I have to admit, I watched the State of the Union Address by President Biden. I certainly heard some interesting things in it, especially the exchange with the heckling Republicans who were SHOCKED, SHOCKED [see below for the “Casablanca” reference!] that Biden would remind them that during last year’s election campaign, the Republican senatorial campaign put out an eleven-point program which included the proposal to SUNSET every piece of federal legislation --- which of course includes Social Security and Medicare.
[On April 15, I delivered a commentary entitled “Senator Rick Scott wants to “sunset” Social Security and Medicare.” Both the oral and extended written version --- including a link to Scott’s plan in his own words – are available here.]
[for people too young to remember Casablanca, the French police chief closes down Humphrey Bogart’s café because he is “shocked” at the gambling --- and at that moment, the croupier gives him his winnings for the night!]
But I refused to watch the Republican response from the Governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I am glad I didn’t. It was ridiculous and awful.
HOWEVER, I did read it. I take very seriously my responsibility to try and come to grips with what the “other side” is saying. Beginning in 1980, I became a lifelong student of what I call “right-wing economics,” as exemplified by the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States. I later wrote Surrender, How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution. (U Mich Press, pbk, 2000) which was devoted to an attempt to explain and analyze the so-called Reagan Revolution in economic policy in the 1980s.
For the oral presentation on the radio, I decided to highlight two quotes and do a deep dive into both of them.
Early in her speech Governor Sanders accused President of Biden of “surrender[ing] his presidency to a woke mob and can’t even tell you what a woman is.”
First of all, what the Hell is a “woke mob”? If you asked yourself that question you were not alone. One can actually get a fairly straightforward description of what the word “woke” originally meant when it was coined by some rap artists. Here is Merriam-Webster’s explanation.
Initially, the idea of being “woke” was developed by black rappers as a short-hand for truly understanding certain issues related to racism in America. That’s what the dictionary definition indicates though it also recognizes the changing definitions of the word over time. But one only goes to the dictionary if one really wants to find out something. Governor Sanders and the extreme right wing has no interest in seriously considering the meaning of that word in the context it was originally used. Instead, they created their own use for the word. They have decided that the word “woke” is a useful epithet to describe people who believe that there are significant structural racial advantages to being white in America – even today. In other words, the right wingers would say that someone like me who believes that there are incredible privileges that exist in the US today if you are white and --- shall we say --- significant difficulties one will encounter just by being black --- that person is “woke” and the right-wingers don’t mean it as a compliment. Saying that word is sufficient --- the right-wingers don’t have to explain WHAT is wrong or incorrect in what I just wrote above. They just use that word as a signal to their followers that the person they called “woke” is --- BAD.
Well and good. So now we know that being “woke” is BAD. What has that got to do with not being able to tell you what a woman is? There we get into this wholesale attack on the idea that some individuals believe that though they were born biologically as one gender, they FEEL and want to LIVE as the other gender. --- But it’s not that they cannot tell you what a woman is. Actually, the people who support trans-gender rights believe that a woman is a human being WHO WISHES TO IDENTIFY and LIVE AS A WOMAN --- what’s so damn terrible about that?
Back in the 1950s and 60s just being accused of being a homosexual put one’s life in danger. And in fact, during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, there were plenty of individuals (particularly cruel members of the religious right) who cheered AIDS as God’s punishment for gay men (though why God would send a plague that completely avoided lesbians is beyond me). Decades later, we now have a national acceptance of being gay --- with openly gay people allowed to serve in the military and high achieving gay people --- members of Congress and the cabinet. Meanwhile, gay marriage that was illegal thirty years ago is now legal throughout the land.
Now it is the transgendered minority in the population that is getting the horrendous treatment that used to be reserved for gay people. There are laws in many states making it illegal for people who have transitioned from one gender to the other to use bathrooms appropriate for their current gender. When you think about this, it is as ridiculous as the old argument that permitting gay people to marry cheapened the marriages of non-gay people. There are even some states where legislatures are considering laws that would make it illegal for doctors to assist individuals in making gender transitions – and that parents who support their children’s efforts to make the transition should be arrested for child abuse. If only people who support such outrageously repressive actions towards individuals who were born trapped in a biological body with which they do not identify would realize how this is exactly like the prejudicial fear of homosexuality which caused countless gay people --- especially gay youth – to commit suicide especially in the years when it was better to hide being gay than to “come out.”
In any event --- that reference to “can’t even tell you what a woman is” was just a cheap effort to cater to those who (for some completely non-rational reason) fear allowing transgendered people to live as they wish to live. But for those who listened to Governor Sanders and wondered what the heck she was talking about, I hope this (rather long-winded) explanation works.
Next example from Governor Sanders: “I signed executive orders to ban CRT, racism and indoctrination in our schools, …..”
Once again, if you are not privy to the extreme right-wing echo chamber you might ask yourself what the heck is CRT. You might also wonder why there needs to be an executive order to ban racism and indoctrination in our schools.
CRT stands for Critical Race Theory – an analysis that argues that structural inequalities in society can get perpetuated even if no racists engage in individually acts of discrimination.
Because I am not really versed in the literature (which is extensive), I went to a very interesting web site created by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund called “Critical Race Theory: FAQ” available here. Here’s as good a summary as I could present so no need to rewrite it: “Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is an academic and legal framework that denotes that systemic racism is part of American society — from education and housing to employment and healthcare. Critical Race Theory recognizes that racism is more than the result of individual bias and prejudice. It is embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities. According to CRT, societal issues like Black Americans’ higher mortality rate, outsized exposure to police violence, the school-to-prison pipeline, denial of affordable housing, and the rates of the death of Black women in childbirth are not unrelated anomalies.”
I would venture to bet that 99% of the individuals who crowd into school board meetings demanding that their children not be “taught” Critical Race Theory have no idea what it is. In fact, the Daily Show’s roving reporter had just such a discussion with a couple of people at a Trump rally who said they were strongly opposed to Critical Race Theory. When asked what it is, they responded “I don’t know.”
The extreme right wing, as well as politicians like Governor Sanders have no interest in exploring what CRT really is and whether it is a convincing analysis of our society. (By the way – studying a theory is not the same as accepting it. Education doesn’t only consist in learning what is “right.” Instead, much of education is exploring the many sides to arguments about various theories. I am sure there are plenty of aspects of Critical Race Theory that have been intellectually contested in the various writings about it as well as in many classroom discussions. In my own field of economics, there were many theoretical propositions presented in class not as THE TRUTH but as proposals to be debated and discussed --- accepted, modified or discarded by the students after careful consideration.)
But the right wing is not interested in taking analyses like CRT seriously. Instead, they just redefine CRT --- accusing it of attempting to make white children feel guilty about slavery and over 100 years of Jim Crow in US history. For the oral commentary I called this “total garbage” but I would have preferred to use a barnyard epithet. Whether one utilizes the complex analyses of CRT or just honestly teaches the true history of racism in the US, there is nothing in this approach to education that attempts to make anyone feel guilty. Instead, it is an attempt to make ALL OF US --- all Americans of whatever color ---- understand how we got to this point today.
In this context, I was moved by President Biden’s reference to “the talk” that black parents have to have with their children about how to avoid being shot by a nervous trigger-happy cop. As President Biden said, and as every honest parent of white kids would have to admit, this is a talk we would NEVER have to have with our white children. But too many black kids have been killed by cops because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or were playing with a toy gun, etc. The disproportionate danger that affects particularly young black men is the reasons parents have to have “the talk,” and the reason parents of white children do not.
And of course, one other very important fact of American life which demonstrates the structural inequalities of our society based on the color of one’s skin is the statistically measured fact that black life expectancy lags behind that of white folks. Even worse, the infant mortality rate for black children born to RICH black mothers is HIGHER than the infant mortality rate of white children born to POOR white mothers.
(For that shocking information, with statistical detail, see “The Upshot: Childbirth is Deadlier for Black Families, Even When They’re Rich, Expansive Study Shows,” by Claire Miller, Sarah Kliff and Larry Buchanan, The New York Times, February 12, 2023, available here.
So when Governor Sanders claimed she was banning “racism and indoctrination,” she was actually doing the opposite. She was attempting to make sure that only a white-washed history of the US is taught. According to the right-wing attempts to indoctrinate, once the Civil Rights Movement was successful in the 1960s, PRESTO, no more racism or discrimination in the US. The structures that had been created over decades of official Jim Crow in the South and the inculcation of stereotypical “knowledge” of black Americans among the white majority suddenly vanished with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The only problem of racial discrimination now according to too many of our mis-educated white fellow Americans is discrimination ---- against white people!
[See for example: Sandra Jones, “How the right wing is 'whitewashing' public school history curricula,” Out Schools, February 15, 2023, available here.
This article discusses Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s proposed revision of the statewide standards for US history curricula in K-12 education. Many of the proposed changes are truly outrageous --- lending support for my assertion that the right-wing wants to turn the study of history in this country into indoctrination.]
I ended my oral presentation with an angry cry that I find the kind of garbage spewed by right wingers like Governor Sanders truly disgusting. It is my fervent hope that over time, more and more of our fellow white citizens will see through this horrible attempt at brainwashing and fight against the misinformation and disinformation that is endemic in speeches such as the one delivered by Governor Sanders.
(and for those who want to read the entire transcript of her presentation, here it is. Believe me, there are more ridiculous doozies in that speech than the two I just highlighted!)
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies
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