THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXPANDED VERSION OF A COMMENTARY DELIVERED OVER
WAMC-FM ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2020 BY MICHAEL MEEROPOL, PROFESSOR
EMERITUS OF ECONOMICS AT WESTERN NEW ENGLAND UNIVERSITY
“BLACK AND BROWN VOTERS IN MILWAUKEE, DETROIT, PHILADELPHIA, PITTSBURGH,
NEVADA and ARIZONA SAVED THE REPUBLIC B Y ELECTING JOE BIDEN”
So I watched hours and hours of coverage of the election between 6:00 PM
on Tuesday, November 3 and 4:30 PM on Wednesday, November 4.I got about
2 and a half hours sleep over night on Tuesday and woke up early enough
(at 4:15 AM)to see the counting of votes from Milwaukee Wisconsin flip
that state from a Trump to a Biden majority giving Wisconsin’s electoral
votes to Biden.By then I had endured the loss of Florida, North Carolina
and (I feared) Georgia.I also saw the apparent re-election of Thom
Tillis in North Carolina, John Cornyn in Texas, Joni Ernst in Iowa and
the loss of the Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama.These early results
dashed my hopes for a Senate majority and with it hopes for judicial
reform and a whole series of hoped for progressive legislation.
By 4:00 PM on Wednesday the 4^th , the networks had called Michigan for
Biden.As I write this on Friday morning, November 6, Georgia and
Pennsylvania have already flipped to a Biden majority, courtesy of black
voters in and around Atlanta, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.With Arizona
and Nevada aiming towards a Biden victory (there is of course a chance
that Arizona will flip to Trump, as I write so that’s uncertain) the 270
electoral vote goal appears to have been surpassed (if Biden wins
Arizona and Nevada, he will end up with 306 electoral votes).I can
breathe a sigh of relief that Trump will be gone but I also experienced
a profound shock and disappointment in many too many of my fellow Americans.
I apologize to those who listened to this broadcast on Friday, November
6 who believe Trump’s lies.I apologize to those who supported
President-elect Biden and Vice-President elect Harris who believe now is
the time for healing not recriminations.
I totally disagree.The election returns have revealed us as a profoundly
damaged people.Yes, the majority of American see through Donald
Trump.From polling data it appears that a significant majority of
Americans know that he lies virtually whenever his lips move.But the
minority who believe him is much too large. I hear individuals (even at
least one new member of Congress) spouting Q-anon conspiracy theories.I
saw someone on TV when asked about CDC director Redfield’s argument that
wearing a mask is even a better way to protect oneself from Coronavirus
than a vaccine assert “He didn’t say that!”Much worse, I see many
millions of Americans becoming convinced by Trump’s lies that he lost
the election because of hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes.(I
myself heard someone in my Physical Therapy venue repeating Trump’s lies
that the counting of votes after election day involves illegally
creating ballots to steal the election for Democrats.)This willingness
to believe nonsense should not be surprising because even though Trump
repudiated – during the 2016 Presidential campaign -- his assertions
that President Obama had not been born in Hawaii, there are still a
(small) group of people who still believe that.
But it gets worse.Among those who would admit that Trump is a lying,
racist, misogynist --- whose failures of leadership on the Coronavirus
has cost tens of thousands of lives --- there are many too many willing
to give him four more years anyway because he improved their personal
economic positions.
We white Americans (and I am ashamed to be one of them) have revealed
ourselves as profoundly infected by America’s original sin ---- racism.
[This assertion needs development.I am NOT saying that every white
person is a racist.I am saying that every white person is infected by
racism by virtue ofliving in the United States.That means that racist
institutions and racist memes are all around us and it is very difficult
not to be affected by them. When one is infected by a disease it is
possible to fight it ---with one’s own antibodies and/or with medical
intervention.But if one does not fight the infection, it can kill you or
leave you debilitated.So it is with racism.Racism can be right on the
surface --- one can hate and/or fear people who are different based on
the color of their skin.But one can also be totally unaware of the way
inequality affects black and brown Americans and in fact willfully
refuse to believe the evidence of systematic racism in America.Thus ---
to those deniers, the disproportional killing of black men by police in
the United States is explained away by the fact that blacks are
disproportionally criminal.The fact that blacks and Hispanics are
suffering disproportional death from the Coronavirus pandemic is
explained away with reference to failures to practice personal
hygiene.The ability to “explain away” disproportional impacts on black
and brown Americans of disease, police misconduct, educational
deficiencies, incarceration rates arises because too many of us white
folks have been succumbed to the racism infection.This is unfortunately
true even for those who would never call a black person the N word, nor
knowingly as individuals practice discrimination.And how does the
original sin of racism apply today?After all, as many of my students
would defensively tell me “I had nothing to do with slavery.”Yes, that’s
true but slavery was followed by over 100 years of Jim Crow and even in
the North where blacks had the right to vote, they were subjected to de
facto segregation in housing and education leaving them with an
extraordinary deficiency in terms of accumulated wealth, even to this
day.(In 2016, the typical white family had TEN TIMES the wealth of the
typical white family.That gap has surely widened as a result of the
pandemic.)For a really good journalistic analysis of the enduring legacy
of the hundreds of years of racism and discrimination up to the 21^st
century, see Ta-Nahesi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” _The
Atlantic_(2014) available at
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
<https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/>]
When I was growing up, racism was all about white supremacy over black
Americans.Racism was simple --- it was a black and white thing.Some of
it was vicious --- the Ku Klux Klan, the murder of Emmett Till in 1956,
the brutality of Bull Connor on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in
Alabama.However, some of it was more genteel --- at least in speech if
not action.I was hitch-hiking through Texas in 1963 and the young man
who gave me a ride stated that he believed black folks “should know
their place” (he used a word halfway between Negro and the N word!) but,
he assured me, “I don’t go for all this hating!”
Today it’s more complicated.White folks are not just worried about black
Americans asserting their rights --- even (God forbid!) electing a
President.They are worried about the “browning” of America due to
increased immigration and significant Latino and Asian
birthrates.Pressed by the danger of a loss of privileged status (it
wasn’t just Obama’s election but long run demographic trends promising
the US will become a “majority minority nation” within 30 years), too
many have responded with fear (hence the massive gun purchases during
Obama’s years in the White House) and anger.It is that anger over loss
of white privilege that has driven the cult-like worship of Donald J.
Trump, the worst President in the history of our country.
The great intellectual critic of the US, Noam Chomsky has asked
rhetorically, “Can you think of anyone in human history who has
dedicated his efforts to undermining the prospects for survival of
organized human life on earth?”This of course relates to Trump’s rolling
back of environmental regulations in order to raise the profits of
fossil fuel and other businesses.Yet millions of Americans voted for
Donald Trump --- not just once in 2016 when he was an outsider promising
to shake things up but twice --- after he had demonstrated how dangerous
he was to the public health, the basic rules of American democracy and
to the survival of human life on the planet.
[For a detailed interview with Chomsky, seeIsaac Chotiner, “Noam Chomsky
believes Trump is the worst criminal in human history.”_The New Yorker,
(_October 30, 2020 available at
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/noam-chomsky-believes-trump-is-the-worst-criminal-in-human-history
<https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/noam-chomsky-believes-trump-is-the-worst-criminal-in-human-history>.]
The “worship” of Trump has led too many of my fellow (white) Americans
to join what can only be described as a DEATH CULT.Their membership is
demonstrated when they willfully attend rallies for Trump without masks,
or strap on their machine guns and enter the Michigan state house to
demonstrate for the “freedom” not be take necessary precautions to save
themselves and their families from the deadly Coronavirus.By their
actions they are supporting a pattern of behavior GUARANTEED to wreak
more death and disease on tens of thousands of our fellow
citizens.Please remember these deaths fall disproportionately on our
fellow black and brown citizens --- many of whom are in essential jobs
and unable to work from home.
To return to my strong disagreement with the need for all of us to come
together and “heal,” I think some people need to be fought not
coddled.The people who created a caravan of Trump trucks in Texas
harassing a Biden campaign bus, the vigilante who murdered two
demonstrators in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the individuals who conceived of
the inhuman child separation policy at the border and those who carried
it out, the Police Union members who (even if they themselves would
never shoot an unarmed black man out of racist fear or hatred) continue
to shield the racist murderers among them --- all of these are indeed
the enemies of all that is good and decent about America.If there is
going to be reconciliation, it is these victims of the Trump cult who
must “reconcile” with full black citizenship and the rising percentage
of immigrants in our society --- The rest of us should make no effort to
“reconcile” with racist America.
Ironically – the damaged white people of America (and there are too damn
many of them --- let us not forget that in both 2016 and 2020, Trump won
a majority of white voters!)had their long term health saved by
courageous and patriotic Black Americans in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
Detroit Michigan, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the
Latino voters of Arizona and Nevada who voted in just enough numbers to
guarantee that Trump would not have four more years to kill Americans
with COVID and destroy the planet with his policies. Even faced with a
Republican Senate, President Biden will definitely be able to engage in
a sane, science-based, strategy to combat COVID-19 --- saving the lives
of even the people who routinely take action designed to put themselves
and their loved ones at risk.
By coming out and voting in large numbers, these courageous black and
brown Americans have proved once again that they love America.I join the
great NBA coach Doc Rivers in wishing OH SO MUCH --- that America would
finally start loving them back
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