Reply #10: Fear of the other -- Obama flouts the tacit US Caste System

[Elmore Furth]

These gentlemen wish to appeal the the tribal instinct of "fear of the other." They wish to make Obama to appear to be "not one of us."

It is part of the "smear, fear and queer" message that the Far Right has been pumping out about their opponents since McCarthy.

This looks to us like racism, but it is really a super-category to racism. It is fear of the other built into the explicit structure of a culture, above simple racial distinction. The force of law has been of little moment against the force of this cultural rule.

Further, though it differs in degree, we also have a caste system in the United States, with some mobility available from one class to another, although those moving to one they are not born into are often regarded with scorn. For the “upwardly mobile” the class one is leaving often criticizes the ambitious person with expressions like “he’s too big for his britches,” “she thinks she’s too good for us,” and “he’s got Champagne tastes but a beer pocketbook.” The people born into the class one is trying to enter will be equally critical, saying things like, “You can take a man out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of a man,” or “they are so obviously nouveau riche, who do they think they’re fooling?”

Even more, most classes look with disdain upon other classes, including any above or below them in the perceived cultural hierarchy. Working class laborers talk about “suits” who “never get their hands dirty.” Middle class workers talk about people who “always have dirty fingernails,” as well as “trailer trash.” People in upper management scorn “middle managers” and “bureaucrats.” People with inherited money joke about “working stiffs.” People without much money regard people with a lot of money as “bloodsuckers” who - they believe - got rich by stealing money from them. People in the entertainment industry, who tend to be liberal in their social views, look upon middle America as a “white bread” audience clearly too unsophisticated to comprehend reality as it really is, and therefore in need of pandering to their backwardness, as well as forced enlightenment. Homosexuals call heterosexuals “breeders.” Heterosexuals call homosexuals "fags" and "queers." Southerners scorn Northerners, and vice versa, in every virtually country. American fantasy monsters in children’s book have often been “slant-eyed demons.” Japanese children’s books have “round-eyed demons,” often also blue-eyed and blond. Liberals look at conservatives as mean spirited and dull witted; conservatives accuse liberals of giving in to the culture and pandering to laziness. Every one of these groups has jokes about the others (and every one of the others returns the disdain), and heart-wrenching “true stories” that support their worldview, and nasty tales of the suffering caused by those with whom they disagree.


We have classes - castes - by the thousands, interpenetrating and overlapping, and we regularly justify the ones we’re in, and look down at all the others. Our fear of the other is pervasive beyond the bounds of race.
Fear of the Other