“Our destiny is inextricably linked."
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
I hope you’ve had chance to read my story, what has become our collective story, all the inextricable links between my own fate and the challenges facing America today. If 100 years were swallowed up by Jim Crow, now it feels like over 50 years have mysteriously vanished since the triumphs of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Some things have gotten better—and failing to acknowledge that fact is a profound insult to all those who fought and gave of themselves during that turbulent era—but others seem to be getting worse.
Our Country is Polarized to the Point of Paralysis.
It feels as if America has metastasized into two warring factions, our differences seeming as unresolvable as those of North and South prior to the Civil War. Whereas the slave economy created the great divide in antebellum America, today we are separated by innumerable issues that are viewed through the prism of two dramatically different world views.
America Still Lives in the Shadow of Jim Crow.
Many people of color, especially African Americans, feel like the deck is stacked against them. They are convinced they are the victims of “white privilege,” the notion that our society endows white people with countless advantages, including generations of “entitlement” that are taken for granted. They feel like they’ve been denied their fair share of the American Dream and have run out of patience to be granted the justice and equality promised by the Constitution. Trying to convince them they’re wrong only makes matters worse. We need to acknowledge these people have good reasons to feel as they do, and the sooner we address their grievances the better off the country will be.
“White Grievance” is Very Real for Some People.
Just as many people of color believe they are treated like second-class citizens, a sizeable number of whites feel they are being unjustly taken advantage of by a nebulous group of “elites” who look down on them and aim to destroy their values and culture. A good deal of their anger and resentment for the “other” is driven by fear that an increasingly multi-cultural, multi-racial society is leaving them behind. Some have even latched onto the “great replacement theory,” which posits that liberal elites, most especially Jews, are using non-white immigrants to help push white Americans out and steal the country away from them. Once again, it’s pointless to tell them they’re wrong, that their anger and resentment are misplaced; if that’s how they feel, we need to take a good hard look at what brought us to this point.
The American Dream is Out of Reach for Too Many People.
Thanks to globalization, automation, and technology, many working people, no matter their skin color, are struggling to maintain a “middle-class” existence. Industries suited to world markets are globalization’s winners, while manufacturers that must compete with lower foreign labor costs are its losers. Those who possess the education and skills to prosper in the new, knowledge-based, economy are thriving, while the less skilled suffer its consequences.
This new economy’s losers are falling further and further behind, often relegated to menial, low-paying jobs that offer no hope for a better future. They view America’s educated professionals as adversaries leaving them behind in a globalized, information-based world. They are bitter and angry at losing their shot at achieving the American Dream, and once again it’s pointless to tell them they shouldn’t feel that way. Some vent their frustration through misplaced hatred of the non-white “other,” while others express it through self-hatred, the result being “lives of despair,” including the opioid and fentanyl epidemics that ravage America’s heartland.
The American Middle-Class is Being Decimated.
Fewer and fewer people can afford a decent middle-class lifestyle, and a substantial number are working two and three jobs just to make ends meet. And the “gig economy” is often no substitute for a steady paycheck and a pension. People have been led to believe that, in time, their circumstances will improve, but globalization is long-since out of the bag, and even if it wasn’t, automation and technology are far worse culprits.
Economic Inequality is the Biggest Problem We Have.
The Growing divide between the new economy’s winners and losers helps increase our already alarming income inequality, what is very possibly the country’s biggest problem. Having grown up in the plantation economy of the antebellum South, I saw the evils of extreme income inequality firsthand, and I would hate to see this country lose its middle class to a new aristocracy reminiscent of the planter class. If you read my website and my journal, you’ll see that I talk a lot about the “Cotton Kingdom,” the powerful slaveocracy that dominated the South prior to the Civil War. We can thank God the Cotton Kingdom was defeated on the battlefield and banished from the earth, but today we have an all-powerful equivalent in the top. 01%, the people who own most of our country and have far too much power in Washington—to the detriment of the majority of Americans. It’s high time we make our government work for that majority again.
