeatedly uses racial slurs.

“The language and behavior in these videos have no place in our schools or in our community," Parish said in a statement released Thursday evening . . . . we are taking action within the scope of our Code of Conduct and under division policy.”

That included, she said, the decision to forfeit Friday’s game against York High School. It was scheduled to be played in Poquoson.

Poquoson is the smallest city in Hampton Roads, with a population of just more than 10,000. It became an incorporated town in York County in the 1950s, and then a city in 1975. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the city’s school district is made up of 92% white students, 2% Hispanic or Latino students and 1% black students.

York County has a population of about 67,000. In its school district, 72% of students are white, 13% are black and 6% are Hispanic and Latino.

In October, a 53-year-old Poquoson man was charged with assault and battery after he confronted a Poquoson High School student who was waving a Confederate flag at a football game against Tabb High, another York County school.

This post will not make me popular in Poquoson, but the racist undercurrent of the city needs to be exposed.  And personally, I try to avoid Poquoson since gays aren't exactly welcome either.

America's Future: Getting Rid of Trump Will Help

Increased racial hatred, increased gun violence, trade wars damaging American farmers and perhaps moving the country toward a recession, and frayed relations with long time allies.  All trace back in varying degrees to a single individual:  Donald Trump.  The main is a boil (if not a cancer) on nation and conservative columnist and former Republican Jennifer Rubin makes the case that almost anyone else would be better in the White House and would set the stage where serious, sane progress to address pressing problems could begin.   If Trump cannot be removed by impeachment, then he needs to be removed at the ballot box in November 2020.  The cancer that he embodies must be removed and not allowed to further metastasize.  True, we will still have to contend with his dangerous supporters, but his removal from office will be a much needed beginning.  Here are column excerpts:

Even if we get a Democratic president Americans don’t like all that much, or whose limitations are obvious, we’ll be in a better spot than we would be with President Trump. That’s an unsurprising assumption by Democrats. But, increasingly, independents and disaffected Republicans — as seen from their praise of former president Barack Obama’s remarks on the mass murders in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio — know this to be true. “Anyone but Trump” should be the goal for all Americans, even Republicans.

For one thing, Republicans won’t have to observe the debasement of other Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), who lamely tried to create some moral equivalence between Trump, who incites white nationalism of the type motivating the El Paso terrorist, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who incites no one to hatred and whose ideology — progressive capitalism — hasn’t driven anyone to kill.

Whatever the problem, things would be better without Trump even with a president whose ideology and/or performance might not thrill most Americans.

Combating domestic terrorism? Just getting rid of the instigator of white nationalism would be a plus. The Post reports:

The administration has also curtailed or disbanded a Department of Homeland Security program that had been created to counter violent extremism by working with regional authorities and organizations to identify those vulnerable to radicalization, whether by Islamist groups or the far right. . . . this presidency has come to be defined by policies that are aligned with aspects of the white nationalist agenda and his penchant for fanning racial animus.

We could curtail Trump’s presidency and rebuke the white nationalist ideology, or we could reelect the man who stoked their grievance. It’s pretty easy to figure out the best option from a national security standpoint.

The trade war with China? Trump now has seized “control” of policy, . . . And how’s that working out? Not well:

Business executives, economists, and former government officials have said the worsening conflict between the White House and China was damaging the U.S. economy. Business investment contracted in the second quarter of 2019, and a number of White House officials are worried that the economy is beginning to slow.

Get rid of Trump and you would, at the very least, have a less chaotic, less impulse-driven policy from someone who understands U.S. consumers and not China pay the tariffs.

Relations with allies? They’ll immediately improve without Trump. Human rights policy? Once Trump is gone, we wouldn’t be in the business of praising mass murderers (e.g., Kim Jong Un). Environmental policy? Even some Republicans are dumping their climate change denial, but as long as Trump is in office, any hope of progress is illusory. Russia? No Democrat or Republican likely to be elected will kowtow to Vladimir Putin.

I don’t mean to suggest that all our problems will go away if Trump does, nor do I mean to suggest it doesn’t matter who succeeds him. However, we would eliminate a slew of Trump-created problems and inanities and make it possible rationally to address issues.

It’s not hyperbole to say Trump is a threat to our democracy, to national security and to progress on virtually any issue. We want the best possible president, but we will settle for anyone who isn’t Trump.

If you care about America and the future, vote Democrat in 2020 and in Virginia's 2019 elections.

Trump’s Racism Betrays America's Victims

For many it is far easier to bloviate about American exceptionalism and to ignore the racism that Donald Trump both embodies and seeks to fan for perceived political advantage. But doing so betrays the many victims of America's often ugly past, especially the evils of slavery and the Jim Crow era. Slavery and racial sins are often close to mind living in Hampton, Virginia, the site where the first African slaves were brought into the British colonies that became the original states of the United States of America.  Where I sit at this very moment a mere few miles down the coast of Hampton Roads harbor from that site where the evil of slavery arrived 400 years ago this year.  Four hundred years of mistreatment and often outright horrors have been perpetrated all because some whites continue to be obsessed with being the supposed supreme or superior race. Trump intentionally continues this cancer that still haunts America. Ignoring his conduct and racism betrays the many victims of America's ugly and brutal past. While we cannot change the past, we can learn from it and vow to never ever let such hate and violence occur again.  A column in the Washington Post reminds us of just how hideous some of America's past is in fact and why we must not betray its victims.  Here are column highlights (warning, some of it is disturbing):

I had fully intended to ignore President Trump’s latest round of racially charged taunts against an African American elected official, and an African American activist, and an African American journalist and a whole city with a lot of African Americans in it. I had every intention of walking past Trump’s latest outrages and writing about the self-destructive squabbling of the Democratic presidential field, which has chosen to shame former vice president Joe Biden for the sin of being an electable, moderate liberal.

But I made the mistake of pulling James Cone’s “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” off my shelf — a book designed to shatter convenient complacency. Cone recounts the case of a white mob in Valdosta, Ga., in 1918 that lynched an innocent man named Haynes Turner. Turner’s enraged wife, Mary, promised justice for the killers. The sheriff responded by arresting her and then turning her over to the mob, which included women and children. According to one source, Mary was “stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death.”

God help us. It is hard to write the words. This evil — the evil of white supremacy, resulting in dehumanization, inhumanity and murder — is the worst stain, the greatest crime, of U.S. history. It is the thing that nearly broke the nation. It is the thing that proved generations of Christians to be vicious hypocrites. It is the thing that turned normal people into moral monsters, capable of burning a grieving widow to death and killing her child.

During more than 300 years of routine horrors — the slave ships, the brandings, the separation of families, the beatings, the lynchings, the constant flood of humiliation, the racist ads for soap and toothpaste, the anti-black riots, the segregation of buses and pools and schools and suburbs, the sundown towns, the kangaroo courts, the police dogs and water cannons, the church bombings, the cruel and petty tyranny of whites, reinforced by the most prominent politicians in the country — during all of this, none of the descendants of Europe were able to stamp this evil out. As James Baldwin said in 1963, “The only people in the country at the moment who believe either in Christianity or in the country are the most despised minority in it.”

Racism is the fire that left our country horribly disfigured. It is the beast we try to keep locked in the basement. When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event, not just a normal day in campaign 2020. It is a cause for shame. It is the violation of martyrs’ graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. It is, in the eyes of history, the betrayal — the re-betrayal — of Haynes and Mary Turner and their child. And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open.

I am finding it hard to look at resurgent racism as just one in a series of presidential offenses or another in a series of Republican errors. Racism is not just another wrong. The Antietam battlefield is not just another plot of ground. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is not just another bridge. The balcony outside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel is not just another balcony. As U.S. history hallows some causes, it magnifies some crimes.What does all this mean politically? It means that Trump’s divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and inflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump’s continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means — whatever their intent — that those who play down, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers.

Some political choices are not just stupid or crude. They represent the return of our country’s cruelest, most dangerous passion. Such racism indicts Trump. Treating racism as a typical or minor matter indicts us.

The fact that evangelicals continue to overwhelmingly support Trump is an indictment of them and proof that they are morally bankrupt and have zero moral authority to lecture others.  The fact that many of my Republican "friends" conveniently look the other way is likewise an indictment of them. Anyone with a shred of moral decency in them needs to condemn and shun Trump. It is far past time when a desire for lower taxes justifies enabling outright evil. 

Trump Voters and the Dreams of Brexit Britain

My many posts about Trump supporters and the Brexit leave faction in the United Kingdom have been typically less than kind.  In both groups, I see hatred, resentment and a delusional longing for a past that is forever lost - if it ever even existed as viewed in their minds - that in the longer term will harm the proponents of Trumpism and the Brexit leave supporters. And yes, race does play a major role in the mindset of both groups whether spoken or unspoken, as does a sense of lost privilege both domestically and internationally.  The Brexit leave group still longs subconsciously for the days of the British Empire when Britain dominated the global economy and the sun truly never set on the empire.  For Trumpists, they long for a return of the immediate post-WWII and early 1950's when the USA was the unchallenged world hegemon.   The problem is that the policies they support cannot restore the lost world either group longs for.  Meanwhile, especially in the case of Britain and Brexit, the policies will ultimately make their circumstances even worse.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the Brexit mindsel.  The parallels with Trump supporters are profound.  Here are highlights:

The June 2016 Brexit referendum left Britain a divided nation. That much we know. But the referendum didn’t create division. It exposed something that was already there, latent. This was hard to see if you attended to people’s conventional political views about taxation or public spending; even the issue of immigration, by itself, wasn’t “it.” Nor was it to be found in something as vague as “feelings” or “emotions.” It lay elsewhere, in the realm of the individual political psyche, that blending of personal, family and nonacademic history, casually informed reasoning, clan prejudice, tribal loyalty and ancestor worship that forms the imaginative framework in which, as we represent it to ourselves, our lives relate to events in the wider world.

In that framework, the way our representation of the past relates to our representation of the present isn’t always linear. What may seem, rationally, to be dead, gone and replaced (or to have never existed) is actually still there, immanent, or hidden, or stolen. An empire. An all-white Britain. A socialist Britain. A country that stood alone against the Nazi menace. One’s young self. A word for this is “dreaming.”

The past week has laid bare the crisis in British politics. . . . . How this situation resolves remains anyone’s guess.

The major cause of this paralysis is the breakdown of the just-about-ruling Conservative Party — one faction prepared to compromise over Brexit, the other, a small minority in Parliament, eager to break absolutely with the European Union whatever the consequences. This makes sense only if you understand the hard-core Brexiteer minority as most in tune with the Leaver dreaming: that state of mind where it’s natural to talk about the Britons who endured the Nazi siege of the early 1940s as “we,” as if the present and the past, the dead and the living, were one and the same, bound to re-enact the slaying of a European dragon every few generations.

Remainers have their own rich dreams, no less fascinating, but I spoke mainly to Leavers, since they were the disrupters. . . . . I noticed three things.

One was a strong sense of oppression, of being censored, and an attendant resentment. There were several occasions when Leavers I spoke to left pregnant gaps that could only have been filled with anti-immigrant sentiments that they weren’t “allowed” to say. By no means all Leavers are racist, but I ended up with the impression that for many, casual racism is regarded as a lost patrimony; that as much as Leavers might oppose immigration, they are no less resentful of the “elites” rendering it awkward to categorize people along racial lines.

Another thing I noticed was the internationalism of Leavers — internationalism with a particular flavor: the nostalgia for Ian Smith’s Rhodesia by a Norfolk farmer and member of the European Parliament from the far-right U.K. Independence Party. . . . 

The third thing was the preoccupation with the state as defender of its people. This was literal — U.K.I.P. fliers boasting of how many extra aircraft carriers they would build in government — but also figurative, that it was the British government’s job to defend native Britons against immigrants; foreign competition; greedy capitalists; and, through the National Health Service, illness.

I used to be skeptical of the idea that Britain hadn’t come to terms with the loss of its empire. It was such a long time ago, and not a single one of the many Leavers I’ve had hours of conversations with over the years has explicitly expressed wanting it back. How could you? It would be ridiculous.

I believe now that a subliminal empire does persist in the dreaming of a large number of Britons, hinted at in a longing for the return of guilt-free racial categorization, in the idea that my country can be both globally open and privileged in an international trading system where it can somehow turn the rules to its advantage, in the idea of a safe white core protected from the dark hordes beyond by a mighty armed force. This idea, which begins to make sense only if your country happens to control a global empire, came from someone whose childhood dream was to be an official in the Indian Civil Service. It has been orthodoxy for four decades, not just in her own party but for a time, at least, in the main opposition. The bizarre and already disproved notion that the global free market might work as an avatar of Britain’s imperial power lies at the heart of the die-hard Brexit psyche. Propagating it was Mrs. Thatcher’s personal success, and that success, as we can now see, was her great failure.

Mississippi Signals the World That It Is Still Defined by Racial Bigotry

Sadly, yesterday 54% of voters in Mississippi opted to vote for Cindy Hyde-Smith, a segregationist who "joked" about attending a public lynching if invited, referred to her state's days in the Confederacy as its "best history" and attend a segregated private "academy" and enrolled her own daughter in a similar segregated school.  The message sent to the rest of America and the world was very clear: Mississippi is the home of racist, bigots and individuals who hold others who are different in contempt  - if not subjecting them to open hatred.  Not surprisingly, Hyde-Smith also opposes marriage equality and opposes same sex couples using state park facilities for commitment/marriage ceremonies. Its a continuation of Mississippi's ugly history.  A history which has condemned the state to being among the worse state in the nation in numerous rankings (see the image above).  Some states in the South - particularly Virginia - have disavowed their ugly past and are striving (at least in urban and suburban areas) to be welcoming to all citizens, regardless of race, religious faith and sexual orientation.   Why is this important?  For several reasons: (i) educated people flee backward, bigoted states and regions - look no further than Southwest Virginia - and (ii) progressive, modern businesses who want to hire the best and the brightest do not locate in backward, bigoted states and regions - e.g., Amazon's decision to locate in Northern Virginia and New York City.   A piece in the New York Times looks at the history of racism and inequality that Hyde-Smith and her supporters seek to maintain. Here are highlights:

On Tuesday, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith won a hard-fought runoff election over her Democratic opponent, Mike Espy. That Mississippi is sending a Republican back to Washington is hardly a surprise, but Ms. Hyde-Smith gave the opposition hope in the closing weeks of the campaign as she careened from one gaffe to the next — each one emphasizing both that she was tone deaf and that she found humor in her state’s history of racial violence and voter suppression. Racist violence, segregation and voter suppression are not shared historical jokes. They are our present. Unless we change course, they will define our future. Ms. Hyde-Smith claims not to have realized there was anything wrong with what she said. She has steadfastly refused to apologize. Perhaps most important, since her comments came to light, she has yet to publicly engage in conversation with constituents of hers for whom hanging is not a joke and voting is a hard-fought, continually challenged right. During the campaign, she did not acknowledge there was even a dialogue worth having. Perhaps this is because for much of her life she has been hearing only one side of an argument and doesn’t know or care that there is a larger conversation to be had. If this is the case, it may have something to do with where Ms. Hyde-Smith went to school and where she chose to send her daughter to school. It was only a few days ago that we learned not only that Ms. Hyde-Smith had attended and graduated from a now closed, whites-only segregation academy called the Lawrence County Academy but also that she had chosen to send her daughter to Brookhaven Academy, which shared the same founding history. And as late as 2016, it had managed to maintain a strikingly white racial makeup, with one black child and five Latino children attending a school with 386 pupils in a town that is 54 percent black.

The most notable thing about the South’s segregation academies isn’t that they were racially segregated. Racially and economically segregated schools remain across all parts of the United States. What is notable is that taxpayer dollars financed these all-white schools at the cost of simultaneously creating poorly funded all-black public-school systems in the South. To put it simply, as the financial drain of taxpayer dollars from whites attending segregation academies decimated school systems educating black children, black communities, students and teachers paid a terribly high price to ensure that whites were educated with other whites.

[S]egregation academies were a private school concept adopted in Mississippi and found across the South in the decade following the Brown v. Board of Education decision. They were conceived as a way to permit white parents to avoid sending their children to schools with black students and a legal way to work around the Brown decision, which did not apply to private schools. These funding schemes were so successful that by 1970, roughly 300,000 students were enrolled in all-white private schools across 11 Southern states, and by 1974, 3,500 academies enrolled 750,000 white children. In Jackson, Miss., alone, white enrollment in the public schools fell by 12,000 students, going from representing more than half of the student body in 1969 to less than a third in 1976. That demographic shift caused a drastic reduction in the funds available to educate the predominantly black children left behind, as tax dollars earmarked for their educations followed white children both to quasi-private segregation academies or to still segregated white public schools. For their part, black parents fought back using the legal system to file hundreds of lawsuits arguing for educational access and equal funding, but many also acquiesced. Terror campaigns, both economic and physical, convinced them it was in their best interest to “choose” to stay in underfunded, segregated schools. Those who attempted to enroll in all-white public schools were subjected to numerous forms of both physical and economic intimidation — job loss, eviction, threatening phone calls and physical attacks.

That is part of the educational history of the defeated Democratic candidate in the race for the Senate in Mississippi, Mike Espy, who integrated Yazoo City High School in 1969.

Mr. Espy attended a parochial school through his first two years of high school, then it closed and he enrolled at Yazoo City High School. He was the only black student in his class and remembers having to carry a stick with him during the day to fend off the physical attacks he often faced when the teacher left the room. In 1970, he was joined by his twin sister, Althea Michelle, and 15 other black students.

Reflecting on the difference between his experience integrating a public school and that of Ms. Hyde-Smith, he said, “If the story is correct, she consciously made a decision to separate, and my parents consciously made a decision to be inclusive.”

Mr. Espy knows that racist violence is no joking matter. We know that his opponent cannot say the same.

Hopefully, decent people and progressive business will take not of Mississippi's signal to them and choose to avoid the state like the plague. If this happens, the downward spiral and economic isolation of Mississippi will intensify and, hopefully, at some future day Mississippi residents will opt to throw its ugly past and people like Ms. Hyde-Smith on the trash heap.