Like the white populist movements of olden days, the new white populists of today claim allegiance with people of color

After the sixth book arrived in the mail, I realized something might be going on here. Stupid White Men; Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, Does Anyone Have a Problem With That: The Best of Politically Incorrect; Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right; When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism; Dude, Where’s My Country? Turn on the TV, and there’s Jon Stewart sneering at Trent Lott, Strom Thurmond or the bigoted Republican Party. Listen to the radio, and there’s Al Franken talking about the racist plot to disenfranchise black voters during the 2000 election. Liberal pundits, while not as ubiquitous as conservative talk radio and TV warriors, nevertheless seem to be coming out of the woodwork these days.

In addition to excoriating the Christian right, the gun lobby, and evil corporations in general, these liberal pop-culture icons-in-the-making also talk about race on occasion.

In his corporate speeches, Al Franken likes to offer the following commentary on U.S. racism: “Looking at your faces today, I can see that this group hasn’t caved in to that whole affirmative action nonsense. Look around, see all the white faces and laugh. ”

Bill Maher, who has a new HBO show “Real Time With Bill Maher” since the canning of his “Politically Incorrect” post-Sept. 11, made this remark during a March 2004 segment: “Nothing gets white people to the polls like fear. In fact, the right wing is so fired up about Jews and gays and the potty mouth, they’ve almost forgotten who the real enemy is —brown people.”

Like the white populist movements of olden days, the new white populists of today claim allegiance with people of color and supposedly represent a solidarity of common white folk and communities of color against the establishment.

But the history of white populism is a story of overlapping goals and class politics; however, it is equally a story of sustained racism, of pimping people of color in the name of working class power and thereby erasing the privilege and power bestowed upon white workers because of their skin color.

And that’s a major mistake— to see racism not as a central element of U.S. society, but only a ploy of the establishment to maintain power.

Historians have long cited the white populist revolt of the late nineteenth century that brought Southern white and black sharecroppers together as a powerful cross-racial movement. Throughout the South, white sharecroppers joined together to form the Farmers Alliance during the 1880s. Unwilling to admit blacks, they helped form the Black Farmers Alliance, which existed as an appendage with little power or autonomy. A number of candidates supported by the Farmers Alliance found their way into legislatures on the backs of black voters, only to later support anti-black bills.

The history of white populism (including the abolitionist movement and the progressive movement of the 1920s) is a story of claimed working class solidarity against the common enemy of the white elite. Yet these same white populists supported legislation that denied a minimum wage or labor protection to agricultural and domestic workers (mainly people of color) as part of the New Deal.

Recent coalitions have found similar problems—white support for the civil rights movement during Freedom Summer or the 1960s coalitions between the Weathermen and leftist organizations of color often replicated unequal power relations and sanction of white privilege. Moreover, many white activists from the 1960s, such as Todd Gitlin, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, have gone on to illustrious careers, while people of color like Leonard Peltier, Fred Hampton and Tommie Smith faced less fortunate futures.

Whether as a “giddy multitude” (a term used to describe black and white indentured servants of the 1700s) rising up against landowners exploiting indentured servants, or communities joining together against the outsourcing of jobs, social scientists often celebrate white populist movements without a discussion of racism, privilege and goals.

While conservatives have denigrated Moore, Franken and others in their milieu for unfairly exploiting racial divisions (as part of their un-American plot to “slander” Republicans like George Bush), their actual willingness to engage in a discussion of racism is more illusion than fact. Race and racism represent an afterthought, or at best, another tool for taking on “lying liars” of corporate America—but not to deal with the entrenched inequities that divide along racial lines.

Racism: A Republican, Southern, Elitist Thing