And then, as any film historical record from the 30s and 40s will show, hire nothing but Black people to do the actual labor of maintaining said railroad,
And as the dearly departed PB&J sandwich would remind us,
“If you can convince the lowest Black man he’s better than the best Hispanic man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll vote Republican for you.”
First generation immigrants did not and do not assimilate much, but their kids do. You could argue that first generation immigrants actually assimilate more now than a century ago because we don’t have the self-contained ethnic ghettos of the past, and partly because of that you really need to have some command of the English language to get by. Also mass media has exported a lot of American culture so some immigrants don’t have to assimilate as much to still be relatively similar. Still, since today we see the first generation immigrants it feels like they’re not assimilating, because they aren’t, but their kids will become part of the mix just like the German and Italian and Russian immigrants’ kids did.
An Us being against Them is as American as apple pie. The mere existence of a Them demands that some people think about themselves as Us. Any crumb given to Them is a crumb taken away.
The wildly ironically named Native American Party, usually called the Know Nothings, were virulently against the newly-immigrated Catholics. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s also targeted Catholics, and added on hate for Jews and Immigrants as well as Blacks. They controlled Indiana and many major cities in the North. They got the Immigration Act of 1924 passed so that darker skinned Thems (i.e. eastern and southern Europeans: Asians had long been banned) had little chance of entering the country. The Civil Rights era looked like strides were being made until Nixon’s Southern Strategy slowed it to a crawl.
The present day world is nothing new. It’s always been there, under the surface in times of backlash, in our faces when they could take control. In every era, the Us look for a Leader to destroy the enemy. Study Huey Long’s career for a frighteningly similar pre-Trump example. Once a group gives total allegiance to a Leader, only death can break that hold.
Polls keep trumpeting that Trump is underwater in every policy issue. Nobody cares. Trump has maintained a steady 90% approval rating from Republicans since day 1 of his second term. Almost all the Republican politicians in Congress who say a word against him have announced that they won’t be running for office again. Trump has personal power that he translates into authoritarian power - that is mainly being used against Them. Hallelujah!, cry his supporters.
Many good analyses of today’s culture have already been given. I don’t mean to slight them: everything matters. But the core issue has always been Us vs. Them.
I disagree somewhat. I make a decent middle class living in Arkansas, mostly in computer science. No one asked to see that I have a BS in electronics and a Master’s in Instrumentation and Electronics. I have encountered several people working on computer networks who have no college degree at all.
Does a college education enable one to act more intelligently? I recall a US Senator chiding Mrs. Biden for “calling herself a doctor” when she had a PhD in education.
This.
I also work here in Arkansas, and a few years ago I was playing HR recruiter for a large company here. My experience has been the opposite. My IT guys aren’t keen on hiring people without degrees even if they’ve been doing the job for 5+ years. They’re an insular bunch, so they’ll make exceptions for people they know, but by and large they want someone with a degree.
For some people, it’s not that they remember mistreating people who they thought of as not normal (though I agree that for some it is.) For some people, there’s A Right Way To Live. And because there is A Right Way, any other way must be Wrong. They may recognize that perfectly nice people live in what they think are Wrong ways; they may even think they ought to be nice to such people. But, because they think there is A Right Way, they therefore think that anyone saying those other ways of living are Right must be saying that their way of living is Wrong.
Therefore saying that it’s OK to be gay, or trans, or of a different religion, or atheist, or in an interracial relationship, or whatever they’re objecting to, is perceived as a direct attack on them and on their entire way of life. Because there’s no place in their heads for ‘these different ways of living can all be right’.
It’s not a frame of mind limited to any particular economic or social group. But it’s unfortunately pretty common. I first recognized it many years ago when I said casually to a group of co-workers who were discussing music that I didn’t much like country music. (I would now say that’s an over generalization; I like some of it.) They reacted exactly as if I’d continued on to say ‘and all of you are obnoxious and stupid and Wrong for liking it’; which I had neither said nor meant.
And I agree that some of it is the result of people deliberately trying to terrify every group of every other. We all want ourselves and our loved ones to be safe, no? There isn’t any safety in turning us against each other — that way lies only danger for everyone. But a lot of people — and I include in that some of the people doing the terrifying — can’t see that.
Chiding Dr. Biden?
Maybe because there are no good solutions to that.
When you are not educated, it is easier to lie to you. Note that the GOP won in 2024 based upon three Big Lies- The Economy was bad, The borders were open, and crime was out of control. None of those things were true.
Xenophobia is rampant the world over. Not just in the USA. It is the main issue.
Right, Fox and Conservative Talk Radio brainwashes people with a barrage of scary talk and out and out lies. One of my Liberal biddies got “converted” as there was a local CTR that asked him on as a “gun expert” (he really wasnt). But then he listened to them- started calling Obama “the Muslim in Chief” etc.
Not every but most. A combo of being Primaried out and death threats.
It is not that. Even in nations that arent “white” xenophobia is rampant. See Japan.
Right Wing Populism thrives in the modern world- Many nations have a RWP leader. RWP is based upon lying to the lowest common denominator and xenophobia.
IMHO, it’s that the left tries to talk them out of their fear. Have you ever spoken to someone with arachnophobia and reassured them that the spider isn’t venomous, or spoken to someone with a fear of flying and told them commercial flying is safe? The success rate of such logic-based persuasion is near 0%. Whereas the right affirms them in their fear, makes them feel heard and listened to, makes them feel understood and empathized with.
It may be useful to remember the old adage that “you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into”. It simply means that beliefs based on emotion, identity, or social influence, rather than logic, cannot be changed through rational argument.
You’re trying to fight a losing battle against a vast disinformation campaign supported by numerous institutions that these people implicitly trust, including now the White House itself and a president who shamelessly lies every time he opens his mouth. Most of these people love what they think Trump is doing because they haven’t a clue what he’s doing, and blindly believe everything he tells them even if contrary evidence is right in front of their faces. When Trump tells them the people shot in Minneapolis were terrorists threatening federal agents, they believe it. When he tells them the protestors are all paid professional troublemakers and you can tell because all their signs are professionally made, they believe it, even when all the pictures and videos show no such thing. How do you fight such insanity with facts and logic?