politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Historically, one reason that US conservatives turned so heavily against public services is — narrowly & specifically — racism; or rather a willingness to share facilities with other white people but not with black people.
When they were told they had to desegregate town swimming pools and let the black kids learn to swim too, they shut down the swimming pools instead.
Yep a theater company in my town recently put on a play dramatizing the closing of the city's pools. Instead of integrating they filled the pools frequented by white patrons with concrete and the one frequented by black patrons with garbage. It also touched on the fact that the lack of availability for safe public swimming locations has led to needless deaths of hundreds and hundreds of black people who opted to swim in fast moving creeks and waters connected to industrial facilities. All because racists were unwilling to share a body of water with someone with a different color of skin.
it's not just racism. it's classism too.
rich whites love public services that benefit them, but not when poor people get them too.
The UK remembers when Margaret Thatcher took their kindergarteners' free milk. Shortly before she fucked up their parents' not-free housing market.
The thing about the swimming-pool example is that "town leaders" (rich whites) were okay with poor whites using town pools, but freaked out at black people using them.
While this is true, I think it's more of a symptom of the in-group expanding when it acquires an easier-to-distinguish bullying target. Excluding the Irish and Italians in the US was (generally) more difficult than looking for melanin or hair texture, and as they lost their accents many could blend right in before being noticed. And once you're in, you're much harder to dehumanise. These days a "no Irish" sign would be quickly laughed off or removed, but they were everywhere in the US once.
Same problem with excluding poorer whites of all varieties from pools, you might be able to do it by looking at clothing, but even that's harder and there will be infiltrators to the niche in-group social sphere. The Great Gatsby infiltrating the ultra wealthy, and the kid from the wrong side of the tracks makes friends with less-poor kids at the community pool.
You can see it in England as well, the old-money Londoners will look down on another equally white English person for having an accent that indicates they're from Manchester or Sussex. Or even worse, gasp Yorkshire! I've seen that happen to Bavarian and Saxon Germans too - people ashamed to speak because their accent identified them as out-group.
I'm glad this is slowly changing as more historically out-group people make it into in-group leadership positions, and people aren't as shamed out of intercultural relationships. But I think that there will always be some arbitrary group of people who are considered to be the bottom of the social hierarchy. And those people will generally be the people who are most obviously different from the equally arbitrary 'ideal'. Like people who rely on assistive technology, or people who are very overweight, or people with 'bad' teeth.
Maybe in the future it will be all humans if we're conquered by an alien species who we can't easily blend in with. We'll all be inferior to the many-tentacled, who are clearly the superiorly limbed species.
I dunno. Closing facilities in response to mid-20th-century desegregation was a very specific movement. I'm not sure it has anything whatsoever to do with Irish or Italian immigration or any other group. It was really, narrowly, specifically about black Americans — making sure that they could not share in the public spaces that their white peers enjoyed. The pools were closed only after town authorities were told that they could no longer exclude their black neighbors, the same black families who had lived there for generations.
The pool closures were a reaction of "I'm taking my ball and going home" that caught widespread attention and was easy to copycat for other small-town "elite" who resented being forced to treat out-group humans as in-group humans. It definitely a response to desegregation, which in itself is the deliberate barrier removal for a social out-group that is gaining widerspread acceptance. Which groups are the outgroup and ingroup change over locations and time, this time it could be roughly distilled to 'white' vs 'black'.
Pool closures are definitely still inseparable entirely for the context of the time, the civil rights movement and 'race relations' and slavery and the US. But the same patterns play out all over the world regardless of why one group has power and the other doesn't.
Small anecdote: one of my grandparents was concerned about my parents marriage. Because 'mixed marriages don't work' (actual words). Both of my parents are visually the same 'race', their family heritages are separated by around 2000km / 1250mi. Almost nobody in the world would think they are somehow 'different' in any significant way, let alone incompatibly different. It's really bizarre, but a hint of previous social expectations and how narrowly in-group and out-groups have been defined.
It's also ableism! The wealthy and powerful often think that because they "succeeded", everyone else who didn't is less of a person than them and deserves their position in life. They frequently believe that everyone in life has the same opportunities and were just too "stupid" to take them. I have also seen this internalised - many people have said they're "not smart enough" to be rich, which was always patently untrue. The truth is that growing up in richer families often leads to better health outcomes (less contaminated water, regular doctor access, better pregnancy education and maternal health, etc.).
Sometimes Prosperity Theology kicks in too, with the premise that God rewards those he loves most. The corollary being that poor people must be somehow sinful and hence deserved their circumstances.
And then, when the poor are malnourished and contaminated with lead and chemicals dumped in their water supply and can't perform to anywhere near their potential had they been born to a rich parent... well. That's just evidence they were right about them all along
The common problem is the unwillingness to share. Our power structures reward a lack of empathy with money.
While I think ableism is an issue, I don't see you describing that. What I see you describing white supremacy, because that is what created and reinforced inherited wealth. Add on the Property Theology (which I've been told has origins in Calvinism) and it helps solidify race and class hierarchies.
This is literally the opposite of that.
It's ridiculous how the school lunches debate got turned on its head
Poor kids already get free lunch, nationwide.
This is literally a debate about using public money to fund free lunches for kids whose parents can afford it.
I haven't formed an opinion myself, I can see both sides of the issue. But there are SO MANY uninformed people jesus. Usually we (leftists) are the smart ones.