Do you ever wonder why Chicago’s murder rate ranks so high among Republicans as a topic of discussion? I do. Since when have they been concerned about what happens in the big cities?
Oh yes, the Wallace campaign and crime in the streets. Law and order and crime have been staples of Republican campaigning for years. Yet somehow, this focus on Chicago remains disproportionate. Perhaps it is because Obama based himself in Chicago.
But if you look at the rhetoric of the last five or six decades, you’ll find a theme. Shootings and other violent crime is subtly tied to Black neighborhoods, the ghetto. (The fact is that shooting fatalities are concentrated in three neighborhoods of Chicago, all Black). OK. So we can blame poverty and discrimination for the violence.
No, that is not the message Trump supporters get, the Republicans. The message they get is that they have been right all along: Blacks cannot govern themselves and therefore must not participate in democracy. The old specter of lazy, criminal Black folk stealing chickens and getting drunk on Saturday night arises quickly.
If you were raised in America as a White person, as I was, growing up you heard these stories about Black people. Then they were not considered racist b/c under current definition, most White people were thoughtlessly racist. That was just the way Black people were and since you didn’t go to school with them or work with them, you didn’t know.
But here is the point of all this: disenfranchisement via law and terror. The former via voter suppression and the latter by police violence.
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
