Category Archives: Racial Equality

Politics And The Cities

Conversations over the last couple of weeks have focused my attention on a troubling aspect of political life that has been receiving less attention recently, due to the Trump/Musk hourly assaults on America’s government and constitution– the social and political divides between urban, suburban and rural Americans.

I recently ran into an old acquaintance who used to live near me, in the heart of the city. She’d subsequently moved to the very edge of suburbia, to an area one might characterize as “rural adjacent,” and in our catch-up conversation, she noted that several of her neighbors were afraid to go downtown (in one case, admitting to a fear of traveling south of 56th Street). Her new neighbors seemed amazed that she’d survived her years as an urban resident, and seemed unwilling to believe her description of urban life as safe.

Paul Krugman recently addressed that mindset. He began by describing a recent “evening out” in New York.

I had a civilized evening Tuesday. I did a public event at the CUNY Graduate Center, interviewing Zach Carter, author of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes. Video of the event, which seemed to go well, should be available in a few days.

Then some of us took Zach out for dinner near the GC, which is just across the street from the Empire State Building. The conversation was great, and we lingered until almost 11, after which several of us walked over to the subway and took it home. And you know what happened?

Nothing. There were plenty of people out on the streets, which felt perfectly safe; so did the subway, which efficiently delivered us to our destinations.

Krugman documented the safety of his city, but he recognized that offering such evidence has become political, because trash talking about cities and urban life has become a constant theme in MAGA rhetoric.

According to Donald Trump, people in New York are afraid to go outside, because they can’t cross the street without getting mugged or raped. Just last Friday Sean Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, called the NYC subway a “shithole,” which nobody wants to ride. Spoiler: It isn’t.

The data confirms Krugman’s point, which raises the question, why has trash-talking about urban life become a MAGA theme?Krugman says that Trump’s hostility to immigrants impels him to portray urban areas with large numbers of immigrants as  crime-ridden dystopias. While that is undoubtedly part of it, it would be a mistake to ignore a more obvious motive: Trump’s constant efforts to restore White males to dominance over other Americans.

Black people, immigrants and various other “Others” tend to live in cities. Suburban developments and gated communities are slowly becoming more diverse racially, but not economically. Some small towns in Indiana have seen an influx of immigrants, mostly Hispanic, but they are the exception. When someone says they are “afraid” to come into an urban core, they are really communicating a belief that “those people” are dangerous. They might make an exception for the Black doctor who can afford the mini-mansion down the street, but they’re sure that their neighbor is unrepresentative.

There’s a reason that virtually every city in the U.S. with a population of 500,000 and above is Blue on political maps, and virtually every rural precinct is Red. Those of us who live with that dread word–diversity–are comfortable with the varied fabric of life produced by a diverse demography. Most of us celebrate it. We find that our daily lives are enriched, not threatened, by encounters with interesting people who don’t look or pray (or eat) like us. We are less likely than our rural relatives to believe that difference translates to threat, and more likely to enjoy the expanded foods, perspectives and entertainments that those differences offer.

We’re also more likely to accept the necessity of government. I still recall an observation I once read to the effect that when you live down an unpaved road a mile or so from your nearest neighbor, and throw your dinner scraps out the back door for the dogs and other critters, you tend to discount the importance of a government that provides services like roads and garbage collection.

Obviously, not every rural resident is fearful or racist, and plenty of urban dwellers are both–but the Blue and Red of that political map is instructive. MAGA is essentially a rural phenomenon.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the full effect of Trump’s insane economic policies hit the rural folks who have been voting their racial animosities rather than their economic interests.

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The Real DEI

As Trump and Musk continue to destroy the government agencies that monitor or prevent the illegal activities that enrich them, they’ve pursued an ancillary effort that lays bare the source of Trump’s narrow electoral win: MAGA’s war on “wokism” in general and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs in particular.

As I have previously noted, the animosity toward efforts to address social and legal discrimination are part and parcel of an unfortunate but persistent strain of American bigotry. To our shame, millions of Americans have defended slavery and Jim Crow, opposed votes for women, donned white sheets and marched with the Ku Klux Klan. Others–who were less virulent but no less bigoted–merely refrained from hiring or otherwise doing business with minority folks, and blackballed Blacks and Jews from their country clubs and other venues.

The current assaults, ironically, are evidence of the nation’s historic protection of straight White Christian males from the uncomfortable reality that they are not a superior breed. It turns out that intellect, character and ability–and absences thereof– are pretty equally distributed among all races, religions and genders.

For confirmation of that fact, we need look no farther than the collection of clowns, incompetents and sycophants Trump has installed in important positions, and compare them to the credentialed and competent “DEI hires” he ejected from those same positions. If we ever needed evidence that White skin is no guarantee of intelligence, integrity or competence, virtually all of Trump’s appointees provide that evidence.

Trump’s base undoubtedly approves of the ferocity with which the administration has pursued its assault on anti-discrimination efforts, but it turns out that Americans in general have moved on from the days when your police chief was a disciple of Sheriff James Clark and your friendly banker or dentist was a Grand Dragon of the KKK.

A recent article in the Atlantic looked at the survey research, and concluded that the extreme positions—and appointments—of the Trump administration are wildly at odds with the views of most Americans.

The extreme positions—and appointments—of the Trump administration are self-evidently at odds with Americans’ views in the main. Recently, Trump appointed Darren Beattie to a senior diplomatic position at the State Department. Beattie is notorious for making arguments such as “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” I don’t need to look at survey data to argue that this is a fringe position.

Earlier in the article, the author did look at survey data, and shared evidence of Americans’ views on DEI efforts in general.

Given the way this administration has targeted DEI and “woke” policies, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Americans were completely on board. Yet according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted right before the election, just one-fifth of employed adults think that focusing on DEI at work is “a bad thing.” Even among workers who are Republican or lean Republican, a minority (42 percent) say that focusing on DEI is “a bad thing.” In a January poll from Harris/Axios, a majority of Americans said DEI initiatives had no impact on their career; more respondents among nearly every demographic polled (including white people, men, and Republicans) said they believed it had benefited their careers more than it had hindered them. (The sole, amusing exception being Gen X.) A June 2024 poll from The Washington Post and Ipsos found that six in 10 Americans believed DEI programs were “a good thing.” And all of this was before any backlash to Trump’s presidency had time to set in.

An early signal that the administration is overreaching comes from a Washington Post poll on early Trump-administration actions, which found that voters oppose ending DEI programs in the federal government (49–46) and banning trans people from the military (53–42). When asked about one of Trump’s signature issues, deportation, the poll showed that, by a nearly 20-point margin, Americans do not want people to be deported if they “have not broken laws in the United States except for immigration laws.” It’s hard to imagine that those same Americans approve of sending a man to Gitmo for riding his bike on the wrong side of the street, or of calling a city’s administrator for homelessness services a “DEI hire” because she’s a white woman.

If there’s one thing Trump excels at, it’s demonstrating that White Christian men are not universally superior–and that those who most resent DEI tend to be both unintelligent and dangerously inept.

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Why Economic Ignorance Matters

America’s election of Donald Trump–horrifying and destructive as it was and is–was part of a global lurch to the Right, and that lurch can be attributed to one over-riding factor: a negative reaction to immigration. There are a lot of moving parts to that reaction, but I want to focus on one inarguable element of MAGA’s hatred of (certain) immigrants–a hatred that blinds the economically-ignorant to the predictable consequences of mass deportations.

Racism has always been the central part of Trump’s appeal, and his promises to “protect” the border have, accordingly, focused on the southern border. When he talks about limiting illegal immigration, it is quite clear that he is talking about poor brown and Black people, not the rich, or the stray Canadian or Norwegian.

The promised massive deportations have yet to occur, but early reports reflect two “Trumpian” realities: his disregard for legal and constitutional niceties, and his ignorance of the way the economy works. It isn’t just his love of tariffs that illustrates that ignorance; he clearly has no comprehension of the importance of both legal and illegal immigrants in selected sectors of the economy.

In his first few weeks back in office, Trump has consistently ignored the law, so it isn’t surprising that early “roundups” have frequently crossed the constitutional line. As Paul Krugman recently noted, “if you make it clear that respecting the rights of the accused is a liberal, DEI thing, of course some ICE and Border Control agents will run wild. Basically, anyone with brown skin will be at risk of at least temporary detention.”

And speaking of risk, even though the number of immigrants arrested is small so far, Krugman and others point out that  the raids that have occurred have already inspired widespread fear.  Some workers have stayed home rather than coming to work. Others have returned to their home countries. And some businesses have even laid off valuable employees for fear that they may be raided.

In the linked essay, Krugman offers charts documenting the likely economic impact of widespread deportations, beginning with the fact that almost 1 in 5 U.S. workers is foreign-born. Most of those are here legally, but unauthorized immigrants make up around 5 percent of the work force.

Losing a large fraction of these workers would be a serious blow to the economy, especially because immigrants, legal and not, play a much bigger role in some industries and occupations than they do in the economy as a whole.

Agriculture is the most striking example: Immigrants — many of them undocumented — make up most of the farm labor force.

Push those workers out, either by actual deportation or detention or simply by creating a climate of fear, and just watch what happens to grocery prices.

About a quarter of construction industry employees are immigrants — 40 percent in Texas and California — but this number rises to 31 percent if you look only at “construction trades,” i.e., people who actually build stuff as opposed to working in offices or marketing. And the immigrant share is much higher in particular trades.

So at a time when Americans are still angry about the price of groceries and, with more justification, about the unaffordability of housing, Trump’s immigrant crackdown seems set to hobble food production and home construction.

Krugman notes that Trump can probably call off most of his threatened tariffs, granting exemptions in return for concessions benefitting him personally, but his constant, ugly screeds against (certain) immigrants have played into racial hatreds that can’t easily be reined in.

I have previously posted about the gap between immigration facts and the fallacies that allow MAGA bigots to use migrants as a handy wedge issue. As I said then, if anyone harbors doubts about the GOP’s entirely political approach to what the media routinely calls the “border crisis,” it should have been dispelled when Republicans abruptly walked away from a bipartisan proposal that–after difficult negotiations–had given them pretty much everything they’d been demanding, so they could use the “border crisis” as a campaign issue.

And speaking of the border–most of the 11 million immigrants who are here illegally flew in and overstayed their visas.

America’s anti-immigrant hysteria is central to today’s White Christian Nationalism. Of course, there has always been a nativist streak in America; Ellis Island was first established to keep “undesirables” from entering the country. “Give me your tired, your poor, your masses yearning to breathe free” was Emma Lazarus’ response to the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Know-Nothing Party was formed largely by people who feared that Irish Catholic immigrants would take jobs from God-fearing Protestant “real Americans.”

We haven’t come very far, and MAGA wants to take us back……

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Reclaiming America

In the wake of the November election, I can’t count the number of friends and family members who have declared a moratorium on political news–who have taken a “time out” in order to protect their equilibrium/sanity and avoid descending into depression.

I will admit that I have dialed back my usual immersion in the news, for the same reason. It really has been an act of self-preservation to take a vacation from the evidence that so many  Americans have dismissed the ideals of our founding, and are willing to close their eyes to threats posed to the principles that truly did make America great.

But a vacation is not a departure, and it’s time to determine how each of us can contribute to a massive uprising of people who may have different political affiliations and/or policy goals, but who agree on the importance of protecting civil liberties and participatory democracy in the face of the grifters, autocrats and racists–elected and otherwise– who are preparing to assume control of the government.

If those of you reading this are like me, your inbox has been filling up with notices from political and nonprofit organizations, both local and national, outlining their preparations for sustained activism in the face of those threats. One example–Democracy 2025–lists 280+ member organizations, and over 800 Lawyers, advocates, and experts already engaged in the work.

Despite claims, no President or their allies can just snap their fingers to implement an anti-democratic vision. Our laws and Constitution provide real protections and tools through the courts and in our communities to stop abuses of power and harms to people. Still, these threats are real, so we’re prepared to confront them.

Learn more about the threats we’ve identified, and check back often as we release additional analysis, tracking, and tools to respond.

I’ve received dozens of other, similar announcements, although none with as extensive a list of participants.

Local organizations–including numerous bipartisan and nonpartisan ones– are also gearing up to defend fundamental constitutional values, recognizing that what we are facing is not a partisan political confrontation, but a civic, social and indisputably moral conflict. We can go back to arguing about politics and policy when we have restored the rule of law and respect for time-honored democratic norms.

As Mark Twain once wrote: Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

A group of local organizations that define patriotism as Twain did is planning a rally at University Park, in downtown Indianapolis, on January 20th–the same day as the Inauguration and also, coincidentally, Martin Luther King, Jr. day. The rally is intended to reaffirm attendees’ commitment to King’s vision and opposition to the restoration of White Nationalism and patriarchy. There will be uplifting music, readings that remind us of America’s historical aspirations, and messages from clergy of different faith traditions. (Yours truly will also participate in the program.)

We will pledge allegiance to the America we love and believe in–a generous and welcoming country devoted to liberty, inclusion and equal civic participation.

The rally– titled Reclaim, Rebuild and Resist– will begin at 10:00 a.m and end at noon. It is intended to demonstrate a firm and unyielding commitment to the principles of liberty and equality enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and espoused by Dr. King—to reaffirm our support for the original American motto: e pluribus unum (out of the many, one), and our concerns for the threats posed by members of the incoming state and federal administrations to the values of inclusion, equality and the rule of law.

We will pledge to reclaim the visions of Dr. King and other social justice warriors, to help in efforts to rebuild and reinforce America’s democratic institutions, and resist attacks on foundational American values from any and all sources.

If you live in central Indiana, I hope you will attend. And bring your friends and families.

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The Crusades Of 2024

We Americans talk about theology, philosophy and ideology as if they are discrete mental categories, but of course, they aren’t. The other day, as I was mourning the political reality I inhabit, as I tried to comfort myself with reflections about the “fits and starts” of progress, I suddenly realized what I have missed about America’s current cold civil war: at its base, it’s our contemporary version of religious war.

I actually owe this insight to Micah Beckwith, who recently took to X/Twitter to declare that college students who criticised his medieval worldview are impermissibly “woke” and to threaten the existence of the Indiana Daily Student, which had published the critique.

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that the hysteria against “wokism” is terminology for the war between religious fundamentalism and liberalism–especially religious liberalism.

Religious beliefs began as an effort to explain mysterious phenomena: why the tides go in and out, why people become diseased, why some folks prosper and others don’t.  What we call secularism is really the steady expansion of human knowledge  that erodes the role of supernatural beliefs. We no longer ask the priest to pray over a broken leg, we call the doctor. We no longer use prayer (or rain dances) to counteract droughts. Most of us (unfortunately, not all) reject the Calvinist belief that equates poverty with moral deficit and wealth with superior merit.

Many denominations have responded to the growth of science and empiricism by revisiting their approach to theology. Rather than seeing religious adherence as a simple issue of obedience to orders from “on high”–orders interpreted differently by the theologians of each specific denomination– many Christian, Jewish, and Islamic congregations have reinvisioned religion’s role.  Rather than issuing fundamentalist decrees, these more mature theologies help parishioners wrestle with the nature of goodness and the ethical and moral obligations of humanity. Their churches, synagogues and mosques offer congregants the comfort of loving and supportive communities. My friends in the Christian clergy tend to focus on the Sermon on Mount (could anything be more woke?).

But that lack of an authoritative “bright line” drives fundamentalists crazy. Horrified religious literalists (abetted by those whose personal prospects are enhanced by biblical notions of patriarchy and America’s cultural Calvinism) fight back. Today, they are the bulk of the MAGA people supporting Trump.

One example is Pete Hegseth–the Fox News pundit who is Trump’s ridiculous and unqualified choice for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is a self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist who has tattoos that he claims are “religious symbols.” Those symbols date back to the Crusades–the effort by the Christian west to “liberate” Jerusalem from Muslim control. One of the tattoos says, “Deus Vult.” Hegseth explained in 2020, “I’ve got Deus Vult – God Wills It – which was the cry of the Crusaders, on my bicep.”

Like Micah Beckwith and other fundamentalists, Hegseth is confident that he knows precisely what God wills. I need not spell out the dangers of putting such people in positions of power.

People like me, who tend to be critical of organized religion, have missed a central point: it isn’t “religion” that is the problem–just as it isn’t philosophy or ideology. It’s regressive religion, philosophy and ideology. It’s a primitive world-view used in the service of Othering–a religion, philosophy or ideology that is at base a rationale for the dominance of some people over others.

The danger arises from “righteous” folks who are certain they possess exclusive knowledge of “God’s will.” That isn’t just the Beckwith version of Christianity. Every religion has its contingent of fundamentalists who know exactly what their God demands and are prepared to impose that understanding on the rest of us.

In the U.S., because Christians have been in the majority, the religious fundamentalism that animates Christian Nationalism  threatens not just our religious and civic liberties but allso–as my Christian friends insist — authentic Christianity.

Those of us who have rejected organized religion cannot lead the charge against this theocratic Crusade. That leadership must come from within the Christian community. There are signs that such leadership is emerging, that Christians who base their understanding on Jesus’ “wokeness” are waking up to the fact that the fundamentalists pushing for theocracy are endangering the very values and beliefs that animate their more loving and inclusive versions of their faith traditions.

I now understand the battle over “wokeness.” It’s a modern version of the Crusades–a battle of fundamentalist True Believers against contemporary religious and philosophical beliefs.

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