Tag Archives: racism

To Address Racial Equity, Most of Us Need To Pay Higher Taxes

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When it comes to addressing racial equity issues in education, health care, and housing, racism is a barrier.  But I would argue that fiscal conservatism is an even bigger barrier. 

In Minnesota’s policymaking debates about racial equity, this is the unacknowledged “elephant in the room.” It is what makes all of the hopeful dialogue about addressing racial equity feel hollow to me.

DFL Governor Tim Walz, Speaker Melissa Hortman, and many others deserve a lot of credit for leading on police reform.  Despite the failure to pass police reforms during the recent special session, I suspect they’ll eventually enact some police reforms. This is in large part because police reform is relatively inexpensive. 

But beyond police reform, I’m pessimistic when it comes to DFLers being willing to address other major forms of systemic racism in society, such as in health care, housing and education. 

That’s because most DFLers and all Republicans seem completely unwilling to make the case for higher taxes.

Elected officials need to get courageous and make the case that privileged white people like me need to pay higher taxes in order to build a more equitable state.  I’m not naive about this. I’ve worked in and around politics for thirty five years, so I know tax-raising is excruciatingly painful for politicians, particularly in an election year. But if we truly care about making racial justice progress in this agonizing “educable moment,” there truly is no other way.

To cite just one example, Minnesota has long had some of the worst achievement gaps in the nation, gaps that open as early as age one.  The roots of k-12 achievement gaps are early education opportunity gaps. Year after year, about 35,000 low-income Minnesota children can’t access the high quality early learning and care programs that they need to get prepared for school. Those 35,000 left-behind low-income kids are the children who are most likely to fall into achievement gaps in the school years and other types of disparities throughout their lifetimes. The lack of new revenue is why our 35,000 most vulnerable children continue to be left behind every year.

Similar tales can be told about many other issues, such as health care and housing. We know what to do in those areas as well, but we don’t do it, because the changes would necessitate requiring Minnesotans to pay higher taxes.

I understand why politicians are afraid of being branded tax raisers.  But the inescapable truth is that lawmakers’ long standing insistence on perpetuating the fiscal status quo is perpetuating systemic racism.  

So we need to start talking honestly about the fiscal side of these racial justice issues too. Until we do, progressive leaders’ lofty rhetoric about racial justice gains is just idle chatter.

Bye, Bye Bill-O. Schadenfreude So Sweet.

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NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 3The deceptively lovely German word “schadenfreude” feels like it was made for Bill O’Reilly. If ever a guy deserved an ignominious demise, a real “Game of Thrones” shot-on-the-toilet departure, it is Bill-O, the biggest of cable TV’s braying, anti-PC “straight shooters”. A self-inflating TV “entertainer” whose Orwellian all spin-and-fantasy “No Spin Zone” was designed to inflame the self-pity, bogus victimhood and grievances of (mainly) aging white men, while piling up tens of millions of profits for his employers. So yeah, a lot of people are enjoying watching Bill-O take one to the chest and topple over, off the pooper (i.e. FoxNews), albeit clutching $25 million in bye-bye cash.

(Trevor Noah gets the overnight prize for the best of many gleeful takedowns.)

No offense to all the women he intimidated, pawed and leered at, but getting Bill O’Reilly for sexual harassment is a little like jailing Al Capone for tax evasion. I mean, great. The deal got done. Whatever it takes. But O’Reilly’s barely disguised racism and siren call to his audience of confused and embittered whites, stoking their antipathies toward the truly less fortunate was a far worse pollutant in our cultural waters than hitting on every woman who found herself marooned in his domain, wittingly or otherwise.

It’s a wholly good thing that O’Reilly’s downfall generates another round of talk about sexual harassment. The piggish behavior of entitled bullies like Bill-O is a universal disease, even as the FoxNews “empire” raised it to the level of a brand ethos. But the greater cancer that O’Reilly and so many others of the Fox “team” normalize(d) was the extraordinarily cynical concept of white Christian male privilege, of a moral standing based entirely on gender, race and religious orientation. It’s always been repugnant, but it is so deeply baked into our popular culture today it’s almost like we don’t see it anymore.

I had two conversations with O’Reilly over my years covering the media. Once in Minneapolis when he was on tour hyping “Inside Edition” and then years later in Hollywood at some press dog and pony show. (The other notable at that event was singer Jon Bon Jovi. Proving what a nerd I am I — tried — to chat up O’Reilly.)

The impression the first time was, “One of those guys.” A Sammy Glick character hyping a cheesy tabloid show as the next coming of Edward R. Murrow. The second time the impression was simply, “a jerk.” A guy who, now feeling the cushion of real money, couldn’t bother to engage in a conversation about cable news … at a cocktail party organized for the sole purpose of schmoozing the press. Bill-O had clearly decided he was beyond that stage of life. Or maybe he was looking for someone with more cleavage.

At the Washington Post Ruth Marcus unloads on the Fox culture for creating and enabling the O’Reilly/Roger Ailes frat house within and projecting its corresponding message to its audience. But watching O’Reilly over the years and the events of the past week I was reminded again of author Susan Cain’s research for “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.” The experts she interviewed formed a consensus that big, narcissistic, possible sociopathic characters capable of dominating rooms and conversations hold sway over the more introverted among us purely because they talk the most and the loudest. Human nature lends undue credibility to such people, possibly because they are doing something most of us can’t, or won’t. Whether they possess better judgment or more valuable insights is secondary to the influence of their presence.

Hence a toxic flow of Bill O’Reillys, Rush Limbaughs, Donald Trumps and on and on … and on and on. (Many of the worst, the most toxic, appeal to the authoritarian personality, common people inordinately submissive to the rule of force, or personality in these cases.)

So as I say, “whatever it takes.” There’s delicious justice in women driving O’Reilly off the air, (until he reappears on Breitbart TV). But his piggishness toward women was only one facet of his and Fox’s sociopathic personality.

 

 

Would Vikings Have Doubled Down On Priefer If Accused Of Racial Slurs?

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Al_Campanis_Nightline-2When Los Angles Dodgers General Manager Al Campanis said black players “may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager,” he was quickly fired.

When Minnesota Vikings punting coach Mike Priefer was accused of saying something much more violent and radical about gay people, the Vikings gave him a vote of confidence before the issue was properly investigated.

That’s messed up.

Imagine if a Minnesota Twins pitcher accused pitching coach Rick Anderson of saying the things Priefer is accused of saying:

“Coach Anderson would ask me if I had been defending the black people recently and denounce as disgusting the idea that a mixed race couple would kiss, and he would constantly belittle or demean any idea of acceptance or tolerance.

Another time, Coach Anderson made a joking remark about me leading the Martin Luther King Day parade. As we sat down in our chairs, Coach Anderson, in one of the meanest voices I can ever recall hearing, said: “We should round up all the black people, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows.”

Would the Minnesota Twins shrug off such an accusation?  Would they announce him as their guy for next year before an investigation was completed?  Not a chance.

Watching this, you have to conclude that there is an ugly double standard at work here.  It is  much more acceptable to use gay hate speech in the professional sports world than racial hate speech.

To be clear, I’m not concluding that Coach Priefer is guilty.  The matter needs to be fairly investigated.  But giving the accused a professional vote of confidence in the midst of the investigation is a boneheaded PR move. Worse than that, it is an act of its own form of institutional bigotry.

Here is what I keep asking myself:  If Mr. Kluwe made up this story, why wouldn’t he fabricate a story where there are no witnesses and evidence involved, so he wouldn’t be forced to produce witnesses and evidence?  Because there are claims of witnesses and text messages, at this stage Kluwe’s charge can’t be prematurely dismissed as obviously groundless.

Again, there is a double standard at play here.  If Coach Priefer had allegedly castigated Kluwe for marching in a Martin Luther King parade, the Vikings would have taken this much more seriously.   If Priefer were accused of saying that  people with black skin should be murdered en masse, the Vikings would not have announced yesterday that they were doubling down on him.

There was a time when spewing racial hate speech was much more acceptable among professional sports coaches.  No more.  But with gay speech, we clearly have a ways to go.

– Loveland