The 2016 elections are strategic for advancing racial justice

[Starry Messenger]

http://peoplesworld.org/the-2016-elections-are-strategic-for-advancing-racial-justice/

This has been a gut-wrenching time. The horrific police murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the killing of five police officers in Dallas give the uneasy sense of a nation on edge. Have we entered a more hateful and polarized era? Or is real progress toward racial and social justice possible?

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Racism has been a central thread throughout our nation's history dating to slavery. After 50 years of GOP and right-wing racism being injected into the veins of the body politic, we are confronted with the likes of Donald Trump. Racist ideas that once existed on the fringe are now being made acceptable to the mainstream. They have found some fertile ground in an era of economic dislocation and decline and the rapid demographic shifts that are unsettling millions, particularly white working people.

At moments like this, whites without anti-racist consciousness are susceptible to demagogues like Trump, easily taken in and manipulated by racist stereotypes, bigotry, and disoriented to act against their self-interests. Especially for working class whites, particularly white men, whose anger and frustration over their own bleak future is being misdirected away from their class enemy toward their black and brown class brothers and sisters.

Instead of taxing the rich, they will get more enrichment of the one percent. Instead of a living wage, they will get continued declines in real wages and greater economic insecurity.

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