Barbershop: We know you’re not done Socrates but you need to hit the pause button so we can summarize what you’ve said and make sure we’re on the same page…
So Europe is outta white folks, and to have influence in a world where the majority of nations are POC, the US can’t afford for the most racist white folks to be the face of the country.
Barbershop: Here’s what we heard: That despite all the democracy BS, America has always had a hereditary caste system. White folks were the privileged caste and Black folks were the abused caste, The reason white folks could get away with it is they had the numbers from the jump, 85% plus, and we’re 10-12%. We never had a chance. Also, we didn’t just provide the free labor that generated the generational capital and wealth for white people, we provided the dumping ground for white anger and angst, per our exceptionally well informed young brother. We got a question: What happened to change America that much in 60 years? Why did the demographics change so radically?
And this white meltdown that gets articulated as MAGA, is really code for making America white again. So everything we’re looking at that seems crazy makes sense, cause like you said, once you know, you’re able to understand.
Socrates: Some historical context. America is a country of immigrants, but historically its been a country of European immigrants.They came very often over the objection of the white people that were already here. But the growing capitalist industrial economy of the United States required them and so it got them. The question was: How where they so successfully assimilated?
The answer is race. Race, like nationality, is a social construct and neither has a tangible existence; they exist in our collective imaginations. All those folks left Europe with national identities, German, Italian, Irish, whatever, but if they kept those national identies in America they’d generate the same social and political animosities they did in Europe. So in America, European immigrants became white, so they could then become American. Or put another way, in becoming American, they become white.
Non-Euporean POC were either barred from immigrating or faced a severely restrictive quota system.
Barbershop: So what changed in the second half of the 20th Century.
Socrates: First two European based world wars. No matter who’s counting or how they count it Europe suffered over 50 million civilian and military deaths. There were no excess Europeans left to immigrate to America.
The other thing WW2 did was end European global imperialism, and the US emerges as the heir to Western hegemony. But there was also a nuclear armed ideological adversary in the Soviet Union that was competing for influence in the world’s rapidly emerging decolonized nations.
The problem: the US is in a world of emerging sovereign nations made up of POC, but is running an apartheid state that would embarrass South Africa.
Barbershop: So Europe is outta white folks, and to have influence in a world where the majority of nations are POC, the US can’t afford for the most racist white folks to be the face of the country. You can’t have the United Nations sitting in the back of the bus on their way to the segregated hotel. That’s what’s going on in the world that turned 1960 United States into the United States of 2020?
Socrates: The Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act and the real game changer, Immigration & Naturalization Act of 1965, which eliminated racial/ethnic quotas in immigration. Over time these legislative changes reshaped American society.
In order to maintain its global footprint and expand its influence, the United States had to be equally accessible to the world. Think of post WW2 America as the Roman Empire of the 20th century (which it was), the world has business with the Empire and the Empire has business with the world, so all roads lead to Rome or America.
The civil rights legislation didn’t do anything about systemic racism, but it made America appear more inclusive and welcoming to a culturally, ethnically, religiously diverse world. It did structurally weaken the American caste system and radically alter American society by delegitimizing Jim Crow and producing a superficially more tolerant and commercially integrated mass culture. It’s also the source of the political tensions between the classes in America’s white caste.
In addition, it provided the United States with a growing population in order to support and sustain an expanding economy. It was good business and good global politics, and it’s what the times required.
Barbershop: But anyway, 50 years later you get a President Barack Obama and a country that’s 40% POC headed irreversibly toward 50%!
Socrates: You also get a President Donald Trump as a response to a President Obama. You get neo Nazis and a rejuvenated KKK masquerading as the Republican Party, and Republican controlled state legislatures who can’t decide whether they’re the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials.
Barbershop (the young brother): By necessity we’ve spent a lot of time (again) having to discuss white folks as a predicate for talking about Black folks. So my question: Where are we in this scenario?
Socrates: Not only an excellent question, it’s the only question that really matters. My brother’s given that question some serious consideration, and I have reason to believe he’s about to tell you what he thinks.
