Typical GOP maneuver: Blame the victim
Neo-Classical Republicanism
By ISHMAEL REED, NYT
OAKLAND, Calif.
DURING Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Obama declared that “Our housing market is healing, our stock market is rebounding and consumers, patients and homeowners enjoy stronger protections than ever before.”
Tell that to black Americans, who were hit harder than the rest of the country by the recession and are having a harder time recovering. That struggle is not a coincidence, or merely a result of past inequality. During the housing bubble, blacks were deliberately targeted for subprime loans: as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, the big banks committed “systematic discrimination against blacks and Hispanics.”
One would think that Republicans, so eager to promote wealth building, would see an opening. Instead, they blamed blacks for the recession, accusing them, among other things, of taking out risky mortgages they couldn’t afford.
But the response on the left has been equally frustrating. By advocating government action as the first response to black unemployment, “progressive” opinion makers encourage the popular stereotype that blacks and welfare are virtually synonymous (even though the bulk of handouts go to red-state whites).
(More here.)
OAKLAND, Calif.
DURING Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Obama declared that “Our housing market is healing, our stock market is rebounding and consumers, patients and homeowners enjoy stronger protections than ever before.”
Tell that to black Americans, who were hit harder than the rest of the country by the recession and are having a harder time recovering. That struggle is not a coincidence, or merely a result of past inequality. During the housing bubble, blacks were deliberately targeted for subprime loans: as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, the big banks committed “systematic discrimination against blacks and Hispanics.”
One would think that Republicans, so eager to promote wealth building, would see an opening. Instead, they blamed blacks for the recession, accusing them, among other things, of taking out risky mortgages they couldn’t afford.
But the response on the left has been equally frustrating. By advocating government action as the first response to black unemployment, “progressive” opinion makers encourage the popular stereotype that blacks and welfare are virtually synonymous (even though the bulk of handouts go to red-state whites).
(More here.)
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