Remember all of the anger at town hall meetings across America during the national debate over health care reform, when some people said they wanted to take their country back? A racist even painted a swastika outside the district office of black Congressman David Scott (D-Georgia), who was inundated with racially threatening faxes, emails and phone calls. And Tea Party supporters hurled racial and anti-gay epithets at Congressional lawmakers who gathered outside the Capitol in support of health care.
An interesting study was released suggesting that white opposition to heath care may be racially motivated. The report, conducted by the Greenlining Institute, a multiethnic public policy, advocacy and leadership institute, set out to determine whether race is a factor in support for the 2010 health care reform law, and whether racial bias is involved in white opposition to the law.
Based on data from the 2008-2010 American National Election Survey, the report found that more Americans supported health care reform (44.3 percent) than opposed it (35.8 percent, with 19.8 percent holding no opinion). But the devil is in the details.
While 78.6 percent of blacks, 52.6 percent of Latinos and 43.6 percent of people of other racial backgrounds supported health care reform, only 38.4 percent of whites supported the legislation. Support among people of color could be a result of racial disparities and inequities in America’s health care system. For example, people of color are more likely to be without health insurance. Blacks and Latinos are less likely to have a regular doctor than whites. Native Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. And although black women are 10 percent less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than white women, they are 36 percent more likely to die from it.
The Greenlining Institute focused in on racial resentment, which is defined as “a political belief system that fuses whites’ belief in traditional conservative values such as the protestant work ethic (e.g., hard work equals success) with whites’ negative feelings towards blacks as a group…. Whites who share this perspective tend to believe that the reason blacks fail to get ahead in society is their failure to work hard enough, and not because of racial discrimination.”
Interestingly, the study found that whites who were high in racial resentment were against the health care law, not because they hated Obama, which they did, but because of their attitudes towards blacks. They believed African-Americans and other groups were getting something they did not earn or deserve. On the other hand, for whites who were low in racial resentment, their positive feelings about health care were related to their positive attitudes about the president.
Although this study is new, the concept of racial resentment in politics is by no means a brand new phenomenon, and certainly not in the U.S. During the Civil War, the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 were the result of racial resentment. Specifically, poor whites were resentful of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves. And they did not want to fight a war for the liberation of black people, who would potentially come up North and take their jobs. As one Pennsylvania newspaper put it, “Willing to fight for Uncle Sam,” but not “for Uncle Sambo.” Further, New York’s working-class Irish were resentful of black labor, which was used to replace striking Irish longshoremen. One newspaper gave an account of an Irish Catholic judge named John H. McCunn, who complained about spending millions of dollars to fight a war against slavery: ”[H]e had seen the negro at the mouth of the Congo River, and the Slavery of the South was a paradise in comparison. The negro was a prince in the South compared to his situation at home.”
The Draft Riots were ugly, with four days of arson, looting and murder, and an official death toll of 119, which at the time was believed too low. A cartoon from Harper’s Weekly depicted an angry white mob about to beat an elderly black man who was protecting a black child in his arms. Black families were hunted down and lynched, and their houses set on fire. Interracial couples were particularly at risk. One black man was burned alive, while others were hanged from lampposts, and a Mohawk Indian was beaten to death because a mob thought he was black. Further, the Colored Orphan Asylum on 5th Avenue and 43rd Street was burned to the ground, forcing 237 to flee to safety.
After the Civil War and the end of slavery in America, the federal government attempted to do right by freed black folks. Gen. William T. Sherman proposed giving former slaves confiscated plantation property and a mule to farm the land — hence the origin of Special Field Order 15 to deliver “40 acres and a mule” to each freed slave. Under this program, 40,000 blacks resettled on confiscated land on the islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. After the assassination of President Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson ended the program and the forced to leave their land.
Suddenly, whites had to deal with black power. African-Americans were not only transformed into free labor, but citizens, voters who could run for office and become senators, sheriffs and judges. Reconstruction in the South was backed up by 38,000 federal troops in the South, and the Freedmen’s Bureau brought aid to emancipated blacks, and free education to blacks and whites. Eventually, the Bureau and Reconstruction itself were abandoned, and the federal troops were no longer there to protect African-Americans. White resentment turned to anger, fueling the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other domestic terrorist groups. By 1871, Congressional hearings on Klan violence found that since the Civil War, 50,000 murders had been committed in the South.
With Jim Crow came a reign of terror aimed at African-Americans. For example, a mob of 10,000 white men destroyed the prosperous black community of Tulsa, known as Greenwood or Black Wall Street. The white community, resenting the success of their African-American neighbors, killed at least 300 black residents, possibly many more. In post-Civil Rights era politics, conservative Southern politicians capitalized on white bitterness over the gains of black America. Party affiliation among disaffected whites switched from Democratic to Republican, and the segregationist Dixiecrats found a new home. But the racial resentment towards black progress remained the same for conservative white Southerners, it just became more sophisticated, with a code-worded message.
As the late Lee Atwater, architect of the Southern Strategy noted, “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N****r, n*****, n****r,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘n****r’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
Like Reconstruction, affirmative action disrupted traditional systems of white privilege. As a result, whites have used affirmative action as an excuse to resent African-Americans. Arguments against affirmative action and other programs that promote diversity and inclusion are framed in terms of the benefits bestowed upon unworthy, unqualified black people.
A common strategy is to identify atypical success stories such as Oprah Winfrey as proof that affirmative action is no longer necessary, or to set up the straw man of Bill Cosby’s child vs. the poor son of an Appalachian coal miner competing for admission to college. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) brought white resentment to broadcast TV with his infamous anti-affirmative action campaign ad. The commercial, which Helms used against black opponent Harvey Gantt, featured a pair of white hands crumbling up a rejection letter because an unqualified minority landed the job.
Similarly, white opposition to slavery reparations is couched in terms of undeserving black grievances. For example, in 2001 David Horowitz listed ten reasons why reparations are a bad idea. For example, Horowitz explained that there is no single group responsible for slavery. Besides, America is a multiethnic nation and most Americans have no connections to slavery. In addition, Horowitz said that “To focus the social passions of African-Americans on what some Americans may have done to their ancestors fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago is to burden them with a crippling sense of victim-hood.”
Moreover, he argued that African-Americans, who have the highest standard of living of all blacks in the world, owe a debt to America for ending slavery and allowing them to enjoy their freedom. Pat Buchanan made it plain on his blog: “First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known….Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans….We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?” In other words, black people, you never had it so good, so why complain? That says a lot.
Today’s charge of “reverse racism” is the disingenuous cry of personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, who disparage diversity and ignore the very real dynamics of race and power in this society. They provide bitter people with a forum to channel and legitimize their racial resentment. Yesterday it was slavery and civil rights, today it is health care. Undoubtedly, it will be something else tomorrow. None of these issues cause the racial resentment, they only reflect them. The resentment was always there.
