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Beyond Trump: \'Grapes of wrath\' revisted?

| Updated: October 19, 2017 14:37:37


Beyond Trump: \'Grapes of wrath\' revisted?
Donald Trump is clearly not the typical U.S. presidential candidate. Perhaps that beckons a sigh of relief to a society taken to the limits by some of his outlandish positions and rhetoric. Yet, the reality of the stubborn support he has garnered portrays a disturbing picture of today's United States of America:  the growing proportion of sympathisers for and advocates of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, and mercantilism he is evoking is a cause of concern. Though a wiser and more compassionate "America" may thwart his victory ("America" here means only the United States, not Central nor Latin America), those sentiments will not vanish: their growth in an increasingly hostile domestic and international environment suggests that when birds of the same feather flock together, reason, realities, and the lessons of history can easily evaporate.
 
Taking racism by the horns exemplifies and elaborates the point. It is not necessarily in the limelight because Barack Obama became president, or that over 90 per cent of Afro-Americans (AAs) voted for him: that many also voted for Al Gore in 2000. It may have more to do with a long-brewing cultural clash. Numbering 45.6 million and accounting for 14.3 per cent of the total U.S. population (as opposed to 8.8 million representing 8.7 per cent out of 76 million in the year 1900), Afro-Americans and other minorities are being unrealistically made to believe they do not belong in mainstream society, much like it was in 1900, and certainly even more so before.
 
Since family values represent the cornerstone of Republican beliefs, how we interpret the stabilising institutions of marriage, family, and education matters. A recent Pew Research report informs us, for example, a century ago two-thirds of "Americans" over the age of 18-years were married, a figure climbing to 72.2 per cent in 1960, only to collapse to 50.3 by 2013; three-quarters of AA families had two parents, another figure plunging to barely one-third today; and though 10 per cent of AA men did not marry then, more than 25 per cent do not do so today. Statistics for women show an identical flip-flop since AA men were not worth marrying. Though they are worrisome, jumping from such figures to the conclusion that declining family values produce a declining community/country cannot stand the test of time or the tenets of being civilised.
 
A 2005 study, "Consequences of Marriage for Afro-Americans, suggests, by a 2-1 margin, more AA women were educated than AA men, thus AA women benefited less from marrying AA men than Caucasian women did marrying  Caucasian men ( the same study found Caucasian women were similarly more educated than Caucasian men). Another consequence: AA children got off to a more uphill climb as students than their Caucasian counterparts: two-thirds of AA students graduate from school, as compared to 73 per cent for Hispanics, 86 per cent for Caucasians, and 88 per cent for Asians in U.S. societies. The U.S. National Centre for Education Statistics further says that, whereas 16 per cent of Afro-Americans have less than high-school education, only 8.0 per cent of Caucasians fall in this category, in fact the uneven figures are stacked against AA groups at all levels: with high-school education, 29 per cent against 33 per cent, with a Bachelor's degree 13 versus 21, and those with a higher degree with a 6:12 ratio disadvantage. Yet, must the buck stop here because of the disadvantageous ratios? What about those who do make it?
 
Negative interpretations typically originate within those very institutions and among the very students themselves. The third piece of this series will show how even Caucasians are not exempt from the free-falling U.S. education worldwide. Yet, to conspiracy theorists, it is only one step from here to draw even more outlandish conclusions: of the AA population, only 7.0 per cent were incarcerated a century ago, but 26 per cent today, something a family, education, or both, may have prevented; indeed, over half a million AA prison inmates today, of the 45.6 million population, shows a far higher proportion than the white inmates (totalling almost half a million) out of just over 200 million white people.  
 
Long-term AA strides have typically (even deliberately) been ignored. Washington's National Monument carries a widely visited AA leader today (Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial) that was unthinkable a quarter-century back, while the first AA face will appear on a U.S. dollar note (Harriet Tubman replaces Andrew Jackson on the $20 note: he was the very man responsible for the "Trail of Tears" whereby Cherokees were marched from the south-east into Oklahoman settlements in 1838-9). In spite of spoilers like O.J. Simpson and, in the entertainment world, Bill Cosby, a disproportionately larger AA number have struck fame and fortune in sports and as icons, like Jackie Robinson, Michael Jordan, Selena Williams, et al.  
 
Racial outbursts have nevertheless increasingly and virulently dotted the calendar, though not all targets have been Afro-Americans: Arabs, Hispanics, Muslims, in short, anyone not visibly resembling white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) Americans have experienced sordid racial experiences. Obama's election did not create racism, only exacerbated it: recall how in Jasper, Texas, an Afro-American, James Byrd, Jr., was dragged behind a car to death by a white supremacist, Lawrence Russell Brewer, before Obama entered the White House, in June 1998 (Brewer was executed in September 2011). Uncivilised incidents like these in civilised societies have had a history of coming out of the "cracks" or being shoved "under the carpet" depending on who one is talking to: 88 per cent of Afro-Americans believe racism exists, but only 67 per cent of Caucasians; yet that a majority of both groups believing it exists is what is worsening rather than alleviating the racial plight.
 
Trump can take credit for institutionalising these attitudes. Some wide-ranging examples depict: he allows his supporters to physically assault AA attendees of his campaign speeches; he refers to Chinese as "currency manipulators" or for "ripping off" the United States; Japan, he says, "takes all our money with their consumer goods," in the process "buying all of Manhattan"; and Mexicans being nothing but "rapists" and Muslims "terrorists". These only license fringe segments of society to come out openly, as if with legitimacy. His "bigotry" cannot be solely politically-driven in a super-charged election, since even the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, could not but comment on the depravity it demonstrates. In an April speech in Cleveland this year, he observed that, though bigotry "is not proof of strong leadership . . . [, it] is evidence of the lowest and most craven lack of faith in the principles that uphold a 'land of the free'."
 
Why, then, are so many "grapes" of wrath hanging so heavily upon U.S. society at this particular juncture? Just recall the multiple ways adversities and constraints have been successfully confronted in very, very recent times: (a) the United States finally crossed the racist Rubicon with Obama's election; (b) its increasing intertwining with China is evident in corporate investments spiralling from $11.1 billion in 2000 to $65.7 billion in 2014; (c) it is resurrecting its Japanese interests as a China counter-balance, or "pivot"; (d) it streamlined an immigration deal with undocumented workers so well as to blend with Lady Liberty's message, and indeed, after a 30-year lapse since the epoch-making 1986 IRCA (Immigration and Reform Control Act) legislation; and (e) Republican George W. Bush actually blamed 9/11 events on terrorists, not Muslims, in the first chance he got. With Trump as a candidate, much of the rest of the world feels insulted; with him as a possible president, heaven knows how heavily the United States and the rest of the world will pay for his tirades and policies. That Sa'udia Arabia has already signalled it will cash $750 billion of U.S. securities if a 9/11-related legislation passes, is suggestive of other actions likely. It could then open a can of worms, not just for U.S. society, but for many other countries.
 
"In the souls of the people," Tom Joad lamented in John Steinbeck's epic novel of U.S. society struggling during the 1930s, and "in the eyes of the hungry . . . the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy." He was speaking during the consolidation phase of the Second Industrial Revolution in the 1930s for the Oklahoman farmers (the "Okies," spoken as despicably as Trump supporters would refer to Afro-Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, or Muslims) being exploited by big-business, much like Hispanics farm-workers still are today. He was also speaking of an occasion when a Trump-like figure, Charles E. Coughlin (Father Coughlin, born, as Ted Cruz, in Canada), was also stirring the public against "the heinous rottenness of modern capitalism," advocating fascism, and denigrating President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a "Jew" (because of being "a great betrayer and liar."). Could Trump be the leader of the uneducated, outwitted, disenfranchised, and uncompetitive "Americans" in today's Fourth Industrial Revolution, much like Father Coughlin tried to be of 40 million radio-listeners during the Second Industrial Revolution? The next article explores and expands.
 
Dr Imtiaz A Hussain is Professor, International Relations, formerly Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City.
 

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