Rally for Travon Martin at Univ. of Minnesota
On a recent ski trip, we noticed two types of profiling: First, the lift operators at the bottom of the mountain scanned the lift tickets of some skiers and snowboarders, but not others, to make sure they had purchased a ticket that day. It seemed like only younger and less affluent-looking snowboarders were being checked, while older, prosperous-looking skiers were not. That night, at a nice restaurant in town, the host told some younger, scruffier looking snowboard types that it would be an hour and a half wait for a table, and then told an older, affluent looking couple that they could get a table in just ten minutes.
Humans have done this type of profiling ever since they walked the Earth. Often it was a survival mechanism. If you were living 10,000 years ago, chances are you were with a small tribe or clan in a small community, one that possibly you never left. If one or more different-looking (hair, clothing, ornamentation, etc.) intruders showed up one day, you and your clan would need to make a quick decision about whether they were dangerous. A wrong decision could have cost lives.
Today, however, despite the lasting instinct to profile, we are armed with more experience and more information. We know that there are different races and ethnic groups, and different combinations thereof. Airplanes, ships, cars and trains permit people to travel to distant lands and meet (and mate with) very different types. Many people have the freedom to express their individuality with their hair, clothing, jewelry, tattoos, piercings, makeup and otherwise. America in particular is often called a “melting pot” because it’s where many former tribal and ethnic group members have gathered to live together in a remarkable social experiment that could lessen the natural adverse effects of profiling.
Unfortunately, conservatives and the Republican Party are not on board with the American experiment. Instead of having an inclusive “big tent,” Republicans and conservatives play to white people’s (and especially older, male whites) ancient tribal fears of those who are different from them, including blacks, Latinos, Arabs, Asians and Muslims. Nowhere is this “scary black/brown/yellow/red people” fear-mongering more apparent than on the Republicans’ propaganda channel, Fox “News,” which continuously runs hyped-up and often false stories about the “New Black Panthers,” the “Ground Zero Mosque,” the “thug” Trayvon Martin, and more. This right wing fear-mongering seems to have grown significantly since Presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared on the national scene in 2007. By now, however, the right wing scare tactics have gotten so bad that Republicans have even turned on each other with their profiling fears.
The bad news for Republicans and conservatives in America is that the populations of these non-white or non-Christian groups are increasing more rapidly than the white population. Therefore, as Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said in 2013, if the Republican Party does not adjust quickly to this reality and become more inclusive, it will be in a “demographic death spiral.” A quick look at Fox “News” or the most recent CPAC conference seems to indicate that this lesson has not yet sunk in.
Photo by Fibonacci Blue, used under Creative Commons license. http://is.gd/TKJxaI
GOP logic, since Reagan, has been to appeal to white working class people whose world revolves around their guns and bibles. The problem is that those people are dying out and their children are not nearly as conservative as they are. So that’s a systematic problem for the party itself. The coalition Reagan built is deader than he is and what’s left of it are fighting over the scraps. What exists today as the “Republican Party” is the death throes of what was the southern/mid-west conservative party. One only needs to look at the electoral map in 2012 and see that this party has a serious problem when it comes to securing the white house.
The real threat of the party is its stranglehold in congress. The possibility of a Republican dominated congress, thanks to the Koch brothers, is very real.