What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?
Why does everything in America suck? We have failing public schools, broken highways and bridges, pathetic mass transit, a public health system that can’t handle pandemics (or even basic public health), a workforce that works harder for less than workers in any other advanced country, and so on. As Dylan once sang, “Everything is broken.” The reason for this social decay, argues economist Heather McGhee is racism. Sure, corporate greed and the expropriation of our political system by the Koch brothers and their ilk hasn’t helped, McGhee acknowledges. But white resentment of public spending – even when it lifts their own boats along with those of racial minorities (especially Blacks) – is “the key uncredited actor in our backslide,” states McGhee.
The economist made her argument yesterday in a New York Times Sunday Review essay titled “Our Economy of White Resentment” which everyone should read. (She expands on her provocative theme in her new book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.) Here are some of McGhee’s bullet points that we all should consider:
* White people who exhibit LOW racial resentment against Black people are 60 percentage points more likely to support increased government spending than are those with high racial resentment.
* A new Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study calculated that in 2019, the country’s output would have been $2.6 trillion greater if the gaps between white men and everyone else were closed.
* And a 2020 Citigroup report estimated that if the U.S. had adopted policies to close the Black-white economic gap 20 years ago, our GDP would be some $16 trillion(!) higher.
In other words, racism is bad for business and bad for society. Dividing and conquering the races might be good for corporate capitalists, but it sucks for the rest of us – as Fred Hampton was preaching over a half century ago, before he was drugged and assassinated in his bed. (See my Movie of the Week review below.)
The economic stupidity of racism was again on stark display in recent days, as the owners of the popular Sonoma wine country restaurant The Girl & the Fig shut their doors rather than rehire the young server Kimi Stout who was fired for wearing a Black Lives Matter mask. Apparently one racist customer complained about the mask being worn by Stout – who identifies as brown and queer -- prompting the restaurant owners to ban their employees from displaying BLM messages. And now The Girl & the Fig proprietors would rather put dozens more people out of work – and risk the survival of their little goldmine – instead of adapting to the growing sentiment that, yes, Black lives DO fucking matter.
Along with a peaceful political revolution, we need another cultural revolution in this country. In my youth, we advanced the radical idea that “all you need is love.” We envisioned a rainbow society where people of all colors, genders and sexual orientations could harmonize.
It turns out that our vision is not just hippie-dippie. It’s the only way for America to prosper.
