Photo Courtesy of The Guardian
Once again some fool has found an unflattering image of Trump and made a witty joke about it. And we all find it funny. As someone said, “I laugh that I may not cry.” Don’t people realize that, no matter how frustrated they are, acting like playground bullies isn’t the way to solve this problem?
I’m not going so far as to say we should have sympathy for Trump. He’s a dangerous fool being used by a group of evil men to bolster their power and greed. But even they are only a symptom of the problem.
Fear
And instead of blaming the symptom, you’d be much better off looking for the root of the problem so you can seek a cure for the disease. The first thing analysis turns up about Americans is their fear. Fear of being disregarded on the world stage. Fear of anything foreign. Fear of anyone outside each person’s tiny little circle of friends. And the worst fear of all: that someone is going to crawl up from below and knock you off your perch on the social scale. The strongest tribe you can belong to is your niche in the social hierarchy because so much of your welfare depends on it. And the problem of America, land of the free, is its all-encompassing caste system.
Is It a Race Problem?
On a statistical basis, racial profiling works. If 66% of the criminals police deal with are of a certain skin colour, then a random stopping someone of that skin colour gives officers twice the odds of picking up a perpetrator. Add to that the bigotry that has festered since the Civil War or before, and you have a police force at war with a large number of their clients. Add to that the tendency for the predominantly white court system to convict racial minorities more often. Add to that an unequal school system that turns out poorly educated people who get poorer jobs, which increases the cycle, and creates a subculture who have a right to be afraid. All the time.
Po’ White Trash
Yes, you know all that about black-skinned people, but now let’s apply it to some other Americans. All of the above applies to a greater degree to another disadvantaged minority. For many of the same reasons, the low-class whites in America have the same problems. Their poverty keeps them down, and often only their white skin gives them any natural advantage. When they see this advantage eroding, their fear rises even higher, making them prime victims for a populist like Trump to con.
In developing a real democracy, disadvantaged people would rise towards the level of the rest of society where everyone is equal. In a hierarchical system, a disadvantaged people who rise a step must push another group of people out of their positions. Hence the antagonism in the white “working poor” for the “uppity blacks,” and more recently the immigrants who are “stealing our jobs.”
Those at the Very Bottom
Incarceration rates have long been held up as an example of the unfairness of the American system. But is the unfairness only to people of colour? And is it because of their colour that they are treated unfairly? Well, yes, but there is another factor that may be even more valid: social class.
It’s easy to find statistics about the percentage of racial groups in the American prison system, but harder to find information about economic level. The only specific data available is education: 70% of state prisoners in the US have no high school diploma.
Nathaniel Lewis, a researcher for the People’s Policy Project, crunched a bunch of numbers comparing rates of incarceration for those of different racial and social backgrounds and came to an interesting conclusion. It turns out that social class is a primary predictor of incarceration, and the reason so many blacks are in jail is that so many blacks are poor.
“It could be that mass incarceration is primarily a system of managing poor people, rather than black people, and the racial disparities show up mostly because black people are disproportionately represented in the lower classes.”
Solving Class Tribalism
Statistics indicate that the percentage of incarcerated blacks is decreasing compared to the number of incarcerated whites. This is good for the blacks, but rings a warning bell for the whites. If incarceration is a sign of social class, that means the blacks are rising and the poor whites are falling. No wonder the “working poor” will grasp at any straw, even if it’s orange (ha, ha), to find a solution.
Lewis goes further to suggest:
“One of the best ways to reduce the total prison population would be to embrace social democratic policy that would address poverty, the education gap, and other class divides.”
The American Dream is that anyone can claw his way to the top if he doesn’t mind stepping on a lot of other people on the way up. As long as they maintain that attitude, they’re going to have the problems they have, and nothing they can do will solve them.