http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/2/5/1480317/-Wow-Charles-Blow-goes-there-in-op-ed?detail=email
Much of the energy on both the left and the right this cycle is coming from white Americans who are rejecting the direction of America and its institutions. There is a profound disappointment. On one hand, it’s about fear of dislocation of supremacy, and the surrendering of power and the security it provides. On the other hand, it’s about disillusionment that the game is rigged and the turf is tilted. It is about defining who created this country’s bounty and who has most benefited from it.
White America is wrestling with itself, torn between two increasingly distant visions and philosophies, trying to figure out if the country should retreat from its present course or be remade.
Not totally true. There is BLM. But that is a primarily young people's activity, especially college educated black kids. Blow is largely correct however in that the action in the electorate is coming from white conservatives and white liberals. Blow then remarks on a speech given by Bill Clinton in Iowa:
During Bill Clinton’s speech on Sunday, he brought up the recent report about the rising death rate among some white people in America.
As Gina Kolata reported in November in The New York Times:
“Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans. Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.”
He rattled off the reasons for this rise — suicide, alcoholism and drug overdoses — and then concluded that these white Americans were dying of “a broken heart.”
America has a gauzy, romanticized version of its history that is largely fiction. According to that mythology, America rose to greatness by sheer ruggedness, ingenuity and hard work. It ignores or sidelines the tremendous human suffering of African slaves that fueled that financial growth, and the blood spilled and dubious treaties signed with Native Americans that fueled its geographic growth. It ignores that the prosperity of some Americans always hinged on the oppression of other Americans.
Much of America’s past is the story of white people benefiting from a system that white people designed and maintained, which increased their chances of success as it suppressed those same chances in other groups. Those systems persist to this day in some disturbing ways, but the current, vociferous naming and challenging of those systems, the placing of the lamp of truth near the seesaw of privilege and oppression, has provoked a profound sense of discomfort and even anger.
I must say it is very tempting, if your a person of color, to have a healthy schadenfreude at all this. Or view the statistics Bill Clinton referenced as a optimistic ray of hope. However, there's a good argument to be made that we all depend on each other and we are either going to sink or swim, together. Bill Clinton said that in his speech. But I'm not sure his Iowa audience, seething with anger or broken hearted, is buying it.
i can't add anything my thought run right with the article there is more for some it is too hard to admit what their subconscious knows about them shutting it down when the topic comes up derailing good discourse there is no communicating when there is denial and the status quo goes on. we can change it but the biggest step is changing our self awareness or accepting it and explore it holding on to antiquated ideals only stymies advancement and growth, the greatest country in the world would not allow that backward thinking would it???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
