We've been locked into a racist paradigm as a country for so long that it's difficult for any of us to see past itIn that case, I was referring to the media's focus on Dylann's race and the race of his victims that kept us from seeing intractable problems that are befalling men that could explain the rash of mass shootings that we are witnessing.
Trump's victory during the 2016 presidential campaign stunned our political and media establishment. Not surprisingly, it left the media scrambling for a reason that they might have missed to explain Trump's victory. Not surprisingly, the talking heads decided to talk about race--it's always about race with these people!
I was watching the coverage on that auspicious night and one particular comment stood out for me. It was from Van Jones on CNN. Jones insists on playing the race card, explaining Trump's impending victory as a whitelash against a black president (Starting at 1:20):
Race wasn't the reason that I voted for Trump, but let's assume that race was the primary motivator for the majority of Trump voters and that Jones is correct about this being a whitelash.
Is that very surprising? Was it bad that this was a whitelash? It's stylish in some circles to view interracial relations in terms of intersectionality (which describes how different demographics can intersect with each other and marginalize other groups). Assuming that intersectionality is a valid construct, why is it surprising that whites may see it as a means for minorities to marginalize them? And that whites resisted such marginalization using the only peaceful means available to them, the ballot box.
That's pretty much where I left this line of thought until recently. But it seems that even I fell into the race narrative that saturates our political discourse and didn't realize it until a video posted by independent journalist Tim Pool about 1 month ago.
Tim is an independent journalist who describes himself as liberal in his politics. In the video below he discusses the Yellow Vest protests that started in France over a fuel tax and is starting to spread to other European countries. In it he draws some parallels between the Yellow Vest protests in Europe and the American nationalist movement that elected Donald Trump. The whole video is worth watching but Tim draws some interesting conclusions starting at 10:18.
Basically, globalism has worked but the benefits didn't seem to be equally shared between urban and rural areas. Rural areas in France and the US saw their jobs disappear and their taxes being raised and it was too much for many of them to bear, so nationalist candidates such as Donald Trump and Marie Le Pen have growing appeal among rural voters.
However, the reason that our punditry are seeing such shifts in our national moods as being about race is because the urban areas of the country are more racially diverse compared to the rural areas. Migrants from all over the country and the world tend to settle in urban areas where opportunities appear to be more abundant and lifestyles appear to be more modern. The rural areas of a country are more homogeneous and populated by the original white inhabitants who might have been content to keep producing for the globalist experiment but found wages cut, jobs lost and taxes raised. Now, they're pissed!
Our current paradigm always makes political issues about race. It's hard for us to see past this because we are so eager to prove that we are not racists, and hence, good people. But this does blind us to root causes. The current conflict between globalists and nationalists isn't rooted in racial strife, but a conflict between economic classes.
It's a conflict as old as recorded history--the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat. It might gall some liberals to realize that they are the bourgeoisie in this context, which is why I'm beginning to think that discussions about racism over Trump's victory might have been deflection rather than a good faith effort to understand.
