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    Class Over Race: The New Old Progressive Agenda

    By Michael Wolraich on Mon, 01/16/2012 - 8:15pm | Politics

    In the beginning, racial equality was not a progressive ideal. Early progressives rarely paid much attention to persecuted minorities such as blacks, Jews, American Indians, or Irish and Chinese immigrants. They focused instead on defending an oppressed majority--farmers and workers--from a predatory minority--industry titans and bankers.

    When progressives in the early 20th century did address minority rights, their positions tended to reflect party affiliation rather than progressive ideology. In those days, race politics split at the party line with Republicans supporting racial equality and Democrats opposing. Class politics, on the other hand, produced internal divisions within each party.

    As a result, Republican progressives tended to be concerned about racial oppression, while Democratic progressives ignored or even condoned it. When the moderately progressive Republican president Teddy Roosevelt shocked the nation by inviting Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House, William Jennings Bryan, a radically progressive Democrat, publicly denounced him.

    Some forty years later, FDR's reforms and a broad post-war economic boom lessened the income inequalities and afforded more protections to average Americans. Under Harry Truman, JFK, and Lyndon Johnson the progressive focus began to shift from oppression of the "common man" to persecution of racial and religious minorities, peaking with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

    Leap forward another half-century, and we are now on the verge of coming full circle. As the barriers of racial prejudice have fallen, culminating with the election of a black president, progressive concerns about racial inequality have subsided. That is not to say that the nation has achieved color parity or that Martin Luther King's dream of a day when people would not be judged by the color of their skin has come to true, but America has advanced far in the past fifty years, and fewer progressives now see racial inequality as the nation's most pressing problem.

    By contrast, the old progressive achievements towards class parity are slipping away. Right-wing Republicans threaten labor rights and government institutions like Social Security that we have long taken for granted, even as the income gap approaches the levels of William Jennings Bryan's time.

    As a result, class politics has returned with a roar. In today's New York Times, Paul Krugman exploited Martin Luther King Day to explicitly change the subject from race to class, writing, "Goodbye Jim Crow, hello class system." Speakers at Occupy Wall Street often spoke of underprivileged minorities, but the movement's primary message--the one that resonated across the country--was an appeal on behalf of the oppressed majority: We are the 99 percent.

    Political movements are like lumbering animals; they change direction slowly. It may be years before modern progressives nominate a class-war firebrand like William Jennings Byran. But however slowly, the beast is turning, and American politics is about to evolve--or revolve--again.

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    MLK, I think, was moving in the direction of class struggle toward the end of his life. The garbage haulers' strike. The Vietnam war. Issues that went beyond, though deeply impacted, blacks in this country largely because they were stuck at the bottom of the class barrel. This is how I remember it, in any event.

    In fact, I think he may have taken some heat for his broadened focus from his civil rights colleagues.


    by Peter Schwartz on Mon, 01/16/2012 - 8:31pm

    Yes, he became more a champion for the oppressed everywhere, and did have a sense that it was a class issue.


    by PeraclesPlease (not verified) on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 2:30am

    One reason the beast lumbers, when it isn't slouching, is that its direction reflects in large part not of the majority, but the activist leadership.  Progressive activist leadership, or those seeking to lead, as OWS showed, are incredibly diverse in their goals.  Beyond the class and race issues, are issues ranging from gender to the environment.

    The movement cannot fully return to its days of just a class struggle.  The genie is out of the bottle so to say.  Activists in the leadership ranks won't let it be singularly focused, and that can be considered a good thing. 

    Finding the next MLK or Bryant will be difficult - it will be someone who is not just able to ignite the passions of the populace around a single issue (race, class), but who speaks across the various groups - inspiring them and uniting them to at times put their own agenda aside for the short-term gains of the movement. For a brief moment, Obama appeared to some to be such a person, or potentially such a person. Reagan was able to do it with the far religious right.  

    In some ways, MLK has been able to endure in the imaginations of the progressive movement because his words, his vision has the power to speak across the spectrum - to the environmentalist and to the community organizer to civil rights activists.


    by Elusive Trope on Mon, 01/16/2012 - 8:47pm

    Interesting, what follows is just a dday rant.

    I have witnessed the greatest change in our propagandized mass media in this history of the world. Just the last 50-55 years anyway.

    We as a nation could not imagine a tv show viewed by 30 or 40 million viewers that included a Negro; with the exception of the Jack Benny series.

    Then I Spy came along and I was mesmerized.

    And Cosby received second billing.

    Sports? i just finished watching a fictionalized version of Syracuse U winning the national collegiate trophy in the Cotton Bowl--that had so many inaccuracies to make it patently unpalatable as accepted history according to Wiki anyway--and the events discussed in this films occurred when I was 9 years of age.

    I heard the N word openly said until I was about 12.

    I witnessed the desegregation of baseball, football, basketball...all within my generation really.

    When a Black man kissed a white woman on TV or in a movie, this was supposed to be blasphemy!

    Just look at ESPN sometime. It is amazing to me as a layman.

    But there was a time when the racists and the populists and the social progressives kind of found a coalition and elected Franklin Roosevelt.

    And ever since that time, the corporate oligarchists demurred.

    We live in a three dimensional world unless one consults Einstein and yet where there must be 360 perspectives, we receive two.

    One involves the oligarchists.

    The other involves the rest of us.

    Propaganda rules.

    That is a fact.

    Pudge Luntz and others give out their talking points to conservatives on silly shows like the View and Rush and Erik and Hannity and....whatever.

    And we are left with two points of contention when there are 358 points of contention.

    The oligarchists rule. We know this.

    Taibbi and others simply underline this issue.

    Everyone knows this.

    But we live amongst a society that really wishes little by the way of contention because the oligarchists own the media.

    If you are killed by a fallen tree in the forest and no one witnesses this event, you never died--of course you never lived either.

    30,000 die on our highways every year. How many are reported per our media?

    30,000 die as a result of gunshots. How many of these are reported every year?

    100,000? people die every year because of inadequate medical care every year?

    The advertisement rules in this nation and those with the monies know how to advertise.

    The upper classes win every single damn time! Because they are experts in advertising.

    Once in awhile there are miracles that occur.

    FDR won the day because those with real money and power were ignorant of the new media--the radio.

    Barry won because of a strange conflagration of media reporting (falsehoods most of the time) and repub excesses with regards to appointing foxes to guard the henhouses of our economy).

    But in the end, the oligarchist win every time, because advertising is money.

    I will say this.

    I have witnessed changes in this nation that nobody would ever have prognosticated.

    The right can only go so far as to transform

    However, witness Wisconsin, Ohio, New Hampshire, Arizona...

    The rich shall eventually win out.

     


    by Richard Day on Mon, 01/16/2012 - 8:53pm

    The two Supreme Court appointees made by Obama shifted the Court to the left. Romney's "Corporations are people too"; "Income disparity should only be discussed in closed rooms."; and the people who are not super-wealthy are "envious" send a clear message of where the GOP's concerns lie. More people now acknowledge that the rich should be taxed more. Occupy Wall Street has taken the place of the Tea Party in the public mind. The struggle continues.

    Martin Luther King followed in the footsteps of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, The Tuskeegee airmen and a host of others. The battle has always been ongoing. The opposition is not going to give up, neither should we.


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 01/16/2012 - 11:25pm

    I know well.

    I get depressed.

    Walker is going to be officially recalled tomorrow with petitions signed by 3 times the number necessary!

    When the powers that be make it harder to vote Moveon and a host of other associations are going to be there to help the lost become fully registered voters, more petitions that have legal effect will be signed...

    Yes.

    I must buck up and so must America.

    Good point.

    Makes me feel better anyway. hahahahah

     


    by Richard Day on Mon, 01/16/2012 - 11:49pm

    I believe when the new progressive and egalitarian wave finally takes shape, it will have a strong religious dimension.  I don't know what kind of religious form exactly, but in American history the strongest strains of egalitarianism have usually been an expression of religious outlook.  European socialism never took root here, in part because of its militantly atheist orientation.


    by Dan Kervick on Mon, 01/16/2012 - 11:37pm

    European socialism never took root here, in part because of its militantly atheist orientation.

    I strongly believe that this is not a reason except for a small minority, like the minority who preferred to decry "godless communism" rather than just decrying communism.

    The majority of Americans of European heritage have a proud family narrative passed down of leaving "the old country" because of the lack of self-determination in the old country. Those that came because of discrimination of religion is played up in old style history books and when someone wants to debate freedom of religion. But the religion thing is only one of the many "lack of self-determination" reasons and is actually minor in comparison to many of the others.

    There are far more who came because of hidebound class structures or government rules about the ability to own land, start a business, educational opportunity or similar in the OLD countries. The European brand of socialism was often as not seen as just another version of the old country government bureaucracy, where certain people get ability to advance and others do not, and there are always a lot of rules about what everyone can do and what they can't, often as not related to the written and unwritten rules of earlier days.

    When you figure out some types of socialism that don't get involved with social engineering and don't include government jobs that are more concerned with following thousand-page rule books than serving citizens, I think that is when you will win over a majority of Americans (see Social Security or GI Bill.) And the majority will be also quite happy with it being administered regardless of religion or creed. Just don't carry the big government uber alles too far

    P.S. Reading some of your recent essays, it was hard for me not to be reminded of the dismal historic record that utopian communes have in the U.S. Not only do they not last long, they do not retain much mythic status; there are no romantic equivalents of the Israeli kibbutz story here. Usually the story is: people got fed up with the power games developing in such communities and left to try something else, saying something along the lines of: thank god (small g,) it's a free country.

    And as far as you seeing the global OWS movement as a sign of fondness for the communal rising among the younger generation, I will just note that contrary to a lot of spin, Mohammed Bouazazi immolated himself over frustration with government regulation of his tiny one-man business, where those in government treated him like he was many steps below them as a human; it's pretty fitting that he was posthumously awarded the "Sakharov Prize"

     


    by artappraiser on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 1:56am

    I strongly believe that this is not a reason except for a small minority, like the minority who preferred to decry "godless communism" rather than just decrying communism.

    I think that's actually a very large minority.  It was hugely important throughout the south and the midwest.

    I don't think there is anything utopian about my essay.  It calls for an expanded public sector.  It calls for full employment and expanded public investment in our future.  Is calls for a reorganization of the central bank and the banking system, and various measures to promote greater equality.  It's ambitious in the American context, but the arrangements are completely practical and worldly.


    by Dan Kervick on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 1:30am

    I am reading a book "The Negro's God" written in 1938 by Benjamin Mays who was then a Professor of divinity at Howard University and later became President of Morehouse. The book did a scholarly look at how black authors from Revolutionary times to 1937 viewed God. There were three general categories; 1) God as the ultimate compensator (Your reward is in heaven), 2) God as supporter in combat (Ex: Joshua and the battle at Jericho was a message to fight for your rights), and 3) the communist view (Frankly meaning that there is no God). It appears that the view as communism = Godless was not uncommon.


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 2:49am

    I don't have a problem with the religious dimension in the present movement, but I'm not sure you're right about the history.

    Perhaps with American utopianism and transcendentalism and the civil rights movement (or some of it)...

    But the union movement wasn't particularly religious, as I recall. Maybe a better way of putting it, there wasn't much friction between folks who were in the movement from a religious standpoint and those who weren't.

    So, for example, non-religious people had NO problem marching with King or working with the black churches. It's now more of a problem because of the anti-gay and anti-abortion positions of some chunk of the black church community.


    by Peter Schwartz on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 3:22am

    Pssst Genghis, note misspelling of William Jennings' last name, not good for an author on the era; feel free to delete this comment after editing


    by artappraiser on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 1:53am

    Embarrassing. I always do that with Bryan for some reason. Thanks.


    by Michael Wolraich on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 2:06am

    A few comments:

    1) William Jennings Bryan would make a strange progressive by today's standards. (Even his Silverite position was just another metal substitution for gold, not a free currency system, and his ultra-religion in the Scopes monkey trial is well-documented)

    2) The Irish dominated immigration all through the 1800's, so they weren't exactly a minority in 1900, nor were they powerless.

    3) There were people in the early ACLU like Helen Keller who favored unsurprisingly rights for minorities and the disabled, such as her early support for the NAACP.

    4) The racism of 1900 was tied to imperialism, class distinction, and the crumbling view of what was owed to whites. Mark Twain headed the Anti-imperialism League in 1901, while being publicly anti-racist, including his support for black newspapers and supporting Chinese in the Boxer Rebellion, blacks in the Congo, Filipinos in their fight against US troops.

    5) The problems for the black community have shifted from legal prohibitions to rampant economic injustice. Blacks can pretty well go anywhere they want, work where they want (yes, still racist limitations) - but they are much more likely to be ripped off for mortgages, loans, and other opportunities. So taking the MLK birthday opportunity in the middle of our economic crisis years to note that blacks too are part of the 99% is not unreasonable.

    Note - this is not particularly "class" - no one's asking rich basketball players to give back their money, and people like Soros, Buffett, Gates are still admired - in part because they support a balance of earned income and paid responsibility. While 1% unfairly points to the top of the wealth, the cry is distinctly focused on those who've rigged the deck and are dealing from the bottom - likely a much bigger threat to the livelihood and happiness of US blacks than overt racism at this point, as you can escape the ghetto, but you can't escape the theft coming from government and some of our largest, most crooked corporations.

     


    by PeraclesPlease (not verified) on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 2:29am

    Even his Silverite position was just another metal substitution for gold, not a free currency system, and his ultra-religion in the Scopes monkey trial is well-documented.

    A free currency system would hardly have progressive results.  It would remove the monetary authority of the people of the United States from public hands, and permit the banks to form an oligopolistic private sector replacement in which monetary "policy" decisions would simply be the corporate decisions of plutocratic leaders.


    by Dan Kervick on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 1:40am

    This resonates with me. I've often had similar thoughts. As you say, racism hasn't been banished, but it's at least been tarnished. Almost no one anymore openly admits to being racist. It's all dog whistles. On the other hand, many people see nothing wrong with being classist/elitist; I often have to struggle with it myself. It's easy to see with race (or sex) that you're born with it, so it seems obviously unfair to discriminate based on it. With sexual orientation, there's also truth to that, but it's obviousness varies from person to person. With class, however, many people think that anyone could be upwardly mobile if they just worked hard enough, and that's true for some people. Of course, the best time to work hard is when you're youngest, and the reason you're most likely to work hard is because you have a good support system, which usually comes from being born into the "right" class, so…

    Pardon my ramblings, but I find it hard to talk about this without getting either too long winded or too hand waving.


    by Verified Atheist on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 1:40am

    Seems like it's always ticked off the Occupy critics that the movement is made up largely of employed people, particularly employed white people.  Means that the usual dog whistles won't work.  It also means that you can have a job but still not be getting your share.  Which means the myth of America as a classless society, unlike Britain, just isn't true.  That's going to shake a lot of fundamental beliefs.


    by Michael Maiello on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 5:55am

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