The Police, Immigration and the Racial DividePosted in Articles, Barack Obama, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2015-01-08 11:44Z by Steven |
The Police, Immigration and the Racial Divide
U.S. News & World Report
2015-01-07
Brad Bannon, President
Bannon Communications Research
Polls on the police treatment of minorities and public approval of Obamacare reflect the ongoing racial split in this country.
Sadly, everything old is new again in race relations in America. Tuesday the headquarters of the Colorado Springs NAACP was bombed. The new movie “Selma” dramatizes the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Police are killing unarmed black Americans. The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio is at war with his own police officers because he advised his mixed-race son to be wary of them. The majority whip in the House of Representatives, Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, is under fire for speaking at a meeting of a supremacist group associated with [former] Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Race never pops up on the radar as a priority in national polls. But racial attitudes add to the polarization of American politics because people use those beliefs to define themselves ideologically. If you ask people why they consider themselves conservatives, they often complain about government handouts to undeserving people. People won’t admit to racism, but you don’t have to probe very deeply to figure out that “welfare cheats” is code for blacks. And when I have discussed Obamacare with people in focus groups, a big concern has been a belief that undocumented Latino immigrants would be eligible for the benefits…
…Why are racial tensions so persistent in a nation that has elected and re-elected a black president? The answer is that demography is destiny. The fabric of American society is changing and some people are fighting a doomed rearguard action to stop the inevitable…
Read the entire article here.