Paul Krugman on the Jena Six.
Paul Krugman wrote today on the Jena Six and what it means for the state of race relations. He sums up the state of race relations and says that contrary to the surprised expressions of much of the media, racial tensions are still alive and well. This is hardly surprising when you consider the fact that the Republican Party ideology is nothing more than recycled racism repackaged for modern consumption.
Consider some of the examples that Krugman gives. These examples are perfect examples of the new form of racism that is evident in the Republican Party. These examples are known as dog whistle politics, where the "dogs," or the old-style segregationists, know exactly what the panderer is talking about. For instance, when Reagan went to Philadelphia, MI to give a speech defending states' rights, not many other people knew the significance of that location. But for the segregationists, they understood the symbolism completely -- they knew that in Reagan, they had a man who would turn back the clock on efforts to achieve racial equality. Ditto for George Bush's visit to Bob Jones University in 2000, which was notorious for its bans on interracial dating. Ditto for the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, who all backed out of a PBS debate on diversity issues scheduled for this week.
Krugman echoes Rich's argument that the Republican Party is marginalizing itself with stats:
Consider voting in last year’s Congressional elections. Republicans, as President Bush conceded, received a “thumping,” with almost every major demographic group turning against them. The one big exception was Southern whites, 62 percent of whom voted Republican in House races.
And yes, Southern white exceptionalism is about race, much more than it is about moral values, religion, support for the military or other explanations sometimes offered. There’s a large statistical literature on the subject, whose conclusion is summed up by the political scientist Thomas F. Schaller in his book “Whistling Past Dixie”: “Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters to depict American conservatism as a nonracial phenomenon, the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.”
This explains why Louisiana and Georgia are the only two states where the Republicans are still making gains. In Georgia, the Republicans came the closest to unseating Democratic incumbents in the 2006 Congressional elections. But the southern whites are decreasing as a proportion of the overall population as the percentage of Latinos are growing in this country. And therefore, the Republican efforts to pass HR 4437, which would have began a policy of automatic deportations, backfired spectacularly and undermined Karl Rove's efforts to raise the percentage of the vote that Republicans were getting from Hispanics.
We committed ourselves to the Civil Rights Movement in 1964 when we passed the Civil Rights Act. Although we were in the wilderness for a long time, we have a chance to finish what we started. We must act firmly and decisively to extend civil liberties to immigrants and make them full-fledged members of our society so that they will not be exploited by unscrupulous corporations trying to make a cheap buck. We must liberalize our immigration policies and make this a country where all people are treated equally, and not just all Americans.
Obamathon
