What’s your sense of the state of truth, or lack thereof, in the Presidential Campaign? What do you discern as the importance of this campaign? How can we use the energy that this campaign is generating to promote the long haul work of building beloved community?
[You can read two opinions on the current campaign climate in our News & Views section. One by BCC intern Wesley Morris and fellow NCA&T student Sa'Toya Truss, the other by professor of political science at NCA&T and longtime friend Dr. Claude Barnes.]
2 Comments
Dr. Barnes,
Thanks for your thoughtful commentary. It’s a breath of fresh air in an increasingly toxic atmosphere of 24 hour a day pundit commentary.
Begin with the Wilmington pogrom of 1898 and walk on up through North Carolina history and you will find a wedge consistently being driven between working class whites and blacks for the purpose of asserting the dominance of an elite class of white business owners and politicos. The price of inclusion on the “white team” for working class white folks was buying into the racist values (and violence) of the elites.
In addition to the resources that you provide in your article, I’d recommend that folks read Randy Johnston’s exploration of some of this history at http://www.progressivemyth.com.
For some reason the links in my article do not work. The resources referenced in the article include the following:
1) Mary Lyon on the Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-lyon/if-youre-not-angry-and-bi_b_96829.html
2)Nicholas von Hoffman in The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080428/howl
3)The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
http://www.cbpp.org