Angry White Men

[babylonsister]

Angry White Men

Can the G.O.P. genuinely change its attitude toward minorities and women?

By Kevin Baker

snip//


For almost fifty years now, confronted with the challenges of a complex and rapidly changing world, most American whites, including too many working-class whites, have chosen to vote their worst fears and prejudices—even when it meant undermining their own economic interests.

They voted, and continue to vote, for the party and the individuals who most avidly support business’s “right” to break their unions, ship their jobs overseas, lower their wages, and diminish the mass buying power of America. They failed to notice even when their sainted Ronald Reagan actually raised the overall tax rate for most working people by hiking Social Security and Medicare taxes.

They continue to fear people of color no matter how many of their predictions about them are proved wrong. Over the past twenty years, crime has plummeted throughout the United States, most inner cities have revived and flourished, middle-class blacks and Latinos have filled suburban neighborhoods without setting off a crime wave or a race war, and a black president with a Muslim name took office and promptly started knocking off Islamic terrorists and deporting illegal immigrants.

The proof of decades now is that, having won their equal rights under the law, American citizens of color—old and new—aspire to nothing so much as the very same values and goals of most white Americans. And nowhere is this more true than with those who have felt the need to enter the country without our permission, such as that father, gunned down at the border the other day by some trigger-happy Texas chopper cop—a poor man trying to sneak into the United States to pay for an operation for his son. Far and away, these people work harder, for less money and under worse conditions, than most of “us” have since the nineteenth century.

Yet the reaction of right-wing whites has been to fill their gun shelves with automatic weapons, their ears with radio rants, and their heads with absurd conspiracy theories.

more...

http://harpers.org/blog/2012/11/angry-white-men/

[wyldwolf]

1. Very good piece.

I'd very much like to see some stats, if they exist, or even some anecdotal evidence of women who change their voting patterns once they marry an 'angry white man.' I've been surprised at some of the vitriol coming from my white married female friends this week - especially those I knew before they were married.

[John2]

3. This

article is better than the one Paul Begala wrote of why President Obama won. President Obama got support of only 39 percent of white people. I assume most of that support came from progressive states where whites are more Liberal or the as the right wing whites would call the evil Left. They are similar to the abolitionists in my perspective.

A lot of white women that vote for the conservative Party, usually take a backseat. The male is usually the bread winner. Take Todd Akins attitude towards aggressive women. What did he call senator McCaskill, yet his own wife had no problem with it. Romney's primary view of women's role seems to be like that of his own wife. Go home and cook dinner but have a job as some hobby to keep her happy. Their bodies is also property for making babies. He doesn't see them as the head of households.

Here is one anecdote of a young white female who voted against President Obama in North Carolina because she saw the President as a threat to her husbands wealth. This female had went to college and got a degree but her husband's future took priority over her interests. Everything else that she valued changed and became secondary to her husband's. The group that President Obama lost support from in North Carolina was white women. Every other female group, he won.

[PATRICK]

2. I think there needs to be more of a breakdown

of these white males. Geographic, lifestyle, religion, authoritarianism, prejudice(job threatened) information sourced. Is there a balance of those mostly frustrated by ALL sides not defending their jobs or rights they will reward those who represent only their hatred and nothing else at all?

Certainly I don't know THAT many batshit crazy buffoons. Those indoctrinated by the military and fundies to blame the Dems and identify absurdly with Republicans are the only ones. Inherently they are not bad, except for the indoctrination and the really really misplaced loyalty. It takes a lot of Dems delivering the goods and a lot of bad behavior by the GOP to sway them.

Most of all, if you could set everything aside it seems all of this speculations melts away before the pattern of how well off economically people are feeling. The only other trump is war and fear. Whoever gets to hold the card and be there in place gets the benefit, probably regardless of the efforts of the MSM one way or the other. For all the various issues and voter suppression it pretty much shook down as being partly satisfied and partly dissatisfied with the economy, fear defanged. Numberswise. On the other hand the GOP really really pushed all other buttons as furiously as possible getting their goofball just back to that default.

Then there is that angry loon I had on the phone who thought Obama was a socialist in 2008 and I am positive still thinks that way with no evidence or growth in reasoning powers in the slightest. You'd think they would have a stroke by now.