Comments from the Great Recession 2010

I thought this comment from a reader of the NYT article about blacks in Memphis, TN (and elsewhere) are facing much dire economic loss in this Great Recession than others. Many would comment on bleeding heart stories are shout their racist rants, for the sole purpose of being assholes. But some readers actually read the articles, and pick up and share some insightful points about what they read. This is one of them.

23.
Scott Enk
Hales Corners, WI
May 31st, 2010
10:38 am

How much more economic calamity must "ordinary" middle-class and working Americans, African-American and otherwise, suffer before we stop letting those in power divide and set us against one another by race, gender, sexual orientation, and the like? If this "Great Recession" teaches us nothing else, it should teach us that we need a New New Deal where working people in America are once again on top, where real democracy prevails, and where people, not money or corporations, rule.

Remember, as if you need any more reminders in this "Great Recession," that what has been happening to so many once-prosperous African-Americans in Memphis *can* happen to you. There needs to be a *real* (yes, European-style) "safety net" for us all--as well as an economy and a government that once again works for all of us who must really work for a living. Let's not let ourselves be divided by race, religion, or otherwise in fighting our real foes and demanding a truly fair economy. If that means a Second American Revolution, so be it. Or do you really want to follow the dubious lead of the boiled frog?Even though many white Americans, for example, who thus far have escaped any major pain from this "Great Recession" might still "think" "It can't happen to me" and regard such things as unemployment and foreclosure as evils that beset only the "lazy," the "Other," and the like, what's happening in Memphis to its once-proud African-American middle class should be, not cause for avoidance, but for action.

Instead of letting the rich and powerful divide us and continue to play us against each other while the clowns on top keep laughing all the way to the bank while they continue to impoverish the rest of us, we "ordinary" Americans all need to unite and fight the *real* enemies of our prosperity, our nation, and our way of life. These enemies are not similar Americans of races and backgrounds other than our own, but, rather, are still those Theodore Roosevelt called "malefactors of great wealth": Goldman Sachs and others in "high finance," BP and others in "Big Oil" (let's not even get started *here* about the dire economic as well as environmental dangers BP's continuing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is), and other businesses that have abused working people and their families and communities. Remember also their enablers and cheerleaders among the likes of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Republican Party, and, yes, in the Democratic Party as well. Remember that just as the dangerous "pro-business" policies of the last 30 years or so have ruined the lives and futures of millions of Americans of *all* races to enrich a greedy few, most of the rest of us--yes, dear reader, that includes *you* and those about whom you care--are just a layoff notice, a few missed paychecks, away from ending up in the very same place where the poor and welfare recipients that you and I have often been urged to fear and despise have found themselves.

"Tea Partiers" and others who still somehow think that progressive economic and social policies are a threat rather than part of a vital safety net that we need to expand, not shrink further, especially need to remember that Horatio Alger is not only dead, but also that he wrote fiction. We really *are* in increasingly dire economic and other straits together. As Benjamin Franklin observed, we can hang together or hang separately.