My pro Barack Obama friends are probably going to be pissed because I’m calling this like it is–”calling a spade a spade” as the tired and now politically suspect phraseology puts it–but if Obama’s spin doctors weren’t paranoid about his sending a message to the public that sounds ‘too black,’ he ought to be flat out saying that the McCain/Palin message about his wanting to “redistribute wealth” is racist.
First off, listen very carefully to the constant, repetitive sound-bite of the “middle class” this and the “middle class” that, without ever referring to “the poor.”
That’s because the Republicans could sound very Nixonesque by denouncing tax dollars being given by working people to “the poor.” Nixon enunciated the values of hundreds of millions of working class people by re-defining people who work for a living as “middle class” and then threatening their livelihood and existence with sound bite after sound bite that was summed up with his doctrine that “people who work should live better than people who don’t.” What it comes down to is blame the poor for welfare, not the system that condemns a certain portion of the populace to a permanent acceptable level of unemployment and under-employment.
With that cultural context instilled in millions of American working class people who’ve been re-defined as “middle class” because they have self-esteem issues when called “working class,” when McCain/Palin accuse Barack Obama of wanting to re-distribute wealth, what they’re really saying to white working class people is that this black guy wants to take tax dollars that you paid with your hard work and sweat and give it to those black and brown welfare bums. That’s the message. Make no mistake about it. This is what’s called in formal logic an “unstated premise,” and it’s a racist message.
John Kerry Power Salute @ NAACP Convention
Can you even imagine Barack Obama not being afraid to make a power salute at an African American gathering? I really, really, honestly wish I could, but I can’t. Another reason I voted for Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez.
