The New Racism: This is How the Civil Rights Movement Ends (opens in new tab)

(newrepublic.com)

6 pointscmhamill11y ago2 comments

2 comments

This long-winded essay about "how the civil rights movement will end" boils down to a couple sentences in which the author describes a few Republican votes he didn't like:

"Republican majorities in Southern statehouses are undoing so many of the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement suggests that the end is nigh. Whether it’s by imposing new voter-ID laws, slashing public assistance, refusing Medicaid expansion, or repealing progressive legislation like North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, the GOP-controlled governments of Southern states are behaving in ways that are at times as hostile to the interests of their African American citizens as Jim Crow Democrats were half a century ago."

So his basic thesis is, if you don't believe in welfare you're as hostile to blacks as Jim Crow.

cmhamillOP11y ago

For some definition of "his basic thesis" meaning "radical misrepresentation of his basic thesis," sure.

Whether you like the ideology behind the forces at work in the American South or not, the real effect of these policies is to make the lives of the poorest and most marginalized people in these states worse. In the American South, it just so happens that this means black folks.

I don't know what you'd want out of an article on this issue, but I sure hope it wouldn't be a false rendering of the realities of the situation in the hopes of pandering to some sense of feel-good political ecumenicalism.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse