By Tom Cordaro
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
The mid-term election season starts to heat up after Labor Day, and the stakes could not be higher. The progressive media have been forecasting a “blue wave” that will flip the House and possibly the Senate. The reasons for this optimism are many, but the most talked-about are affordability and the overall economy.
In Democratic Party politics, the words of political consultant James Carville are often viewed as political dogma: “It’s the economy, stupid!” While concerns about the cost of living and the health of the economy continue to poll highly, there is a difference between what people are concerned about and how they will vote in an election.
A lesson from recent history
In 1990 in North Carolina, Harvey Gantt ran against Sen. Jesse Helms, an unrepentant segregationist. (Helms opposed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. He also fought against school busing and affirmative action.) Gantt was the former two-term mayor of Charlotte, the first Black mayor in that city’s history. He was also the first African American student to attend Clemson University.
Gantt ran a positive campaign calling on North Carolinians to embrace a multicultural future that would benefit everyone. As the election drew closer, polls showed Gantt leading Helms. It seemed as if North Carolina was ready to move past the worn-out politics of segregationists like Helms. In the weeks leading up to the election, Gantt was ahead in polls.
Helms ran a racially charged campaign — including the infamous “hands” commercial focusing on affirmative action “quotas” — and defeated Gantt by a six-percentage-point margin. What the Gantt campaign showed, and what the progressive forecasters did not understand, was the difference between what voters are concerned about and how they actually vote.
Former Democratic President and Texan politician Lyndon Johnson was once asked why poor, white Republicans repeatedly voted against their own best interests, and this was his response: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t know you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” When asked about immigration reform, Ana Rodriguez, director of the Leadership Lab at Southern Methodist University, said: “It’s time to admit an uncomfortable truth. Economic concerns do not drive fear of immigration. The changing face of America’s demographics drives that fear.”
Most of the progressive talking heads, pundits, and political forecasters do not want to face this hard truth: White supremacy, the original sin of this nation, is the primary electoral motivation for almost one half of this country. Only a tiny fraction of these folks would openly admit or acknowledge such a thing as “white supremacy.” And yet, the fear of losing their status at the top of the racial hierarchy is so deeply felt that they have no trouble at all disagreeing with almost everything the Trump administration is doing, while at the same time falling under the spell of his rhetoric of racial grievance, fear, and hatred.
A call to action
Elections are important. The electoral process, with all its faults and shortcomings, remains a vital, nonviolent means of addressing social injustice and serving the common good. While elections alone are not sufficient to guarantee our rights and the human dignity of those who are poor or marginalized, we dismiss them at our own peril. Elections do not tell us who we are, but they do measure where we are as a nation.
In the short term, we need to volunteer as poll workers, help register new voters, encourage infrequent voters to vote, and help those who want to vote get to the polls. We also need to stand ready to protect voters when they come to the polls to vote, and to protect the process of counting the vote.
In the long term, we need to continue our transformational work of becoming an anti-racist, multi-cultural, multi-generational movement, and we need to dismantle white supremacy in Church and society. In his final book, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lamented the possibility that white Americans would rather throw away democracy altogether and embrace “a native form of fascism,” to preserve their power.
I believe the stakes described by Dr. King are being played out in this year’s elections. Maybe we need to understand that there is no future for democracy in the United States that is not anti-racist.
Thank you so much for this email . I am 76 and white and each day am seeing more clearly the white supremacy , patriarchy and racism . There is so much I never saw . Now I am waking up daily . I live in Ct and just saw an awful racist ruling by democrat select-people in old lyme that did so much damage to a mostly black group trying to have a beach day . Yesterday I went to a catholic church and they talked about all their programs of helping the homeless etc as we continue to be a patriarchal church based on white supremacy that is only doing band aides and is not willing to really change and give up control . I can no longer just go along .
Hi Tom, Thanks for this. I have long believed that many citizens and voters act against their own economic, political and personal interest when race is a factor. You are absolutely right that we need to invest time and energy and passion in the electoral process this year (and every year). The only thing I would add to this fine essay, and I try to remember to use it myself, is when speaking of “white supremacy” — which has an almost mystical, unconquerable and inevitable quality to it — we add “ideology”: white supremacist ideology. Ideology is something we can break down in parts and understand it for what it is. In a sense, we can proverbially wrap our heads around it and realize that this old and persistent pernicious ideology can be defeated. Thank you again, Tom, for this
Tom, thanks for sharing your thoughts on who we are socially and politically. I have faith that good overcomes evil and that the next generation is better than the previous ones. Let us pray and as you suggested do our duty as citizens, vote.
Thanks, Mr. Cordaro, for a fascinating and necessary essay. When I shared it with a colleague in History, she reminded me that we have forgotten or have chosen to forget that state legislatures, the federal government itself, and the Democratic Party of those years, upon observing that recently liberated Blacks and poor white sharecroppers were beginning to find common cause against the abusive oligarchy of the Revonstruction, they cynically and cleverly created the KKK.
David-Ross Gerling, PhD