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The Origins of Intolerance in America

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prasad1

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In the last few weeks, the alarming rise of vitriolic anti-immigrant, xenophobic rhetoric from the right wing has alarmed a large segment of the American people, but equally disturbing is how much support these noxious views are getting from the public. After the civil rights achievements of the 1960s, it was widely assumed that tolerance and diversity would win the day. Many studies show that growing familiarity with the "other" typically yields more tolerant attitudes. But this recent spasm of hatred is shocking in its intensity and in the apparent rejection of that decades-long progress toward social peace. Many even call it fascism. Why has this reversal suddenly appeared?

The right-wing entertainment complex has doubtlessly added fuel to the fire, but it didn't start it. There has long been anti-immigrant sentiment in the country, and it's been a staple of the extreme right wing. But the phenomenon, as I argue in Dream Chasers: Immigration and the American Backlash, is broader than mere xenophobia. Over the past forty years, incomes have stagnated for the middle class, while social dynamics have encroached upon residual "privilege" -- e.g., gay and lesbian activism resulting in same-sex marriage, women's empowerment, affirmative action for African-Americans, and sharp growth in illegal immigration.

The challenge to white privilege reached another transition point with the election of Barack Obama, which has prompted seven years of madness on the right. Obama is not only black (actually "worse": mixed race) and African (not from the once-subservient slave culture), he has earned a place among the elite, the Harvard Law wiz and hyper-achiever, popular throughout the world, the ultimate cool, street-smart dude made good. In important ways, however, his ascension -- not only to the White House, but to a pantheon of great presidents -- is mainly symbolic in this respect: he arrived at a time not merely of disruption, but rupture, the crackup of white, male privilege that has controlled, root and branch, American politics for nearly 400 years.
Because of this rupture of the fundaments of American political culture, it is a turbulent time and will remain so for many years to come. The vitriolic intolerance practiced by Trump and Cruz and the Republican Party (and too many Democrats and Northerners, too) is a septic symptom of decline, a bitter residue of the dark side of the American experience, but perhaps it is only the decline of white privilege, and not of the great democratic experiment that is the best of America.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-tirman/the-origins-of-intolerance_b_8812476.html
 
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