Let’s be clear. Racism, subjugation, and police brutality are accumulative. Like any loan or investment, hatred and injustice compounds over time. 25 years ago, I participated in the Million Man March in Washington DC. Back then, the organizing factors of the march centered on the protest of 15 years of Reaganomics. The failed conservative doctrine that decimated public investment in education, health, the arts, and infrastructure to name a few. I have to go back because these policies were steeped in bias and economic greed which left African American unemployment rates nearly twice that of white Americans, a poverty rate of more than 40%, and a median family income that was about 58% of the median for white households.
The foundational political calculous of conservatism is the “Southern strategy” which started With Barry Goldwater in 1964 and has been in doing so, he portrayed racial minorities as undeserving “takers,” while erasing the institutional racism at the heart of economic inequity. The message to Southern white voters was both that African Americans were to blame for their own standing in society and that government programs aimed at alleviating racial inequities would disadvantage white Americans.
This is why the slogan “Make America Great Again” has such a resounding impact and or influence on the angry mob we saw storming the capitol and we see riding around in pick-up trucks with American and Trump flags. These folks have been conditioned to think and feel that any progress for people of color is a regression of their status and power in America.