White Americans abandoned democracy and embraced authoritarianism when they realized brown people would soon outvote them

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/30/pissed-on-by-trickledown.html

12 Likes

file under duh.

26 Likes

It’s like the internet has always proclaimed, “White people to become minority by the year XXXX,” as if that wasn’t a fucking improvement.

16 Likes

Speaking as myself who is white person… the sooner the fucking better.

48 Likes

Democracy is great as long as things go my way. What I find really interesting is that the GOP should have had an easy job laid out for them. Courting Mexican and South American immigrants who are largely Catholic should have been easy. But their racism just couldn’t handle it.

21 Likes

Hoo boy, @orenwolf is going to be putting in overtime on this thread. My sympathies! :sweat:

33 Likes

As the now cliched comeback states: “What… are minorities mistreated or something?”

I’m white, male, and not feeling threatened by the equality of others.

17 Likes

Does this analysis form the basis of a workable theory of what to do now to fight against authoritarianism?

6 Likes

I always say that there are plenty of socially and fiscally conservative minorities out there. But they all dive for cover when the GOP starts targeting them in obviously bigoted ways.

GW Bush, to his credit made a pretty fair attempt to court minority voters. But after the election of a black man to the presidency, the GOP found outright racism to be more useful and easier.

9 Likes

I guess if you take from it the notion that fighting for civil liberties for various minorities means fighting for civil liberties for us all.

7 Likes

Give up on appealing to the racists, they won’t be turned. Focus on turning out the people opposed to racism and attempt to flip the folks who just want lower taxes but aren’t racists over. Promote policies that get the middle class and poor stability so the GOP can’t turn them against each other so easily.

14 Likes

I think the neoliberalism as a theory is pretty race-agnostic. I think that was actually one of it’s selling point to an elite that didn’t want to be seen as racist (Bush seems like a product of this). But it’s also power-reinforcing, so it exacerbated existing power imbalances between races. Being race-blind means supporting whatever racism already exists, and lead easily to white people thinking of themselves as the victim of racism.

If that’s what people take from this then I’m a big fan.

15 Likes

100% agree. The republican strategy is simple: Tell everyone the world is naturally dog-eat-dog and that the dogs at the top were the naturally the best, and the dogs at the bottom get nothing. Then create policies that ensure that this continues to appear to be true. Prevent policies that undo this worldview by framing them as the government messing up the natural order, and giving away the winning spots to the losers and forcing the would-be winners to the bottom, which the government does for…(((reasons?)))

Tribes only square off if someone convinces them that there’s only enough for one tribe to survive, and that tribes are even a coherent thing in the first place.

24 Likes

This is why I always get riled up when people talk about “tribalism” in politics. For most of human history most tribes have coexisted peacefully, have cooperated, have intermarried, etc. Pointing out that politics is tribal doesn’t explain why these two tribes are at war right now.

14 Likes

How is that not racist?

1 Like

Dear GOP, suicide would be noble in your case. Try it Now.

4 Likes

The idea that diversity is superior to homogeneity is not a racist idea.

28 Likes

when they realized brown people would soon outvote them

Needs to be a line in a song, STAT!

4 Likes

11 Likes

Can we stop with the clickbait headlines? The continual equating of “white” with “racist”? It’s both inaccurate and ineffective. And it implies the same “all x people are y” equation that drives racism and sexism et al to begin with. Please, Cory, a little less shrill.

2 Likes