Quote:
Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower
It’s a nice story that we can tell ourselves—that only unwashed redneck masses exhibit that sort of overt hostility for minorities. That the more refined affluent GOP holds its nose and accepts the racism but really just wants lower taxes. My uncle was an executive headhunter Greenwich country club guy. At my father’s funeral earlier this year, he was sitting at the back of the church before the funeral (the day before the churches stopped allowing gatherings) and he called me over and asked me where my family was. I said they were in the front left pew, right in front of his granddaughter Sarah. He said quietly, “I’ve never met Sarah.” The reason he has never met his college-age granddaughter is that he disowned his daughter after she married a black man. He feels exactly the way that blurb says, and is vocal about it. He presumably resented the fact that, at the time of the wedding, his son-in-law was leeching off the state as an AUSA. As far as I can tell, he has suffered few-to-zero ramifications professionally or personally on account of his overt racism. Some of his country club pals may have the good taste to only whisper about their disdain of minorities, but it’s still there. I know you think accusations of racism these days are largely overblown, and I disagree, and I’m not going to argue with you about it.
Oh, and when I say he suffered few ramifications, I of course mean apart from the fact that he had never met his beautiful, mature-beyond-her-years, completely delightful granddaughter who was sitting down in the front of the church at his brother’s funeral. And still hasn’t. What a sad fucking man.
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Right. But it's also a blunt and incorrect story certain of us want to tell ourselves about Conservatives, or GOP voters. Or even populists.
We like the myth that it's significantly, primarily about race because it neatly explains a lot while at the same time making it very easy to deride all non-progressives.
But seeing Democrats or Republicans as lockstep voters, or even close to monolithic in their views, is delusion.
I agree people like your Uncle are out there. I know them. But they are outliers. I grew up at golf courses (I'd otherwise never have met my father). There are those hardened bigots. But a bigot who'd disown family for marrying a black person? That is a very rare person among middle to upper class Republicans.
Of course YMMV. I was raised among moderate Democrats and Republicans who prided themselves on being logical. When my cousin married a Black person, the only comments offered were well wishes and whispers about how the person marrying into the family must have been daft to marry someone as bizarre as my cousin.
Those are Northeastern/Mid-Atlantic, been-to-university, rational moderates. Bigotry was frowned upon because it's simply dumb. One would be looked upon as a lowlife to engage in racist talk, in public or in private. That was way the poor Archie Bunker sorts with grudges and bad schooling talked to one another in the shitty bars. It'd be a scandal to have a family member disown a child for marrying, or being gay. He'd be reactively disowned.
Further away from the cities you'll find more openly bigoted sorts. So maybe my point doesn't hold for the more educated and affluent GOP in other parts of the nation. But I really and truly doubt, and I say this coming from a school where 70% of my friends seem to come from somewhere in the Greenwich corridor, that there are many people like your uncle still out there.
And I think it's dangerous to use the word "racism" with a broad brush as seems fashionable among progressives today. (I'm not accusing you of this, but it is a problem that is worth raising here, particularly given the country's rejection of such progressive extremism it in the last election.) If one wishes to use a word so freighted, it should be used carefully, surgically. ("Fascism" is another -- there ought to be a Godwin's Law applied to that one, as 9 out of 10 users don't even know what the term actually means.)
There is a "disdain for minorities" I see among better heeled Republicans that's sometimes rooted in racism. But what's often mistaken for a disdain for minorities is actually a disdain for people who are perceived to not have "measured up." To run a small business, as many GOP voters do, or to work as a doctor, lawyer, CPA, engineer, etc., involves a lot of hard work. To ascend a corporate hierarchy often requires extreme sacrifice. It involves risk, stress, suffering. I think a lot of voters who've made a few bucks or have to run a business day to day, dealing with all the stress that brings, resent those they perceive to not be working as hard. There's a lot of classism in it. They forget that often, a lot of their success is due to luck. And they fail to understand that there are simply a lot of people who aren't talented, aren't smart, aren't conscientious, and aren't willing to take risk or sacrifice as much as some others... Far more of them than there are the converse. Most humans aren't leaders, aren't uniquely intelligent, aren't uniquely insightful. They have to be taken care of to some extent.
I think a lot of it is hard-wired Darwinist instinct. Those who've made something of themselves resent being locked into a system with those who need something from the government. In many cases it's only accidentally about race because minorities tend to be disproportionate members of classes to whom the govt is important.
