In Trumps World, Whites Are the Only Disadvantaged Class
As long as trump holds his base and Sessions continues to do damage, we are in for a disaster.
In Trumps World, Whites Are the Only Disadvantaged Class
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/in-trumps-world-whites-are-the-only-disadvantaged-class?mbid=social_twitter
By Jelani Cobb
6:00 A.M.
https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59836e44b9ba6b65ad528b41/master/w_649,c_limit/Cobb-Affirmative-Action.jpg
In a recent suit brought by Abigail Fisher, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld universities right to use race as a factor in admissions. Now the Trump Administration is taking aim at such policies.
Photograph by Luke Sharrett / NYT / Redux
In 2011, the year Donald Trump became the standard-bearer for the racist campaign to challenge Barack Obamas citizenship, he didnt just lob conspiracies about the Presidents birthplace; he also questioned how Obama gained admission to two Ivy League universities. I heard he was a terrible student, terrible, Trump remarked, to the Associated Press. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? Im thinking about it. Im certainly looking into it. Let him show his records. Coming just two days before Obama released his long-form birth certificate, the attack on the Presidents educational background tipped Trumps hand. He was not simply intent on delegitimizing the first black Presidency but also the processes that made one possible in the first place.
This broader theme was easy to miss in the scrum of last years campaign, as duelling perspectives debated whether economic anxiety or populist racism was the more active ingredient in Trumpism. Trump likely understood that this was always a false dichotomy. The dominant theme in the history of American populism, from the days of Tom Watson through those of George Wallace, is that resentful whites understand their economic status not in absolute terms but relative to the blacks whom they perceive as the true barometer of their standing. The question is not whether C.E.O.s have salaries hundreds of times larger than their own but whether black people have salaries comparable to theirs. The forces that have ravaged the American working classes were set loose four decades ago and were turbocharged by the end of the Cold War, but it took two terms of a black Presidency for much of this public to recognize that its fortunes were in a tailspin. Until 2008, this group had lacked a static landmark against which to measure whether it was moving backward or forward. Obama became that.
Thus Barack Obama and Donald Trump dont simply represent successive Presidencies; they personify rival genealogies of our current moment, warring claims to history. Where Obama built a movement to shake off the dead hand of history, Trump was hoping to reanimate that hand and clench it into a fist.
These are the tea leaves that foretold Tuesday nights leak of the Department of Justice memo announcing its plan to mount a legal challenge to affirmative action in university admissions. Politically, the leak of the memo has the possibly intentional effect of reminding conservatives why they should defend Jeff Sessions from Trumps attempts to replace him as Attorney General. But its significance extends beyond the factional G.O.P. infighting. The memo became public one day before Trumps endorsement of a Senate bill that would curb legal immigration to the United States. (At a press briefing, Stephen Miller explained the move in terms that recalled the language of the racialist Immigration Act of 1924.) These two initiatives, along with the constant talk of building a border wall and the Administrations fulminations about trade deficits, point to an over-all endeavor to create a kind of racial protectionism, to socially engineer a world in which whitesthe unheralded disadvantaged class in Americaonce again have a deck stacked in their own favor. The logical yield of this weeks news is fewer students who are the children of immigrants and fewer black students, whose presence deprives whites of warranted opportunities.
Fisher v. University of Texas, the most recent challenge to affirmative action in higher education to reach the Supreme Court, provides significant context for this weeks developments........................
.......................................... in absolute terms, blacks remain a marginal presence at the nations flagship institutions. Last year, African-Americans constituted just five per cent of the students at élite universities, with a large portion of that minority coming from abroad. In the hands of the Trump Administration, that number could, conceivably, grow smaller, not just at élite universities but across higher education. (Incidentally, Trump suggested earlier this year that historically black colleges might be discriminatory against white students.)...................
Doodley
(8,976 posts)dem in texas
(2,672 posts)Make America Great Again = Make America White Again
SCantiGOP
(13,855 posts)I am disgusted that my dream of playing in the NBA is being destroyed by all the big black guys hogging the team roster spots. And my rap career also is not taking off like I planned.
Kidding aside, there is a lot of truth in the post. And as absurd as it sounds, it is a compelling argument to make to a slacker 30 year old white guy who stayed stoned through his mediocre High School tenure and now finds that he can't get a decent job while those around him talk about how all of the inner city black folks get free cell phones and $60,000 a year in welfare.