Writing for the Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts offered a wonderful article about the recent West Virginia primary where Barack Obama lost handily–from what appears to be a case of bigotry. But as Pitts said, that is not the whole truth. Yes, Obama was rejected by the poor and less educated....
And to quote-- [the poor and uneducated] "Which is a description that fits many in Appalachia–and also a vast swath of black America. So for me, the story here isn't simply the old, familiar tale of the nation's stark racial divide, but also another tale, just as old, less often remarked, of how the white poor and the black poor have long been kept at one another's throats as a means of keeping them from looking too closely or clearly at the ways both are manipulated by the forces of money and power." ........"The white poor have been victims of a con job going back at least as far as the Civil War, when poor white men were used as cannon fodder for the right of rich white men to keep slaves." He then finishes with "My point is that race has often been used as a means of distracting and diverting the white poor. They had little in life, nor any realistic expectations of having more. But the one thing they did have–or so the con went–was whiteness itself. Which meant they had someone to be better than. Someone to look down upon."
What Mr. Pitts is talking about is the "dominator story"...and it is much older and goes back much further than the Civil war. It is much broader than poor whites against poor blacks. It is what Riane Eisler exposes in the book, "The Real Wealth of Nations" Here she exposes the story Mr. Pitts calls "old and familiar tale" .....
The Invisibility of the obvious: Often, we can't see what's in plain sight. In the case of the economy, what we can't "see" are the beliefs and values that we've inherited about gender relationships and how those relationships impact every system-customs, laws, religions, politics, economics, class, race. All are rooted in a gender double standard. Yet, we don't see it!
So what we need to realize is that it isn't just poor whites and poor blacks caught in this con job–we all are, on every economic level because the dominator story has been taught to us from our earliest years. It teaches us that you either dominate or be dominated. Yes, it plays out in Appalachia, but it does so in the homes of the middle class–and even the upper class. Each group finds another group to dominate over. We've 'conned' ourselves into believing the dominator story is the only option. But it isn't.
So, let's not be distracted by the race card–that just reinforces the dominator story one more time. Let's switch to a caring value system–a knowing that we're all in this together. Its time to end the dominator story that keeps us all at each others throats protecting a story that doesn't work.
