Backlash

Whites feel discriminated against.

This blog post attempts to give political advice to the progressive left.

The progressive left needs to get correct the politics of cultural integration.  If they don't, they lose.  It is easier to divide than to unite, and there is political advantage in division.  Hillary identified it, said it was pervasive and wrong.  Trump identified it and exploited it to his advantage.  Trump won the political war.

NPR has been on my mind.  This week I am helping raise money for public radio.  In a radio environment of outrage and sensationalism, public radio is an oasis of reason and fair mindedness and honest journalism  They provide real news.  It is expensive to do, and you can chip in, because that is how independent journalism can be funded: crowdsourced, voluntary contributions:

Click Here: www.ijpr.org

Today the NPR website published results of a poll.  It is troubling, but not sensational, which is the public radio style.  The  survey done by Harvard's School of Public Health reports that every ethnic group feels discriminated against both by individuals and the law.  Including whites. Click here: NPR-Harvard poll

Apparently Everyone feels aggrieved.

Identity politics of grievance is a loser for Democrats.  The study reveals the perils for the progressive left of policies that identify and articulate discriminatory grievance.  Trump understood that a great many white Americans--but also some Hispanic, as was proven right in the 2016 election results--feel that they themselves are discriminated against in favor of others.  People feel others are stepping into line ahead of them, and they resent it.  Whites feel that affirmative action is advancing blacks.  Hispanics here legally resent people here illegally.  Native born Americans resent immigrants getting jobs, to say nothing of getting benefits and doing crimes. Law abiders resent the rights given to law breakers. Christians resent that their holidays have lost public primacy.  Many whites resent efforts toward affirmative action.  There is a lot of resentment in America.

The effort toward equality in the past fifty years has meant losers as well as winners, and Trump represented that group of people who felt under siege, their primacy eroding beneath them, and he nurtured and exploited that feeling.  We will say "Merry Christmas", not Happy Holidays; deport immigrants; rough up suspects; investigate affirmative action at colleges; buy American.   

It was a powerful message.  A great many voters liked it.  A great many people feel discriminated against.

Multicultural Fair: all are welcome

Democrats have a powerful message of their own.  Multi-cultural affirmation, equality, and tolerance.   The result will be imperfect.  Events like the Medford Multicultural Fair put multiple ethnicities and points of view into parity and acceptance.  Language of inclusion will offend some because some groups and people will insist on primacy, not equality, and they perceive inclusion as dilution.  They don't want to "push one for English" in a phone menu because they resent that Spanish is an option.  They want Merry Christmas and do not want Hanukkah.  My suggestion is an improvement, not a solution.

Racial and ethnic resentment will be with us for the foreseeable future.

But there is a difference between inclusion and subordination, between language of inclusion and language of privilege and grievance.  The NPR-Harvard poll gave data that the progressive left needs to incorporate in their thinking, that every group, including majority whites, feel resentment against their being discriminated against.   Whites don't want to "check their white privilege."  A great many don't think they have white privilege.  They think they have white disadvantage.  

The left's language backfired, when Hillary Clinton campaign spoke to that grievance, prejudice against people of color, against women, against immigrants, against gays.  The combined total of those aggrieved is a theoretical majority but not an operational one. Many white women vote like whites, not women; many Hispanics vote like anti-abortion Catholics, not like Hispanics; many gays vote like libertarian conservatives, not as aggrieved gays.  Besides, talk of grievance exacerbates backlash.   People bought and wore tee shirts:  "I'm a Deplorable."

The left does not need to create liberal, inclusive language that can dampen feelings of resentment  They need to remember it, and dare use that language.

Martin Luther King's offered it:  "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."    This language changes the frame.  A message of inclusion and color-blindness would pit equality vs. resentment instead of the 2016 frame of minority resentment vs. majority resentment.

There will still be resentment in  the world, but at least progressives would be working against it, positing a liberal value of equality as its alternative.  The left can win with that.  Not everyone values equality as much as the progressive left does, but it is a stronger foundation for a party platform than is comparative grievance.