Author: Marc Stier

IN BRIEF White supremacy and slavery were created by political and economic elites to divide working people and limit their power; White supremacy has continued to do that throughout American history. Slavery and racial discrimination against people of color is so contrary to America’s unrealized ideals that it has to be justified by racist depictions of Black people that have then been used to describe all people with low incomes. Structural racism has created enormous barriers to Black economic progress and largely accounts for the substantial differences in income and wealth between Black and white people. White supremacy also harms white people with low and moderate incomes by undermining efforts to raise wages and create an inclusive and well-funded safety net for all. INTRODUCTION This policy brief, unlike the others in the We The People series, is not focused on a particular public policy but on the critical background issue… Continue reading

The election of Trump was in large part a rear guard action of old white men (and the wives who think their fate is wrapped up in white supremacy and patriarchy) against an American that has been changing far too slowly for many of us, but far too fast for them–that is changing at all.  Trump’s explicit racism and sexism appeared because the we were slowly undermining racist and sexist practices and the usual mechanisms by which they were reproduced from generation to generation. Those practices were reproduced even as explicit racist and sexist speech was becoming less common in polite company. The power of structural racism and patriarchy makes it possible for them to continue even when people don’t explicitly embrace them. But it becomes necessary to advance to advance racism and sexism explicitly when you are afraid that they are being threatened. Trump’s explicit embrace of racism and… Continue reading