Colorblind Lies & Godless Americana: An Excerpt
Over the past several years, the Right has spun the fantasy of colorblind, post-racial, post-feminist American exceptionalism. This Orwellian narrative anchors the most blistering conservative assault on secularism, civil rights, and public education in the post-Vietnam War era. It is no accident that this assault has occurred in an era in which whites have over twenty times the wealth of African Americans. For many communities of color, victimized by a rabidly Religious Right, neo-liberal agenda, the American dream has never been more of a nightmare than it is now. Godless Americana is a radical humanist analysis of this climate. It provides a vision of secular social justice that challenges Eurocentric traditions of race, gender, and class-neutral secularism. For a small but growing number of non-believers of color, humanism and secularism are inextricably linked to the broader struggle against white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, capitalism, economic injustice, and global imperialism. Godless Americana critiques these titanic rifts and the role white Christian nationalism plays in the demonization of urban communities of color.
Historically, Americana has symbolized mom, Apple pie, and the idyllic innocence of little white kids with fishing poles grinning from Norman Rockwell paintings. The dark underbelly of Americana is the lawless urban racial Other—the fount of all that threatens American progress. During the 2012 presidential campaign, this apocalyptic theme was sounded again and again by Religious Right GOP presidential candidates like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Dubbing President Obama the “food stamp president”, Gingrich was an especially effective demagogue for capitalist class entitlement. Railing against child labor laws, Gingrich commented that:
Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday…They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal.
When I mentioned Gingrich’s diatribe during a training session with a group of African American and Latino teachers, it was clear to them that the “really poor children” Gingrich was talking about weren’t Appalachian white children or “Honey Boo Boo” from the hit reality show of the same name. Gingrich’s “really poor neighborhoods” (rife with illegal activity) were not the mythic trailer parks and Bruce Springsteen blue collar salt-of-the-earth suburbs where the majority of the nation’s white welfare presumably recipients live. These were not the neighborhoods that produced the really poor children Gingrich exhorted to work as unpaid janitors in under-resourced, overcrowded “inner city” schools.
As a symbol of moral failure and ghetto pathology, American public education has always been red meat for the far right. But what is more insidious is that both the Obama administration and the Right have joined forces in ravaging public education. The Obama administration’s 2009 Race to the Top policy has opened the floodgates to privatized schools, dumbed-down curricula, and a permanent regime of high stakes testing that undermines teacher creativity and guts teachers’ unions. Nationwide, public schools have been targeted for charter conversion by foundations, corporations , and hedge fund managers on the hunt for desperate inner city school districts. The neo-liberal magic bullet for “reforming” K-12 education is carving schools up for the highest corporate bidder.
Historically, Americana has symbolized mom, Apple pie, and the idyllic innocence of little white kids with fishing poles grinning from Norman Rockwell paintings. The dark underbelly of Americana is the lawless urban racial Other—the fount of all that threatens American progress. During the 2012 presidential campaign, this apocalyptic theme was sounded again and again by Religious Right GOP presidential candidates like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Dubbing President Obama the “food stamp president”, Gingrich was an especially effective demagogue for capitalist class entitlement. Railing against child labor laws, Gingrich commented that:
Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday…They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal.
When I mentioned Gingrich’s diatribe during a training session with a group of African American and Latino teachers, it was clear to them that the “really poor children” Gingrich was talking about weren’t Appalachian white children or “Honey Boo Boo” from the hit reality show of the same name. Gingrich’s “really poor neighborhoods” (rife with illegal activity) were not the mythic trailer parks and Bruce Springsteen blue collar salt-of-the-earth suburbs where the majority of the nation’s white welfare presumably recipients live. These were not the neighborhoods that produced the really poor children Gingrich exhorted to work as unpaid janitors in under-resourced, overcrowded “inner city” schools.
As a symbol of moral failure and ghetto pathology, American public education has always been red meat for the far right. But what is more insidious is that both the Obama administration and the Right have joined forces in ravaging public education. The Obama administration’s 2009 Race to the Top policy has opened the floodgates to privatized schools, dumbed-down curricula, and a permanent regime of high stakes testing that undermines teacher creativity and guts teachers’ unions. Nationwide, public schools have been targeted for charter conversion by foundations, corporations , and hedge fund managers on the hunt for desperate inner city school districts. The neo-liberal magic bullet for “reforming” K-12 education is carving schools up for the highest corporate bidder.
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