Building Bridges

 

Teaching about Race and Racism

 

Why the Narrative That Critical Race Theory ‘Makes White Kids Feel Guilty’ Is a Lie Ursula Wolfe-Rocca and Christie Nold  August 2, 2022 The Heckinger Report Our classrooms are not sites of demoralized children who hate themselves and their country. Students are hungry for explanations — real explanations — for the world they have inherited.

, studentreasures.com

The wave of state legislation and school board policies restricting what educators can and can’t teach shows no signs of slowing. These efforts rely on a narrative that learning about the history of racism and white supremacy harms students — particularly white students, leaving them feeling guilty and ashamed. We emphatically reject this narrative; it in no way matches our combined 30-plus years of experience as public school teachers. It is not teaching about racism that endangers our students, but the curricular gag-rules that seek to perpetuate their miseducation. Our use of the term “miseducation” comes from the 1933 Carter G. Woodson text, “The Mis-education of the Negro.” Woodson argued that the struggle for education was not just about access, but also curricula. How could formal education be liberatory for a child if “the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies?” Woodson was also clear that racist curricula affect Black and white children. To those who claimed children were too young to confront the history of racism in the classroom, Woodson replied: These misguided teachers ignore the fact that the race question is being brought before Black and white children daily in their homes, in the streets, through the press and on the rostrum. How, then, can the school ignore the duty of teaching the truth while these other agencies are playing up falsehood? We are white women, who teach mostly white kids, in two of the whitest states — Oregon and Vermont — in the country. Woodson’s argument — that all children deserve a curriculum that challenges the lie of white supremacy — has deeply shaped how we view our role as educators. Our identities and educational genealogies have made us particularly alert to the way white children have become props in the recent onslaught of miseducation policies.  Woodson asserted that the prevailing narratives in too many U.S. schools harmed Black and white children, albeit differently. Both groups were inculcated with scripts of Black racial inferiority and white racial superiority. Two sides of the same old and ugly lie. To avoid confronting this lie, the narrative of history lessons making white kids feel guilty has taken hold. Many of the recent “anti-CRT” bills ban any curricula that could lead an individual to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.” A Heritage Foundation commentary endorsing the laws asked, “How would you feel if your child came home from school and said her teacher had told her that everything that happens in the world is ‘racist’ and that she’s part of the problem because of the color of her skin?” The universal language here only thinly veils the assumed white subject for whom this concern is whipped up. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was more explicit in an appearance last fall on ABC’s “The View”: "One of the worries that I have about the way that we’re talking about race is that it . . . seems so big that somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past. . . . What we don’t do is make seven- and 10-year-olds feel that they are somehow bad people because of the color of their skin." We have been among those amplifying the now-common retort: “If kids of color are old enough to experience racism, white kids are old enough to learn about it.” But this formulation has limitations. Early in their encounters with the history of systemic oppression, white students sometimes express denial, disbelief, anger and yes, guilt. But the right would have you believe that those feelings are the end of the story rather than its beginning. We are lucky to work with students over the course of a school year or longer. Our lessons are not one-offs. There is space and time for students’ initial reactions to be named, understood and analyzed — and often transformed. In our experience, for many white students, learning about systemic racism is in fact not harmful, but generative. When students express denial or disbelief, we assist them in finding the resources they need to verify facts. We might ask, “I wonder why some of us struggled to believe this was true? Any ideas?” Through discussion, it is possible for students to understand that what they have been taught — and not taught — shapes their feelings about what they are learning now. We can also introduce a key idea for all critical consumers of information: Knowledge is contested. There are dominant narratives and counternarratives, state-sanctioned history (i.e., textbooks) and marginalized histories. When students understand that there is a struggle to define the past, they are less likely to deny history and more likely to investigate with curiosity why they know what they know and how they came to know it. When students respond with anger — “How could this have happened?” “Why did I never know about this before now?” — we again lean on questions. We might ask, “How would the world be different if more children were learning this history earlier and more fully?” and “So now that you know this history, what do you want to do with it?” When young white people display signs of guilt or shame — we have had students say things like “white people suck” or “I am embarrassed to be white” — our job is to help them process those feelings and foster a healthier sense of self and identity. In a recent podcast, the writer Clint Smith suggested that it is possible to reckon with the truth without allowing it to define your present beliefs. “You are not defined by the decisions that your great-great-grandfather made,” he said. “What would it look like to say, ‘My great-great-grandfather fought in this [Civil] War for a cause that runs counter to everything that I believe in today. And my family is not defined by that’?” Not only can this create a healthy separation between the actions of our ancestors and ourselves, but it also invites us to look for models of white people throughout history who acted for justice. These examples help students imagine and build an identity untethered from the perpetuation of racism. If one were to believe Fox News, a curriculum like ours — one that regularly and explicitly examines white supremacy’s manifestations, past and present — is a recipe for demoralized children who hate themselves and their country. But our classrooms are not sites of doom and gloom. Students are hungry for explanations — real explanations — for the world they have inherited, and in our experience, they often feel relieved to gain insight into why things are the way they are. Moreover, our curriculum emphasizes the varied, powerful and creative ways that people have resisted oppression and built justice. We are careful to offer students models of action, examples of people just like them who have tried to change the world and sometimes succeeded. No, our classrooms are not incubators of cynicism. They are brimming with curiosity, conversation and, yes, joy. To defeat the efforts to miseducate our children, we will all need to do our part: teachers, school administrators, school boards, labor unions, professional and community organizations, elected officials, parents, caregivers and students. We need to testify at school board meetings and state department of education hearings, write letters to the editor and op-eds and advocate to unseat the elected officials who are the architects of these attacks. And for those of us who are white, we need to know that when we emphatically reject the narrative of the guilty white child by telling our stories, the right’s lie will be obvious: Their concern is not that children will feel bad when learning about the fight for racial justice, but that children will feel good. Young white people with the capacity to act in solidarity with movements for justice are dangerous to white supremacy and its guardians. Those are the real stakes — not white children feeling guilty, but white children armed with truth, history and a righteous desire to work with others to change the world. Christie Nold (she/her) has been teaching in Vermont public schools for eight years. Prior to her experience in public education she worked at Shelburne Farms, an organization dedicated to education for sustainability, and taught in a village school in Nedryhailiv, Ukraine. Ursula Wolfe-Rocca (she/her) taught high school in a suburb of Portland, Oregon for 20 years. She is an organizer and writer with the Zinn Education Project and on the editorial board of “Rethinking Schools” magazine. This story about critical race theory was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter. Teaching About Racism

Teachers and Reading Books

A Curriculum of Irrelevancy

Another ridiculous Zoom meeting with a school leader on the precipice of deciding no more classroom libraries because "some of the books might make kids question what their parents want them to know" has encouraged me to think that a Bloody Mary, made with tomato juice remember, is an important part of the food pyramid and I should partake right now. And doesn't vodka come from potatoes?

It has also made me so sad. We are so quickly moving down the path of sustaining a curriculum that is focused on the irrelevant ("Show three ways the author created tension in this short story."), as it guards white fragility and continues to deny a history that is a critical part in the country we are today.

Here is the conversation. All knew I was recording it. I promised not to mention school names, district names, size of district, or anything else thing else that could suggest a particular identity if I wrote about the conversation.

Principal: Dr. Beers, thank you for joining us. We've been asked to take a deep look at the books our high school social studies and ELA teachers have in their classrooms to make sure they present more than a single side of an issue. We had a concern raised by one parent because of a book her ninth grade daughter chose to read. This book was in her ELA classroom in a section marked "Autobiographies." Mrs. X, thank you for joining our call. Would you like to tell Dr. Beers what happened?

Mrs. X: Yes. Thank you. My ninth grade daughter is very sweet, very smart, actually an above-level reader. Her teacher has books in her classroom the students can choose to read. My daughter loves autobiographies and so she chose this book called Warriors Don't Cry. Do you know the book?

I told her I did. I refrained from saying that I met Melba Beals, the author, before I actually read Warriors Don't Cry and I sobbed while reading it. I'm no warrior. I didn't tell her I thought this autobiography of one of the Little Rock Nine to integrate their previously all white high school, should be required reading. I just said, "I have read it. Several times." She raised her eyebrows and went on.

Mrs X: Well, I didn't know she was reading it until one evening she read a part aloud to me and she was crying. She was crying! She said it made her sad to see what white people did to Black people and she wanted to know why white people were so mean and is that why when George Floyd got killed Black people were so angry. She said "it was like nothing had changed." The mother paused then went on: It was obvious that this book was making her feel bad for being white. No book should make a child feel bad for being white. Or, I guess, any other race. We didn't even discuss that George Floyd incident. It wasn't about us, so we didn't see any reason to discuss it. And here she was, thinking about it.

Principal: So, we have some new regulations here in [our state] that encourage having books that present the other side of a controversial issue in libraries, especially classroom libraries. We'd like your opinion on that.

At this point, I was wondering why I had agreed to be a part of this conversation, but I took a breath and began. "I think it is very simple. You have to define controversial. There is nothing controversial about what happened to Melba Beals and those other eight Black students. There is nothing to be controverted with her account - we know that because her account is documented by too many confirming stories and the white students who were the most consistently cruel to her have stepped forward, as adults, and recognized their abuse. There is no "good side" to the horrific year in her life and the abuses by many white people during this time of ending segregation in the South. If you want an example of a controversial subject that should show various positions, I suppose there is some controversy over whether people should eat a plant-based diet rather than a meat-based diet. In a health class I'd like to see students read about that issue from multiple doctors including heart specialists, environmentalists, farmers and ranchers, and nutritionists. But this book, this issue, these facts - I think you are asking the wrong question.

Principal: What's the right question?

Me: Mrs. X, what's your real concern?

Mrs. X: My daughter. She was upset. Books at school shouldn't upset anyone and certainly should not upset a young person just because she is white.

Me: Sounds to me as if your daughter has a huge heart.

Mrs. X: Well, yes. She does. Thank you.

Me: It's hard when our children begin to learn certain truths, isn't it? I bet your daughter cried a lot when she learned about Santa Claus.

Mrs. X (smiing): She did. And she said we could not tell her little [sibling] because she wanted that belief to continue.

Me: Yes. Sometimes we want some beliefs to continue. We don't want to know the truth. And sometimes the truth, when we learn it makes us cry. This is a far harder truth than Santa, isn't it. Learning this country's history is hard. I'm proud of her for feeling what Melba Beals was sharing. Have you started reading the book, Mrs. X? (She shakes her head no.) I think when you do - and I think you should - you will be proud of your daughter for crying and you will thank the teacher for having this book the classroom. Think of it this way: From your description, it sounds like she is smart enough to ask some really tough questions. Perhaps questions she hasn't considered before or things that haven't been discussed at home and maybe you aren't ready to discuss those issues. I don't blame you, they are hard ones.

Mrs. X (defensive): That's right. We don't sit around discussing how white people are bad. That's what you are suggesting, right? All white people are racist. Well, we don't believe that and I don't like my child, she's just in ninth grade, wondering that.

Me: Again, I'm deeply impressed with the questions your daughter was asking. I wonder if she'd be interested in reading more about racism and discovering what others have to say about systemic racism in the country. You know, Mrs. X, having compassion for what someone else experienced and trying to see how patterns of behavior have continued is important if we want those patterns to be interrupted. And this isn't about what I think or don't think. It is about the wonderful daughter you have who is thinking. You wouldn't want to discourage that.

Mrs. X: No, of course not. But she just doesn't need to be thinking about that. My word, that was in the previous century. My daughter is not a racist. I am not a racist. And I don't think we need our students reading things that make them feel bad for being who they are.

Me: Yes. I think a lot of people would agree. You know, for the longest time, no children's books had divorced parents in them. None. I wonder if the kids who sat in classrooms with divorced parents felt left out, unseen? I wonder if they felt bad. And for a long time, no books, or almost no books, featured children or teens who were any color other than white. I wonder how those kids felt? And for a long time, in books and on TV, the Indiginous People of this nation were portrayed as savages or simple minded or alcoholics. I wonder how those children felt. Books ought to make us feel something, and sometimes that feeling is regret; other times it is horror; others times it is courage; other times it is relief at finding someone who looks like we look. Your daughter found one of those books - a book that showed her someone, at her grade, living a very different ninth grade year, a horrific ninth grade year. And that hurt her heart. And that led to her questioning if we're treating one other justly now. And that's a great thing. I think you should be proud of her and should be thanking the teacher.

Mrs. X didn't say thank you, but she didn't say I was wrong. She said that she wasn't sure she had made her point exactly right but did see what I was saying. She said she would "certainly" be reading the book. I honestly don't know if that will make things better or not.

And then she left Zoom. And the principal said to me that this is happening almost daily now. "I don't know. Maybe the only way we can get covered what we need to teach for [our state] test is to take out books like this. I just don't know." I liked this principal. He was conflicted and willing to sit in that for a moment before rushing to a bad decision.

So, I'm mailing him a copy of Forged by Reading, which he has promised to read. I've sticky-noted the section I've pasted below which begins on page 30 of the book. I want him to seriously consider what happens when we begin removing books from shelves. What do we remove next? Who - or what - do we become?

From Forged by Reading (Beers and Probst)

Sailing into tomorrow may require us to rethink assumptions

and values so that we act differently in the future. There will

be implications and consequences for considering the new and

reconsidering what we have long thought. The only way to avoid the discomfort is to avoid the issues. If we can avoid talking about and reading about problematic matters, issues that might require us to rethink values and assumptions, then we won’t feel the discomfort that such difficult thought might entail.

If we banish from our minds, our libraries, and our classrooms any examination of politics, religion, race, environment, sex, justice, and the like, we might protect ourselves from the possible discomfort we might experience. All we have to do is trivialize the curriculum to the point that few will be bothered by anything.

If we can make instruction completely insignificant, utterly irrelevant to anyone’s emotional and intellectual life, then absolutely no one should rise up to protest the threat we pose to treasured beliefs, valued affiliations, or well-established habits of thought and action. We can teach kids how viruses are different from bacteria but avoid discussing why the health care system better serves the wealthy than the poor. We can teach what events led up to World War II and which countries fought on which sides and the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps but fail to mention our own concentration camps for American citizens of Japanese ancestry or consider why the 761st Tank Battalion or the 555th Parachute Battalion consisted solely of African American soldiers. We can give the facts of Brown v. Board of Education but never read what happened to the Little Rock Nine, never discuss how the integration of schools caused thousands of well-qualified Black teachers to lose their jobs because white parents refused to let their children be taught by a Black teacher.

We can teach the definitions of “preposition” and “conjunction.”

That will raise few hackles. “Onomatopoeia” and “zeugma” are

unlikely to drive marchers into the streets, even if we require

students to learn both definition and spelling. Better yet, we

can teach penmanship—that will threaten the values of neither

the conservatives nor the progressives, neither Republicans nor

Democrats, neither those drilling for oil nor the sailors on one of the Greenpeace ships.

Total irrelevancy, absolute insignificance, and unwavering stasis are effective strategies for avoiding the discomfort of thought and change.

***

We cannot, dear teachers, ever give in to the demands of irrelevancy. So, Mr. Principal, you must be brave. You must steer the ship into tomorrow. Your teachers will be there with you. And students, they may shudder at past injustices - long past and recent past - and I hope they do. If they don't, we are in more trouble than I thought.

I wish you all bravery. Stamina. And the knowledge that your hard work is the good work; the best work; the needed work. We need you.

Kylene Beers 

reposted from Facebook. 

If You Don't Think Sanders Can Win ?

Don’t Think Sanders Can Win? You Don’t Understand His Campaign

There was a time in America when being called a socialist could end a political career. Not anymore.

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Dr. Taylor is the author of “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.”

·       Dec. 10, 2019

·        

o    

As the Democratic primary elections get closer, the party leadership has begun to fret in public about universal health care and other ambitious proposals. Even former President Barack Obama tried to assuage donors’ fears in November when he said that the “average American” doesn’t think we need to “tear down the system and remake it.” His comment captured the essence of tensions that have roiled the party for months. Party elites believe focusing squarely on President Trump’s record will end his presidency, while others counter that the Democrats also have to champion bold policies. 

The surprising resilience of the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont vindicates the latter approach. Mr. Sanders’s improbable rise to Democratic front-runner began in 2015 when he organized his campaign for president around a redistributive agenda of universal health care and free college, along with a number of other progressive reforms. Party insiders dismissed this as fanciful and out of touch, but Mr. Sanders aggressively challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination while picking up 13 million votes.

Race, Borders and Belonging

How We Can Beat Trump's Racism in 2020

A road map to neutralizing the role of racism as a divide-and-conquer political weapon Ian Haney López believes that Trump wants 2020 voters debating whether he is a "racist" — it's his strategy for winning. In 2014, he published Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. In the book, he named and explained how politicians used coded racial appeals as part of a strategy of racial divide-and-conquer to help the 1% get even more powerful. His new book, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America, explains how the political exploitation of coded racism has evolved under Trump — and suggests an evidence-based approach on how to beat it. The evidence comes from the two-year race-class narrative research project involving focus groups and national polling. The takeaway is that naming racism as a weapon of the rich and calling for coming together across racial lines proved to be the most effective way to defang the Right’s racial fear narratives and to build broad cross-racial support for racial justice as well as for economic populism. Download Chapter 10: 20/20 Vision: Comparing the Left’s Possible Responses to Anti-Immigrant Dog Whistling here. Recommended

Martin Luther King Jr. - Economic Justice for Our Times

In 1968, a united black community in Memphis stepped forward to support 1,300 municipal sanitation workers as they demanded higher wages, union recognition, and respect for black personhood embodied in the slogan “I Am a Man!” Memphis’s black women organized tenant and welfare unions, discovering pervasive hunger among the city’s poor and black children. They demanded rights to food and medical care from a city and medical establishment blind to their existence.

That same month, March 1968, 100 grassroots organizations met in Atlanta to support Martin Luther King’s dream of a poor people’s march on Washington. They pressed concrete demands for economic justice under the slogan “Jobs or Income Now!” King celebrated the “determination by poor people of all colors” to win their human rights. “Established powers of rich America have deliberately exploited poor people by isolating them in ethnic, nationality, religious and racial groups,” the delegates declared.

So when King came to Memphis to support the strike, a local labor and community struggle became intertwined with his dream of mobilizing a national coalition strong enough to reorient national priorities from imperial war in  Vietnam to domestic reconstruction, especially in America’s  riot-torn cities. To non-poor Americans, King called for a “revolution of values,” a move from self-seeking to service, from property rights to human rights.

President Obama Delivers a Statement on the Shooting in South Carolina

Back to School, and to Widening Inequality

 Robert Reich

 American kids are getting ready to head back to school. But the schools they’re heading back to differ dramatically by family income. Which helps explain the growing achievement gap between lower and higher-income children. Thirty years ago, the average gap on SAT-type tests between children of families in the richest 10 percent and bottom 10 percent was about 90 points on an 800-point scale. Today it’s 125 points. The gap in the mathematical abilities of American kids, by income, is one of widest among the 65 countries participating in the Program for International Student Achievement.

On their reading skills, children from high-income families score 110 points higher, on average, than those from poor families. This is about the same disparity that exists between average test scores in the United States as a whole and Tunisia.

The achievement gap between poor kids and wealthy kids isn’t mainly about race. In fact, the racial achievement gap has been narrowing.

It’s a reflection of the nation’s widening gulf between poor and wealthy families. And also about how schools in poor and rich communities are financed, and the nation’s increasing residential segregation by income.

Why does race, ethnicity matter in public schools ?

Start at about 24 minutes into the recording.
Diversity Forum:  Why Race and Culture Still Matter
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Tyrone Howard

December 5, 2012
California State University, Fullerton
Access the Full Video: 
http://distance-ed.fullerton.edu/bbpresentations/Diversity_Forum_12-5-2012/player.html

Banning Ethnic Studies in Arizona

Critical Race Theory and Arizona.

In recent weeks, the state of Arizona has intensified its attack in its schools on an entire branch of study — critical race theory. Books and literature that, in the state’s view, meet that definition have been said to violate a provision in the state’s law that prohibits lessons “promoting racial resentment.” Officials are currently bringing to bear all their influence in the public school curriculum, going so far as to enter classrooms to confiscate books and other materials and to oversee what can be taught.  After decades of debate over whether we might be able to curtail ever so slightly the proliferation of violent pornography, the censors have managed a quick and thorough coup over educational materials in ethnic studies.

I have been teaching critical race theory for almost 20 years. The phrase signifies quite a sophisticated concept for this crowd to wield, coined as it was by a consortium of theorists across several disciplines to signify the new cutting edge scholarship about race. Why not simply call it “scholarship about race,” you might ask? Because, as the censors might be surprised to find, these theorists want to leave open the question of what race is — if there is such a thing — rather than assuming it as a natural object of inquiry.

The new president, the new reality

There will be times when we need to oppose this administration and its policies. I have already opposed them on education and economic appointments.
At the same time we should recognize that with the inauguration , a positive change has been created in the racial paradigm of this country. Race and racism have long been among the obstacles to building a progressive movement.
It is also clear that a dedicated group of activists can change the direction of this country.
Can you imagine where we would be on the economy if John Mc Cain had won?
Duane Campbell

Does Obama have a race problem

Does Obama Really Have a Race Problem?

There is no doubt that working-class whites harbor resentments against blacks. But wealthy whites are more likely than working-class whites to use the race card in the voting booth.

PETER DREIER | March 20, 2008 | web only
The American Prospect



One of the persistent mantras of this election season is that Barack Obama's skin color may cost him the Democratic nomination (or the White House), because of racism among working-class white voters. According to conventional wisdom, white workers faced with growing economic insecurity -- blue-collar employees in manufacturing and construction, pink-collar employees in office and retail sectors -- vent their frustrations on blacks, whom they view as competing for their jobs or living off of government social programs funded by whites' hard-earned tax dollars. When those white workers get to the voting booth, their anger translates into an unwillingness to vote for black candidates.
Obama confronted this paradox in his speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday. "Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze -- a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many," Obama observed. "And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."
There is no doubt that some working-class whites harbor such resentments against blacks, just as it true that whites and blacks hold similar sentiments about Latino immigrants, and that many Hispanics have negative stereotypes about blacks. Among low-income and working-class Americans of all colors, such cross-cutting prejudices are well documented. It isn't surprising that these attitudes are reflected in voting behavior.
But let's be clear about the class nature of racial prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, and disparities. Wealthy whites are more likely than working-class whites to use the race card in the voting booth. Voting statistics reveal that most upper-income whites consistently vote in Republican, not Democratic, primaries, which means they don't have to vote for black or Latino candidates. And in partisan run-off elections, wealthy whites overwhelmingly vote for Republican over Democratic contenders. In the 2004 presidential contest, eight of the 10 wealthiest congressional districts voted for Bush. The two districts that went to Kerry were both in California's high-tech-oriented Silicon Valley. White voters earning incomes of more than $200,000 a year cast 66 percent of their ballots for Bush. (The Kerry voters among them tended to be professionals in human services, government, teaching, and creative sectors, not those in business and management.)
In contrast, among white voters with family incomes between $15,000 and$30,000, 51 percent voted for Bush, and among white voters in the $30,000 to $50,000 range, 58 percent went with Bush.
If Barack Obama winds up facing John McCain in November, Obama will certainly attract some upper-class white voters -- including some among the 1 percent of Americans with incomes over $364,657, who have 22 percent of all income and own 37 percent of all corporate stock. Because their numbers are so small, they won't make a big difference in the outcome of the election, except in terms of where they send their campaign contributions.
It is all but certain, though, that in an Obama-McCain face-off fewer wealthy whites will vote for Obama than working-class whites whom affluent pundits are so quick to label as racist. Indeed, we've already seen a significant number of blue-collar white voters show their support for Obama in Iowa, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and other states. Yes, white working-class Democrats in economically troubled Ohio favored Clinton over Obama. But in November, most of the blue-collar Democrats, working-class independents, and union members who voted for Clinton -- in Ohio and elsewhere -- are likely to switch to Obama, not McCain.
It is understandable that most wealthy whites would consistently vote for Republicans, who like low taxes and hate strong unions. But in recent decades, a significant number of working-class whites -- the so-called "Reagan Democrats" -- have voted for GOP candidates who have done so little to address their bread-and-butter concerns. As Thomas Frank argued in his book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, the Republicans have successfully used "wedge" issues -- abortion, religion, gun control, gay rights, affirmative action, and, of course, the war on terrorism -- to persuade some working-class whites to vote against their economic interests.
But the tide seems to be changing. Certainly exasperation with the war in Iraq has played a role in bringing many working-class white voters back into the Democratic fold. But the major issues in this election -- stagnant wages, job insecurity, rising health-care and college costs, home foreclosures -- favor the Democrats. Some voters may be blinded by racial prejudice, but in November, pink slips and green dollars are likely to play a more important role than black or white skin.
Of course, class and income aren't the only factors that determine white voting behavior. Age plays a role, too. So far, Obama has inspired a significant increase in turnout among young white voters, but he hasn't fared as well among middle-aged and elderly whites. Unfortunately for the Democrats, young voters are fleeing the older Rust Belt areas like Ohio and Pennsylvania, both key battleground states.
In the Democratic primaries, white Catholics have favored Clinton, while white Protestants preferred Obama. Neither Democrat is likely to win over many white evangelicals, but a significant number might stay home in November if McCain can't convince them that he's sufficiently conservative. National Rifle Association members aren't likely to give Obama or Clinton many of their votes. either.
Unions play a critical role in shaping white workers’ views and mobilizing them in elections. When voters' loyalties are divided between their economic interests and other concerns, union membership can be a crucial determinant. In 2004, for example, George Bush won by a 62 percent to 37 percent margin among white males. But John Kerry carried white males who were union members by a 59 percent to 38 percent difference. Bush won among white women by 55 percent to 44 percent, but Kerry won white women union members by 67 percent to 32 percent.
Similarly, gun owners favored Bush by a 63 percent to 36 percent margin, but union members who own guns supported Kerry 55 percent to 43 percent, according to an AFL-CIO survey. Bush carried all weekly church-goers by a 61 percent to 39 percent margin, but Kerry won among union members who attend church weekly by a 55 percent to 43 percent split.
Despite Kerry’s tepid campaign and upper-crust demeanor, union members gave him 61 percent of their votes over Bush. In the battleground states, where unions focused their turnout efforts, they did even better. In Ohio, for example, union members favored Kerry by a 67 percent to 31 percent margin.
So, even if McCain captures the same proportion of white middle-aged and elderly votes as Bush did in 2004, Obama can still win if he can garner reasonable support among Hispanic voters and increase turn-out among African Americans and young white voters, which he has already shown he can do, while capturing a significant portion of union voters.
By focusing on voting behavior and attitudes, however, political pundits deflect focus away from other fundamental concerns. America’s corporate and political rulers have long used racism, ethnic stereotypes, and immigrant bashing to divide working people and weaken their collective power. Manufacturers recruited Southern blacks to act as strikebreakers in Northern cities, and employers warned "No Irish need apply" and resorted to anti-Semitism to pit workers against each other. In hard economic times, scapegoating against blacks and Hispanic immigrants diverts white workers’ attention away from the failure of business and political elites to create enough decent jobs.
Although working-class white Americans may harbor racist sentiments, they do not control the major institutions that are responsible for America's racial divide, including the economic forces that sometimes pit white, black, and Hispanic working families against each other for jobs, housing, and decent schools.
For example, it is upper-class whites who own and control the banks that persistently engage in abusive and predatory practices against black and Latino borrowers. Since the federal government began collecting data on mortgage loans in the 1970s, the practice of mortgage discrimination -- called "redlining" -- has been well documented. Even affluent blacks are denied loans at a higher rate than working-class whites. Similarly, real estate brokers are more likely to show white home-seekers more homes, in more locations, and in white neighborhoods than they are black homebuyers with similar incomes and educational backgrounds. These practices contribute to racial segregation in housing (which is still pervasive in every part of the country) and the lower rate of homeownership among African Americans, even among those with similar incomes to whites. That such practices are illegal hasn't stopped the nation's banking and real estate industry from engaging in them -- an industry owned and managed by wealthy white businesspersons, mostly men.
It is wealthy whites who also own and control the nation's largest corporations, few of whom have any African Americans or Latinos on their boards of directors (certainly not in numbers reflective of the larger population). It is these major white-controlled corporations that continue to discriminate against blacks, Latinos, and, yes, women, in hiring and promotion. A few years ago, for example, a federal court found that black employees at Coca-Cola made an average of $26,000 a year less than white employees, were routinely passed over for promotions, and frequently earned less than the white subordinates whom they trained or supervised. Three years ago, Sodexho, the giant food-services company, agreed to pay $80 million to settle a lawsuit after documents revealed that it had systematically denied promotions to 3,400 black midlevel managers; although blacks comprised 12 percent of the company's managers, they accounted for only 2 percent of its upper-management positions.
Such practices are hardly confined to a handful of corporations. Sociologists have documented, for example, that employers are more likely to grant white applicants job interviews and make them offers than they are black applicants with the same skills and level of experience. White workers are more likely to be promoted than black employees with comparable experience. Even when in management positions, blacks are often ghettoized in certain niches, such as "community relations" or in divisions that focus on black customers.
It is the major media, owned and controlled by wealthy whites and managed primarily by upper-middle class white publishers and editors, who perpetuate racial stereotypes in their news reporting. As political scientist Martin Gilens documented in his book, Why Americans Hate Welfare, the media systematically portray blacks in stereotypical ways.
In photos and prose, the media over-represent blacks in stories about the poor and welfare. Gilens found, for example, that more than 60 percent of poor people portrayed in the media were black, when in reality blacks comprise only 27 percent of all poor people. Similar slanted images portray blacks as more likely to be on welfare and be jobless than they are in reality, reinforcing negative stereotypes.
It is upper-class and upper-middle-class whites who live in and control the wealthy suburbs that keep blacks out of their communities and their local schools. For example, they utilize exclusionary zoning, which limits the construction of apartment buildings and favors large homes on huge lots. Some might argue that this is really class, not racial, prejudice, that wealthy white suburbanites fear that allowing poor people to live nearby might lower property values. In fact, studies document that, with some exceptions, middle-class African Americans -- even those who can afford to buy expensive homes – are systematically excluded from wealthy suburbs. Banks and real estate agents contribute to this exclusion by "steering" affluent black buyers away from such areas. But the behavior of upper-class whites who sit on local zoning boards and who move to exclusive suburbs to avoid living near blacks also plays an important role.
It is also wealthy whites who long resisted allowing blacks, even affluent blacks, to join their exclusive private country clubs, so that they could keep their distance while playing tennis and golf. Last year, for example, two candidates running for mayor of Dallas, Darrell Jordan and Tom Leppert, were criticized for being members of the Dallas Country Club, which had no black members. Although such barriers have started to fall, especially in recent years after bad publicity focusing on country clubs on the Professional Golf Association tour that practice discrimination, many private clubs still cater to corporate executives and exclude or limit black and female members.
It is possible, even likely, that many upper-class whites are not personally prejudiced in the vulgar way that we associate with hard-core racism. They would never join a white supremacist group, never tell an overtly racist joke in public, and might even like watching Oprah on TV. A handful of them might even donate money to causes that help African Americans like the NAACP or the United Negro College Fund. But in their decision-making roles within the most powerful institutions in society, they -- more than blue-collar whites -- support practices that contribute to the nation's racial divide.
For sure, America has made significant progress in addressing both racial prejudice and racial discrimination. Thanks to the civil-rights revolution, we've witnessed the significant growth of the African American middle class and the dramatic decline of the overt daily terror imposed on black Americans, especially in the South. The number of black elected officials at all levels of government has seen a significant increase, and many of those officials have garnered cross-racial support.
There is, of course, still a white-enforced "glass ceiling" that keeps many qualified African Americans from reaching the top echelons of society. But unlike 30 years ago, blacks are now found on corporate boards and in top management, as TV newscasters and daily newspaper editors, and as presidents and administrators of major colleges, foundations, and hospitals.
Despite this progress, in every sphere of American life -- income, hiring, promotion, housing, the quality of public schools, college attendance, treatment by the criminal justice system, media portrayals, and others -- race remains a divisive issue. While upper-middle class pundits may get some smug pleasure out of pointing to racial prejudice among America's white working-class voters, they would be more accurate if they looked up, rather than down, the economic ladder to identify who really has the power to prop up, or fix, the institutions that turn bigotry into discrimination.


Peter Dreier is professor of politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and coauthor of The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City.

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