Answer to white nationalism

In the 1960s white Americans generally supported efforts of people of color to end legalized segregation and restrictions on voting rights in southern and some border states. When the civil rights movement challenged de facto segregation and denial of equal rights in the north, it provoked a white backlash starting in Mayor Daley’s Chicago against efforts to break housing discrimination in the white suburbs, against forced busing to achieve integration in public schools, and against affirmative action to achieve equality of opportunity to gain admission to higher education and promotion in fields of employment. Whites saw in the latter efforts — reverse discrimination.

Climate change, automation, and outsourcing threatened unskilled jobs in mining, manufacturing, construction, and agriculture. Finally, came challenges to personal identification and lifestyle such as: smoking, fast but unsafe and polluting cars, male dominance in the home including the right to discipline even physically a wife or children. Society might cast a disapproving eye, but rarely did law enforcement or the judicial system punish. And, finally there was a challenge to the gross distortion of the Second Amendment protecting personal possession of any and all firearms.

Then came what seemed to white working class men a surge of successful people of color portrayed in the media interacting socially with whites irrespective of gender, gaining prominence if only in “token” fashion in the professions, commerce, politics up to and including the White House so Mitch McConnell would claim preposterously that since Obama was elected president there no longer exists a race issue in the U.S. And do not forget a wave of immigrants, not from Norway, but from south of our border.

Is there any answer to all of this? Hate, fear, rage, bigotry and rallying behind a demagogue like Trump and lesser wannabes is one. The Trump base will diminish.

Another is a resort to the oldfashioned lifting of oneself up by the bootstraps with some necessary social assistance. There is not going to be some reaching out to those who insist on resisting trends outlined above. There should be a domestic Marshall Plan or another New Deal for those who will try to help themselves. Education and training cannot be scorned.

Many in traditional trades such as auto mechanics, plumbing, carpentry and electronics tell us that those fields are crying for a new generation and there will be jobs for them if we ever get around to rebuilding our infrastructure, but more sophisticated knowledge and skills are needed. There are jobs in the health field requiring training though not as extensive as that for a doctor. There are jobs in law enforcement and firefighting. These jobs can provide more than a minimum wage income. There are wonderful young people currently holding such jobs and making their way — many are people of color and women, and white men will have to accept their training and supervision.

We will be excluded from the global economy conceding leadership to China, or we will guide it to embrace free markets and fair competition. We will restore our place as champion of human rights and democratic government, an example to an admiring world once again.

Trump offers nothing but corporate profits, corporate power, and further concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the few, the ridicule and contempt of the world.