The FT has just reported:
Far more African-American than white voters have suffered a reduction in their family's income due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a poll for the Financial Times that underscores the racial disparities of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The survey showed 74 per cent of black voters reported a financial hit compared to 58 per cent of white voters. It also found that more African-Americans had lost their job since the outbreak began, highlighting the growing economic inequalities at a time when Americans are protesting against the death of George Floyd.
The monthly survey of likely voters for the FT and the Peter G Peterson Foundation found 25 per cent of black respondents had been dismissed or furloughed since the start of the recent lockdowns, compared to 19 per cent of white respondents.
And you wonder why there is uprising in the USA right now?
Black lives matter.
That covers all aspect of life.
And there is gross injustice going on.
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There has never not been gross injustice in the US. The black unemployment rate is consistently double the white one, the first black president destroyed more black wealth than anyone else in history. Good thing we have paragons of virtue like the Pete Peterson foundation, a “non-profit” that billionaire Pete Peterson created to carry on his life’s work of lobbying the US federal government to balance its budget, most likely by cutting social security and Medicare.
We go out in the streets to protest the totally uncountable police only to have the totally uncountable police fire tear gas and rubber bullets at unarmed peaceful protesters and members of the press for which no one will be held accountable. And then it will all die down and Democrats will say it was all Trump and Racism and promise to do nothing about the latter if we go through the trouble of replacing the former. Until it happens again because it is the inevitable byproduct of living in an oligarchy where some people need to pass bad checks for $20 to buy the basics and our government, with bipartisan unity, gladly hands out trillions to the absolute scum of the earth who already have more money than they will ever know what to do with.
I don’t think it’s humanly possible to hate my worthless country more than I already do. Hopefully we can manage to fall into Failed State irrelevance without nuking the rest of the world, but I doubt it.
So what are you proposing?
I ended up watching some PBS America program on TV recently – it was tracking the history around the time of the 14th Amendment. That should have given citizenship and equal rights to all born or naturalised in US. It was quickly undone with a lack of education rights and a failure of the federal courts to provide justice to those (blacks) massacred in southern states. What should have been a starting point for true integration was mostly undone within a short period of time. Same sh#t happening over and over again.
I hope that this time there is enough political will to make the changes needed – I am not optimistic, but hopeful.
Anger – can understand that
Protest – can understand that too
Uprising – that’s when you rise up and go over the line of protest. These are voters in the survey too, so they know the ballot box can be used to make change happen. So I don’t understand the uprising part of your analysis if you can call it that.
Sheldon Square writes: “They know the ballot box can be used to make things happen”
Oh really?
The ballot box cannot undo the un level playing field on which so called “democratic politics” is played. There’s a reason — you have to “pay to play”.
Powerful corporate players are able to mostly get what they want while ordinary people are pretty much powerless — that’s true in the US, the UK and many other “democracies”. The corporate aristocracy is well resourced; well connected; well informed (as regards things that matter to their own agendas); well represented in the political lobby, in the courts, in negotiations; in the mass media which manufactures consent for their agendas. Their plans are well hidden in tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions and, when they need to be, they are well protected by security companies, mercenaries and friends in high places, including in the security and armed forces.
Particularly powerful are those business players in the “hub dependencies” of an interconnected society — like the financial institutions, the energy sector and the mass media as well as those who are part of the military industrial and security complex. They have always had close and direct connections into government and/or are a permanent part of it. As is obvious, all these advantages makes it possible for the corporate elite to stitch up their own agendas and to co-opt whatever government gets elected. What is called “democracy” is a hollow charade — and even more so for black people and other members of the underclass who have their time cut out just surviving.
I think you just undermined your own argument when you used the word ‘elite’. It sort of implies that there are rather fewer of them compared to the not elite.
And everyone has one vote. The many have many votes. The few have few votes. If you think the many are being manipulated in the USA to vote for the few, then that’s an education problem, which in the Union States of America is largely run by the liberals.
In response to Sheldon Square…
Of course it is true that there are a smaller number of the elite than the mass — 1% is a lot less than 99%. However to exercise political influence people have to work through and with organisations and institutions and that requires resources, connections, inside information and all the things that I mentioned before.
As I said you have to pay to play — to get PR companies and advisers to work out strategies, to pay lawyers to argue your case through the courts, to pay for yachts on which to entertain and butter up politicians…You appear to be in denial about the fact that there is a huge advantage to those who have access to money compared to those who have none. Maybe it has never occurred to you before to think in this way.
How can a community of homeless people do any of the things that the rich can do in politics? Just staying warm, dry, clean and fed are a struggle. How can someone who works all the day driving a bus spend their time off work in politics? What time do they have after work bearing in mind they have domestic practicalities to attend to and must also sleep?
By contrast the rich have plenty of time to get involved in politics because they are not just money rich they are time rich. They are “waited on” all the time – other people do their cooking, cleaning, child care, shopping… as well as their research, advocacy, PR…
By contrast the poor wait for – for transport (eg buses), in queues in employment department, social security and housing benefit waiting rooms, at post office counters, in doctors surgeries and on waiting lists for operations, in hospitals on mental health orders, in police cells, in courts and in prisons…
How can someone worrying how to feed their children find time or connections or the money needed to organise an alternative political party? Politics also involves practicalities — when it looks as if the poor are starting to organise they also get harrassed — they find newspapers and establishment politicians accusing them of being in the pay of Moscow and the police fitting them up or putting their knee on their neck…
@Sheldon
Yes, everyone has a vote, except when they don’t – that happens a lot in US and can be tracked back easily to 1860s. People are easily manipulated into not voting by e.g. facebook campaigns of not voting as a way of protesting, Trump team using large data to identify specific wards that need a few votes turned, voter ID, ward boundaries.
In the UK I vote at every election and my vote is practically worthless and so I can well understand voter ‘apathy’
As has been quoted a few times in recent days, Lyndon Johnson said this to an aide in 1968: “What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for 300 years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.”
Precisely
this came up in discussions last night at a scrutiny committee considering cutting back acute services in an area with a high deprived and BAME community.
the doctor attributed the higher death rate to lack of investment in primary and community care, which would have to be paid for by cutting acute care.
such are the delusions of people who should know better.
The trouble in the Uk is that the professional Classes are prepared to go along with oppression in return for a sinecure. that the oppression is covert , insidious and storing up problems for the future is a problem for another day.
Just say no was my advice.
I look at two of my grandsons and can accurately describe them as English, young (20’s), graduates, tall, smartly dressed, mild mannered, articulate with no criminal record. I make no apology for being proud of them. One has been stopped and searched by police over twenty times and the other has never been stopped. The excuse for the stops is always the same – “you fit the description of a person of interest”. Their description would differ only when skin colour is included.
Would anybody care to justify why there is such a disparity of treatment?
We cannot look to the US and feel any superiority we do not occupy any moral high ground when it comes to racism.
Agreed
And I am sorry for your grandson
He has every right to be angry
Democracy in the sense of the voter having any real influence is undermind primarily by the existence networks which allow smaller elite groups to maintain power. In the UK these are mainly public schools, elite Universities and informal business groupings dominated by finance.
The easiest way to boost greater democracy of the voter in Britain would be to dismantle the Public school system that largely maintains the power system of the few. Public school and elite University alumni dominate parliament, law, media, banking and big business.
This will be almost impossible to do without accusations of being “undemocratic” in itself and claims of eroding choice. In such ways do elites use the system to maintain control.