Bill Cosby wags his finger at poor blacks (“no-grows”) and tells them to get their shit together. Morgan Freeman wants to abolish Black History Month and suggests that we can banish racism by simply ceasing to talk about it. Charles Barkley inveighs against looters as “not real black people.” We eat it up and it goes viral. White folks are comforted when they hear darker-skinned men say this sort of thing because it gives them permission to ignore the racism built into the class structure of American society. America’s wealth and power are built on the exploitation of blacks and the poor, and not just those of this nation. Racism is the collateral damage of capitalism, an essential element in our rise to geopolitical prominence. It is an integral part of the American Dream. It is woven into the fabric of our lives. The greatest triumph of advertising was the marketing of Free Enterprise itself. The master stroke of American capitalism was the the propaganda by means of which the poor and the lower-middle class of all skin tones were induced to identify with the rich. It took only a handful of genuine success stories, plus a few generations inculcated with the myth of the self-made entrepreneur, to make poverty sinful and wealth holy, for black and white alike. Alas! Darkness of skin is linked to poverty and failure; privilege and wealth are structurally inseparable from whiteness. Such is the power of ideology. It is hardly irrelevant, then, that the gentlemen mentioned above are rich, enjoy access to many people and places not available to hoi polloi, move in exalted circles, and are accustomed to being treated with deference. In fairness to Mr. Freeman it must be noted that in a moment of lucidity he accused the Mississippi Tea Party of racism.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 19:06:02 +0000
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