Subject: Scapegoating as American as Apple Pie-C Surasky
From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:47:06 -0500

Politicians these days sound a lot like late-night infomercial hosts, only
it's not car polish they're hawking. "Problem solving is easy with our new
and improved "Evil Empire" school of public policy.  In a jam? No sweat-just
blame it on someone else-preferably someone who doesn't vote. California
budget got you down? Don't worry. Just get rid of illegal immigrants. Deficit
too big? Crack down on welfare mothers. Families falling apart? Send all
those gays back into the closet. I guarantee you. You'll feel better in no
time! And if you act now, the political price is cheap, cheap, cheap."

Dark skinned immigrants; poor single mothers; gays and lesbians. Are you
starting to see a pattern here? Like hanging witches, displaying "Irish need
not apply" signs, blacklisting Communists and lynching blacks, there's a long
and sordid history in this country of blaming anything and everything on
"those people." And far from being over, we seem to be experiencing a
resurgence of this form of thinking.

But wait, I know what you're saying. There are serious problems out there
that require tough answers. I'm just being a knee-jerk liberal. But hey, I'm
as passionate as the next talk radio caller when it comes to reducing the
deficit, making sure states don't go bankrupt and reversing the decline of
what's left of the American family. This is my country and to paraphrase the
Army, I'd like it to be all it can be. My point is that the solutions being
floated about these days aren't just xenophobic, racist, sexist and
homophobic. They're stupid. They're mainly political and when all is said and
done-they do more harm than good.  

And the scary part is-we can't seem to get enough of these emotionally
satisfying "us vs. them" solutions. Take Proposition 187 which just passed in
California by a 2 to 1 margin. The proposition denies education, social
services and non-emergency health care to illegal immigrants and their
families.  

Proposition 187 penalizes not only illegal immigrants, but their
children-many of whom are American citizens. I guess I'm confused, but I
thought we'd stopped pulling foreign looking children out of classrooms after
WWII when Japanese Americans were summarily taken from their homes and placed
in internment camps.  
There is no doubt that the rising tide of illegal immigration is a grave
concern to many border states. But in a nation built on cheap immigrant and
slave labor, the final verdict is hardly in on whether or how much illegal
immigration helps or hurts the economy. Besides, can you imagine INS brown
shirts raiding second grade classes and lining up children named Perez and
Gonzalez? Or pregnant women and infants being denied pre-natal care and
immunization shots-only to end up in much more expensive hospital emergency
rooms? If you don't find these images morally offensive, if not downright
terrifying, then at least ask yourself who is going to pay for this. 
In other words, are these measures actually going to make a significant
difference in spiraling state budget costs? Or are they just going to make
people feel good for the time being. In the meantime, Southern California has
seen a spate of horrific hate crimes directed against Latinos and African
Americans. And now there are Republican Congressman so heady with the success
of 187 , even though it will likely be declared unconstitutional, that they
are considering banning all federal aid to legal immigrants. 
And of course there is the Republican Compact with America which advocates
banning federal aid to all legal immigrants.   I don't know about you, but
"Who's next?" is suddenly a reasonable question.
Welfare mothers and entitlements.
And then there's that old standby-"welfare mothers". Not since Ronald
Reagan's fabricated image of the welfare queen with a Cadillac have we heard
such demonization of poor single mothers. If you are under the illusion that
welfare reform will even make a dent in our deficit--consider these facts:
All "welfare" programs such as AFDC, food stamps, housing subsidies and
supplemental income for the disabled elderly cost a total of about 4% of the
federal budget. Even when you add in Medicaid, "welfare" is still dwarfed by
the great middle class entitlements--social security and Medicare--which make
up about 50% of federal spending. 
Did I mention that people get these benefits when they turn 65 regardless of
income? That means that even millionaires Ronald and Nancy are pulling in
monthly checks-perhaps enough to pay for a Caddy. 'But we pay into social
security,' you say. 'It's not a government handout. We deserve it." But
listen to this--in 1994, it will take the average 65 year old 8 years to use
up every penny, including interest, that he or she ever put into the system.
Everything after that is-well-welfare. 
Call me crazy-but this seems to me much more deserving of our cost-cutting
attention than a program like AFDC that benefits poor single mothers, half of
whose recipients leave the program after 2 years, and takes up a fraction of
the federal budget. But hey! Threatening to take away children from poor
women-many of them women of color--is a proven vote-getter. Don't get me
wrong. I am very interested in welfare reform: I want to hear more about
subsidized child care and fathers being held accountable for child support
and I am concerned about a culture of dependence. But the vast majority of
those who benefit from AFDC are children. Summarily kicking their mothers off
of AFDC after a few years is not going to help those children and it
certainly won't reduce the deficit.
And finally there's the religious right whose leaders, I am sure, have been
awarded honorary PhDs in scapegoating. Their anti-gay propaganda literature
bemoans the collapse of family values on the one hand and offers gays up as
the sacrificial lamb on the other.  The success of this approach with the
plethora of anti-gay (and often unconstitutional) voter initiatives across
the country is amazing to me. Does anyone in their right mind actually think
that prohibiting gays and lesbians from having children, banning gay and
lesbian books from libraries, denying gays and lesbians civil rights
protection, and making sure that "homosexuality" isn't mentioned in school
sex ed texts-accept as an abomination against God-is going to save American
families?

Like I said,  consumer beware. Slick sales pitches that offer easy answers to
complicated problems usually are too good to be true.  But then again, some
would say that scapegopating is as American as apple pie. we all know that
its much more fun to blame your problems on someone else than actually admit
you don't know the answers.
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