On December 4th, I detailed how globalization has been a disaster for workers in this country. I’ve since read in a book by Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, that it has also been disastrous overseas, displacing hundreds of thousands of people to make way for dams, mining operations, and factories.
Yesterday, I left the RixPlace lists, e-mail lists of naturists discussing naturism and politics, because I was outraged that rather than confront the disaster of globalization, too many whites there prefer to blame African Americans for their own job hunting woes. Yes, the job market sucks. I’ve dealt with that here (on December 4th).
It doesn’t suck because of Affirmative Action. It sucks because globalization creates a race to the bottom, which benefits only those who own stock. But many who claim to be liberal prefer to follow conservative advice and focus on Affirmative Action, which seeks, imperfectly, to remedy longstanding discrimination. Some in the RixPlace Hot Tub even go so far as to claim that “overt discrimination” ended in the 1980s, as if subtle discrimination were acceptable.
Crying “reverse discrimintion,” they offer no evidence to support their contention that “the playing field is now level,” and no evidence to counter prison, life expectancy, and employment statistics that demonstrate continuing disparities.
Given a choice between blaming corporate elitists who send their jobs overseas, and blaming African Americans, they blame African Americans. Given a choice between empirical evidence and denial, they choose denial. They are nothing more than racist, ignorant, white boys whining about lost privilege, and still seeking to emulate the very elite that keeps kicking them down.