The Republican Party Is Built on White Men’s Racism

Look at Southern history: From the War Between the States onward through the 1960s, the South was solid for the Democratic Party. Then, within a few years, it became solid for the Republican Party. What happened to elicit this change? The Democratic Party in the 1960s openly pushed civil rights for blacks, whereas the Republican Party did not. Hence, southerners became Republican in opposition to civil rights for blacks. Pure racism at its best. Today this racist motive is not as openly visible, but it is there all the same. The Republican Party is the vestige of white, old men desperately trying to forestall America’s new demographic future. It and they ultimately will fail, but they will do irreparable harm to America before they do.

The Republican Party seems hell-bent on dismantling the American way of life for the common man / middle class as rapidly as possible. This includes privatizing Medicare / Medicaid so the common man ends up paying a greater and greater share of his elderly health care, busting unions to reduce the power of the common man in getting fair treatment at work, privatizing public education into a charter school system using government vouchers which won’t cover the cost so that getting an education cost more for the common man, ending programs that help the common man send his children to college so that getting a college education becomes harder and harder for the common man, destroying programs that aid primarily the welfare and lower working classes, such as HeadStart and Planned Parenthood, shorting and reducing unemployment benefits for the jobless, ending funding for the arts and music programs, on and on. All the while, the Republicans want to give more and bigger tax breaks and subsidies to corporations, including oil companies raking in billions and billions in profits, and to never raise taxes of the wealthiest millionaires / billionaires, i.e. the elite richest, top 5% of Americans.

I understand why the corporations and the billionaires like the Koch brothers support these Republican plans. However, why does the working / middle class support these plans that ultimately will take the American dream away from their children and grandchildren? It seemingly makes no sense. Until you examine the demographics of the Republican Party: the majority of its members are largely white, above the mean in age and income, i.e. “old white men.” They frequently claim they want to “take back America”, i.e. return to the 1950s when all the power rested in the hands of white men. The Republican Party appeals to white men who long for the good old days when they called all the shots. The reports that within three to four decades whites will become the minority in the U.S. with Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians being able to dominate politics scares these white men to death. They cling to the Republican Party as their only hope to somehow forestall the upcoming loss of control by the white population. The working / middle class supports the Republican Party because consciously or unconsciously they are responding to subtle racism. In some cases, like in Arizona, the racism is overt and heavy-handed.

The Republican Party will probably wither away over the next few decades as Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians take charge of the government. And with it will go the white man’s hope of keeping control of American politics. So, if white hopes are almost certainly doomed, what better than to have placed most of the control of the country’s economy into the hands of corporations and the richest elite, where white men will still dominate. Let the Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians take charge of the government some day. What they will inherit control over will be a third-world America. The white man will have won a Pyrrhic victory of sorts. As I see it, the working / middle class supports the Republican Party’s economy plans through racism and impossible dreams of keeping a white-controlled America forever. Why else do they support a party that is actively seeking to gut the working class?