"What's Past is Prologue..."
https://www.thenation.com/…/this-is-what-white-supremacy-l…/
This Is What White Supremacy Looks Like
Don’t be confused. Trump’s voters didn’t vote against their own interests, they voted for the preservation of white privilege—their paramount interest.
by Damon Young
November 9, 2016
The Nation
PHOTO: Trump supporters pose with a Confederate flag in Jacksonville, Florida. (AP Photo / Matt Rourke)
There is an understandable inclination to believe that by voting for and ultimately electing Donald Trump, white people (particularly working-class white people) voted against their own self-interests. After all, this is a man who became a billionaire by swindling and defrauding and sometimes just outright not paying people exactly like them, and there’s no real evidence that a Trump presidency will be much different for them than the Trump industry has been.
A version of this post initially appeared on VSB.com.
This is not particularly untrue. But it misses the point—as I did.
In this election, they (white people) did not vote against their self-interests. They may have voted against a self-interest—several self-interests, actually—but not their most important one: the preservation of white supremacy.
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Retaining the value of a whiteness they believed to be increasingly devalued superseded everything else. Including their own livelihoods; their own intellects; their own physical and financial well-beings; their own Christianity; their own consciences; their own agency; their own money; their own educations; their own employment; their own neighborhoods; their own homes; their own futures; their own children’s futures, their own country’s legacy; their own country’s status with the rest of the world; their own environment; their own food, air, and water; their own planet; their own rights; their own dignity; their own integrity; and their own lives.
And please note that I am not including any qualifiers. For working-class whites. Or whites from Rust Belt cities. Or white men. Or white people who didn’t graduate from college—or rural whites, or Midwestern whites, or Southern whites. Or whites disillusioned with Washington. Or whites who hate Clinton. Or whites who felt ignored by politicians. This is on all white people—who are complicit even if they didn’t vote for Trump.
Yes, there exists a difference between allies and racial antagonists. They are not the same. But those allies obviously haven’t done enough collectively to repudiate the mindsets existing in their families and among their friends, possessed by their co-workers and neighbors, shared during private holiday gatherings and public town-hall meetings. Millions of white voters have shown us that nothing existing on earth or in heaven or hell matters more to them than being white, and whichever privileges—real or fabricated, concrete or spiritual—existing as White in America provides. I admit: I underestimated them. Of course, I knew of the presence of white supremacy and the appeal of perpetuating it. You cannot exist as a black person in America without at least a rudimentary and peripheral understanding of it. What I didn’t realize, however, was exactly how powerful this want to retain whiteness is.
I assumed, wrongly, that enough of them would value their own lives, their own humanity, more than the need for white supremacy to be preserved. But I failed to realize how intertwined these things are for them. There apparently is no point in even existing without existing as white. Whiteness is past an identity or status; it is their oxygen, their plasma, their connective tissue.
I’m trying very hard to find silver linings today, some source of comfort or consolation. But I cannot. Maybe I will eventually. But right now, this, the idea that white people are so possessed with clutching and cultivating and elevating white supremacy that they will endanger and outright sacrifice their own fucking lives to do so, is all I can think about. And if they feel that way about their own lives, why would they give a damn about mine?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Damon Young is the editor-in-chief of VSB. He is also a contributing editor for EBONY.com and a columnist for EBONY Magazine.
...MEANWHILE a mere 11 months later...
“Tonight’s vote is a giant setback for every consumer in this country,” Richard Cordray, the director of the consumer bureau, said in a statement. “As a result, companies like Wells Fargo and Equifax remain free to break the law without fear of legal blowback from their customers.”
Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book.The New York Times
Breaking News Alert
October 24, 2017
NYTimes.com »
BREAKING NEWS:
Mike Pence cast the deciding vote as Senate Republicans struck down a rule that would have let Americans sue banks and credit card companies
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
10:23 PM EDT
The overturning of the rule, with Vice President Mike Pence breaking a 50-to-50 tie, would further loosen regulation of Wall Street as the Trump administration and Republicans move to roll back Obama-era policies enacted in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. By defeating the rule, Republicans are dismantling a major effort of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog created by Congress in the aftermath of the mortgage mess.
Read More »
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/business/senate-vote-wall-street-regulation.html
Business Day
Consumer Bureau Loses Fight to Allow More Class-Action Suits
by JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG
October 24, 2017
New York Times
Senate Republicans voted on Tuesday to strike down a sweeping new rule that would have allowed millions of Americans to band together in class-action lawsuits against financial institutions.
The overturning of the rule, with Vice President Mike Pence breaking a 50-to-50 tie, will further loosen regulation of Wall Street as the Trump administration and Republicans move to roll back Obama-era policies enacted in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. By defeating the rule, Republicans are dismantling a major effort of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog created by Congress in the aftermath of the mortgage mess.
The rule, five years in the making, would have dealt a serious blow to financial firms, potentially exposing them to a flood of costly lawsuits over questionable business practices.
For decades, credit card companies and banks have inserted arbitration clauses into the fine print of financial contracts to circumvent the courts and bar people from pooling their resources in class-action lawsuits. By forcing people into private arbitration, the clauses effectively take away one of the few tools that individuals have to fight predatory and deceptive business practices. Arbitration clauses have derailed claims of financial gouging, discrimination in car sales and unfair fees.
The new rule written by the consumer bureau, which was set to take effect in 2019, would have restored the right of individuals to sue in court. It was part of a spate of actions by the bureau, which has cracked down on debt collectors, the student loan industry and payday lenders...
