Census Bureau study showing that race, not class, accounts for the inability of black people to climb the social ladder. Government Accountability Office reported that black students and students with disabilities were disproportionately suspended and expelled in K-12 public schools “regardless of the type of disciplinary action, level of school poverty, or type of public school attended.” The report found that black students “accounted for 15.5 percent of all public school students, but represented about 39 percent of students suspended from school.” This comes on the heels of a widely-read Stanford, Harvard and U.S. New research from different fields shows that black families’ opportunities are limited because of their race. These populists may not be elite, but they’ve certainly done everything they can to maintain power.
One of the most vulnerable groups subject to these actions is children, black children in particular. This threadbare version of populism cannot hide its racist roots - and with those roots come racist actions. Related: A case for educational reparations for the incarcerated That’s not what populism is supposed to mean. When President Trump sends the National Guard to the Mexico border to defend against migrant caravans, saying, “Women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before,” he is fighting the defenseless. in their youth isn’t pushing back against the privileged. No, the refusal to enact legislation to normalize the immigration status of thousands of undocumented people brought to the U.S. I figure the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese during the Second World War is supposed to have been part of a populist movement as well. It was the will of the people, remember, to impose and maintain slavery for 250 years and then institute more than a hundred years of de jure and de facto segregation. Populists, he continued, divide society into “two homogenous and antagonistic groups: the pure people on the one end and the corrupt elite on the other.” They trumpet the “will of the people.” Trouble is, the will of the people in Trump’s populism isn’t so pure. While there is no clear-cut definition, “populists are dividers, not uniters,” according to Cas Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia and the co-author of Populism: A Very Short Introduction, in an interview with The Atlantic. Instead, it represents the populism of the Trump era, which is nothing more than a euphemism for white working-class angst.Īfter the 2016 presidential election, which shocked our nation, we’ve become fascinated with coddling this anger, repackaging it as populism. The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word as “a political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite,” and “the movement organized around this philosophy.” By that definition, the people who struggle the most in our society are black and brown people, LGBTQ people, Muslims, the undocumented - none of whom “Roseanne” speaks for.
The show is clearly meeting the demand of a large swath of America, but populism it ain’t. The ratings boom for “Roseanne” has been upheld as a roar of populism, a convening of conservatives and Obama voters who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. Trump even called real-life supporter Roseanne Barr, star of the show, to congratulate her. The successful sitcom depicts the life of a family whose matriarch might be described as one of the “deplorables,” as Hillary Clinton controversially referred to the supposedly forgotten white working class during her failed 2016 presidential bid. More than 18 million people watched the show, which earned its network, ABC, a robust 5.1 rating, making it the best-rated comedy telecast since 2014. “Look at her ratings! Look at her ratings!” Donald Trump hailed the “Roseanne” television reboot at a campaign-style speech in Richfield, Ohio, last month. Credit: Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
Roseanne Barr arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of “Roseanne” on Friday, Main Burbank, Calif.