WHY POOR WHITES VOTE AGAINST THEIR OWN ECONOMIC INTERESTS

WHY POOR WHITES VOTE AGAINST THEIR OWN ECONOMIC INTERESTS It is really amazing, and more than a little pathetic, that tens of millions of "poor white" folks continually vote contrary to their own vested economic interests, in state, local, and federal elections. Apparently they think that their "whiteness," will save them from poverty, pain, depravity. Such persons are at the "base" of the Southern strategy dating back to the colonial era, when the elite separated their indentured servants, who were black, white, and indigenes, by law, into classes to thwart their conspiring together to overthrow their elitist political, economic, cultural overlords. The blacks became slaves for life, exceptions notwithstanding. The poor whites were elevated politically, economically, culturally, above the blacks, being given small plots of land, seeds, tools, cash, and jobs, overseeing the blacks, and the right to vote. The Indigenes were removed farther and farther west, or liquidated. This division of labor and its legal entitlements worked well for the colonial elite, until it was twice shaken: first, by the 1777-80s American Rebellion, and second, by the War of 1812. In each war, the British offered freedom to the blacks who reached their lines to fight their rebels, the same American elites. This maneuver and offer frightened the reluctant Americans into granting a like deal to blacks who fought on their side, against the British, after initially resisting, due to fear of black revolts against Americans' tyranny. An estimated 5,000-10,000 blacks gained freedom by this means in America . An even larger number were shipped to Canada, to Sierra Leone, and the Caribbean by the British in fulfillment of its promise. But, the Americans' Africans did not receive the land allotments, pensions, nor wages, promised them, that were given to the whites, as bonuses, to induce enlisting and reward service. This convenient tripartite legal arrangement--black slave, poor whites elevated, and destroyed indigenes--was toppled by the Civil War. Then, blacks, now Americans indeed, if yet Africans in spirit, provided the decisive, unyielding "sable arm" that freed them and millions from their thralldom and that saved the country from destruction. Since that war was fought over the future and status of the blacks, relative to this nation's expansion across the continent and the attendant material riches that flowed, the question of what to do with them, for them, to them, or about them, again recurred, as before in the colonial era, of which Jefferson first wrote in his NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (Query XIV) in 1785. For a little while, less than ten years, Congress' post-war Reconstruction, through "The Bureau of Freedmen and Abandoned Lands," afforded some relief. Although the "abandoned lands" that blacks claimed, worked, and developed, and we're promised--40 acres and a mule--were taken away from them by law and given to white, wealthy speculators. Similarly, the earnings that the Freedmen had accrued since slavery and had invested in the Freedmen's Savings Bank, also Congressionally chartered, afforded greedy Wall Street raiders a golden opportunity to pilfer their money on fraudulent land schemes--like the recent mortgage scam's phony and inflated instruments--and to steal the millions of dollars saved by over 60,000 Freedmen in that failed bank. This money was never refunded by Congress; for if it were passed, by one chamber, it would fail in the other. If it somehow passed both, it was not signed by law into law by the President. Catch -22! Desperate and earnest attempts to reclaim it ran through the early 1900s. Meanwhile immigrants from Europe's white poor people were brought in by the millions to thwart the political, economic, cultural, demographic threat to "white power," posed by the surging blacks, whose populations kept increasing through it all! So, having no other option, the ever-resiliently creative blacks set out to do for themselves. By establishing their own communities, schools, banks, churches, businesses, farms, and colleges, with some key material aid from a few Northern missionaries, they managed to muddle through into the 20th century through their "nadir" when lynching, theft, lies, rape, and chicanery was the rule in depriving blacks of all rights guaranteed by law for life, liberty, property, and the peaceable pursuit of happiness! No help, the blacks now sadly recognized, would be forthcoming from the federal, the state, or local governments, despite their sacrifice, loyalty, their taxation payments to all, given each one's callous indifference or hostility to the plight of the blacks. Meantime, racist propaganda spewed like methane from every vent and fissure of American life, proclaiming repeatedly the inherent inferiority of the blacks, and the natural right of the whites to subjugate them. This white power paradigm continues to date in myriad guises. Its intent is to discourage and dishearten the blacks and to encourage and reassure the attitudinal descendants of the "poor whites," who are now executives, teachers, government employees, police, firemen, judges, legislators, business owners, scholars, pastors, soldiers. They are now the "middle class," these attitudinal poor whites; meanwhile the true poor whites--being yet extant, are as deranged as ever: on welfare, on food stamps, on social security, as they ever were, and as hostile to blacks disproportionately, and inexplicably. Almost remarkably, millions of the blacks have somehow overcome all the barriers and obstacles to achieve similar status with fewer resources to whites: middle class and well-above. Now that the President is black, too, the old paradigm of white supremacy is taking a beating, especially when black billionaires, entertainers, agents, actors politicians, authors, professionals and athletes are known globally, along with their services, merchandise, music, and éclat. They are deemed to be Americans by others and deem themselves as such. Politics is practically all that remains for "poor whites," of whatever income level, "poor white" being an attitude, a demented and deranged mentality, which feels itself divested, thrown down from its formerly exalted place in American life, whenever the nation's much-vaunted laws, privileges and immunity is afforded equally to blacks, as a fact, not idea! They deem this to be a breach of the colonial promise made to the "poor whites," that they would remain above the blacks, always, forever, whatever anyone's merits, whatever the law says, simply, because they were white. So they look to, and vote for. the GOP, the Republican-Teaparty, the right wing-quasi-Klan "conservatives, whoever, to restore it. Meanwhile, these reliable racists are repeatedly manipulated, aroused by demagogic politicians who view them as mere dross, to enrich their "boss," the oligarchs and plutocrats that rule! It apparently matters not to them that they are undercutting themselves, their own economic interests thereby. Foolishly and futilely they think that by doing so, that they, "poor whites," attitudinally, are stopping us, the resurgent and reawakened blacks, from achieving fully what is our due! Look at the diagonal of history and learn, "poor whites," that the arc of justice is finally bending our way! With that blessed assurance of our forebears, we agree with those who boldly sing, "there ain't no stopping us now! We're on the move!"