You can see from other posts on this blog that racism is very real to me, and that I take it very seriously. We all, especially whites, but everyone, need to keep their own racism in check and strive to be less racist, and stand up for others who are being racially discriminated against. We need to vote for politicians who take racism seriously. I have no doubt of this.
Most of us agree that one of the most serious problems with racism in our culture is stereotypes perpetuated by the media. But who owns the media, and who wants us divided along racial lines? Why would they want us divided?
In my mid 20's in the very late 90's, I went to live in the Pittsburgh area for a few years. I discovered in Alliquippa PA very segregated neighborhoods and a lot of racial tension. It turned out that the steel mill that used to be that town's main source of income had the town divided along racial lines, and that up to that point in 1998 it was still considered "unsafe" or "inappropriate" for whites go into he black neighborhoods (a norm I ignored and violated frequently.)
Later when I was studying the labor movement in college, I found that the captains of industry had divided their worker population along racial lines. At times this prevented white union organizers from visiting fellow black workers in their housing, because the housing was owned by the employers and whites were not allowed into the black housing areas. Race was literally used to keep the workforce from organizing.
Who owns the media, and why would they want us divided? What do they want us to not organize against? What do we all have in common that is so precious?
What they are controlling is our vote. What they are distracting us from is campaign finance reform. Why they are distracting us from campaign finance reform is government regulations have been put into place to literally make fantastically wealthy people richer to the detriment of everyone else (even most of the "1%.") Watch this:
But what can we do? What can just one vote do? It's not that simple, you can be extremely influential, don't believe that your donation or your vote does not matter, that is the lie they need you to believe. Here's an example of what you can contribute to besides simply voting, to make a difference:
We still have freedom of speech in the USA. Be loud about this, make sure every voter knows this is THE issue at hand. We get this taken care of, and solutions to climate change, immigration, public education, insane incarceration rates, cost of college, police brutality, health care, living wages etc. will be forth coming. Otherwise our own democracy will continue to be used against us.
