En nuestro segundo episodio Juhem y Luciano discuten varios temas. El primer segmento se enfoca en la estrategia de los líderes del partido Demócrata para ganar las elecciones del 2018. El segundo segmento trata de apropiación del término “valores familiares” para el uso de la población no religiosa. El programa cierra con una discusión de los eventos en Charlottesville el mes pasado.
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The Benito Juárez Experience 19
In this episode Juhem and Luciano discuss the Democrats’ reboot, also known as “A Better Deal.” They focus on three articles with different takes on the future of the Democratic Party.
Links:
Everything That’s Wrong with the Democratic ‘Reboot’ in One Lousy Op-Ed (Ian Haney López, Moyers & Company)
The Democratic Party Is in Worse Shape Than You Thought (Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times)
Democrats Are Trying to Win the 2018 Midterms in All the Wrong Ways (Steve Phillips, The Nation)
America Has a Long and Storied Socialist Tradition. DSA Is Reviving It (John Nichols, The Nation)
What I’m Reading…
Can we just stop fantasizing about the South winning the Civil War? (Sean O'Neal The A.V.Club)A new alternate-reality show wonders what would have happened if the South had won the Civil War. If black people need to get over slavery, shouldn't white people get over the Civil War (or the Nazis, for what is worth).
Democrats Are Trying to Win the 2018 Midterms in All the Wrong Ways (Steve Phillips The Nation) White working class obsession among Democratic Party leaders has not reached its peak yet. Phillips shows why they are wrong about the strategy to bring back WWC voters, when they need to make sure the working class voters they do have (and who are not white) don't stay home come election time.
We Are Living in the Coen Brothers’ Darkest Comedy (Jeet Heer The New Republic) If you haven't seen the Coen Bros brilliant "Burn After Reading" you should. They may be suing the Trumps soon over copyright issues.
You Keep Using That Word… (Sincere Kirabo The Humanist) A very meta piece in which he reviews James Croft's review of Anthony Pinn's latest book. All are an excellent read about how humanism can become the greatest force of good in American politics. My words, not theirs.
Lack of Diversity Among Capitol Hill Unpaid Interns
A recent report in WAMU, the DC NPR station out of American University, explored the widespread use of unpaid interns in the halls of Congress. This is an issue I have often brought up in conversations with friends here inside the beltway.
The DC area is very expensive to live in and most people here are not native to the area. This means that to come and work for free you either need some startup resources (often parental help) or make ends meet some other way. This method has consequences, eloquently put by one of those interns.
One result of offering only unpaid positions, Vera said, is a noticeable lack of diversity within the intern pool.
“There’s a reason why, if you walk around the halls, all the interns look like me,” said Anthony Eliopoulos, a current House intern from Ohio. Eliopoulos, who describes himself as “a white, straight male,” said the financial strain caused by unpaid internships means that other well-qualified young people can’t make it to Washington, like he did.
But Eliopoulos didn’t get to D.C. on luck alone. To afford his time away from home, he saved up the money he earned from completing basic training with the Ohio National Guard. He also was able to live rent-free with family in Maryland. Even with all the planning and outside support, he said the costs of parking, Metro, food, and business clothes added up quickly in a city as expensive as Washington.
Unpaid public service warps the view of what public service means. Right now the children of the dominant classes use it as a stepping stone to find more lucrative work in the lobbying industry or helps perpetuate a power elite in political parties. It will ensure that as more people country continue to descend into poverty the ruling class remains insulated from it. And that's not good for democracy.
Latinos, the Nones, and the Decline of American Catholicism
Last week PRRI released a new survey providing an in-depth look at the nones. The nones are now America’s largest “religious” cohort, surpassing Catholics. This is no coincidence. Former Catholics (or people raised as Catholic like yours truly) have been boosting the numbers of the nones for years. The stability of Catholic religious identification in the United States was a mirage. The growth of the Latino population in the 1990s and 2000s, back then overwhelmingly Catholic greatly contributed to the overall numbers and give the impression that Catholic identification was very stable in the face of overall declining religiosity in the country.
Back when I was at the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC) and we released the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey we noted that anomaly. On page 15 of the 2008 ARIS Summary Report Barry Kosmin & Ariela Keysar noted that “…Catholicism lost ground within every ethnic group between 1990 and 2008. If the Hispanic population, which is the most Catholic, had not expanded then the Catholic population share nationally would have significantly eroded.” This observation was based on an analysis of a subsample of nones that received additional questions on ethnic heritage. We found a substantial number of former Catholics of Irish descent among the nones that was further explored in ISSSC’s report “American Nones.”
Even as Latinos seemed to give Catholicism a boost, under the surface there were problems. The third ARIS report, published in 2010, was on Latino religious change. In that report we noted that Catholic identification among Latinos had declined from to-thirds of all Latinos in 1990 to 6-in-10 by 2008 while the share of nones had doubled. The decline in Catholicism among Latinos led us to conclude that “…while Latinos helped to mitigate some of the losses in Catholic identification in the U.S., the Catholic identification is much lower than it could have been.”
By 2013 I had joined PRRI and our Hispanic Values Survey found that the growth of Latino nones was fueled by an exodus of Latino Catholics. The next year, 2014 the Pew Research Center found that 20 percent of Latinos were nones.
In sum, though the growth of the nones seems to be a mostly white, male phenomenon because the most prominent secular faces are white dudes, people of color especially Latinos have helped the group become the largest “religious” cohort in the country. So, secular America, in the name of all former Latino Catholics I say, you’re welcome.
Colorblind Conservatism
At TheHumanist.com, Sincere Kirabo writes about black conservatives. In the piece he dismantles the arguments of African-American speakers at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. A task simplified by the fact that there were so few, most fit in one magazine column. A sample quote below:
Black conservatives, along with their brethren, favor respectability politics and place faith in the idea of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps”—both notions supported by a victim-blaming rationale that neglects the way some identities are privileged over others.
Sincere Kirabo, “The Black Conservative Anomaly“
Though Kirabo’s focus is the current lineup of black conservatives in the GOP, black conservatism is an ideological current with a long history, something I learned during my years in graduate school. In fact, it was the scholarship on African-American ideologies, particularly the work by Michael Dawson and Melissa Harris-Lacewell (today Harris-Perry), what inspired me to write a dissertation on Latino ideology.
In this regard, Kirabo’s piece reminds me of Chapter 3 of W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk. That chapter is a serious takedown of the respectability politics and black conservatism of Booker T. Washington.
There’s a big difference between Washington and today’s black conservatives in the GOP. Washington’s conservative rhetoric included actions, such as the founding of the Tuskegee Institute. He was part of a debate about how to improve the conditions of the African-American community after the collapse of Reconstruction. Today’s GOP black conservatives deny there’s a problem at all, or that the problem lies in individual responsibility.
Which leads me to the contradiction of today’s GOP. As the party has moved from “dog-whistle” statements about race to explicit racism, it has also seen a boom in elected officials of color. The Party of Trump has South Carolina’s Tim Scott, the only African-American U.S. Senator, two Latinos in the U.S. Senate (Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz), as well as governors Brian Sandoval (NV) and Susana Martínez (NM), Indian-American governors Nikki Haley (SC) and Bobby Jindal (LA). Let’s not forget Dr. Ben Carson’s and Alan Keyes’s presidential aspirations. This shows that the party’s base may be racist, but also colorblind. They will elect anyone who spews the hateful rhetoric and reality-denying views they like.
The other day I was watching cable news in room as I waited for a meeting. I don’t recall which network it was, but I recall hearing something like this: A commentator asked where are the reasonable black conservatives like Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and Michael Steele. And I though to myself, if Michael Steele is now considered a reasonable black conservative, the Republican Party is beyond salvation.
Bernie, the Donald, and the Nones
A couple of weeks ago Mark Silk wrote about a Pew poll that found that majorities of nones supported Sen. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in their respective party contests. According to the poll, 61 percent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning nones favor Sanders over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Thirty-five percent prefer Clinton. On the Republican side, 57 percent of nones support Trump while Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich lag well behind with 17 percent each.
The survey confirms a hunch I’ve had for a while. In my social media feeds there are apparently more Sanders than Clinton supporters. Of course, my maybe 1,000 social media contacts (some of them repeated across platforms and not all of them secular) are not likely to be representative of the nones, but those suspicions now are confirmed.
Sen. Sanders’s support is strongest among young Americans of the Millennial generation. This happens to be the most secular generation as well. On paper, it is also a generation that is to the left of the general population on social/economic issues (in favor of more spending on government services and the social safety net). In this regard secular Millennials are the core of Sanders’s coalition.
Sen. Sanders’s support is strongest among young Americans of the Millennial generation. This happens to be the most secular generation as well
What I wasn’t sure, though I also had a hunch, was the preferred candidate among Republican nones. My social media contacts were no good for this since I barley have any Republicans, let alone any Republican nones (these are very rare). My hunch was that the GOP-leaning nones’ preferences were maybe leaning toward Trump, and that Kasich would be ahead of Cruz. And I was way off-target in that regard.
Two-thirds of Republican nones are men according to Pew’s Religion Landscape Survey.
My reading of the Republican nones assumes that this is a conservative group on economic matters but more liberal on cultural matters. That assumption is likely correct and will be the subject of a forthcoming post. Trump, depending on the day, is the least religious candidate in the Republican field, a positive for those who only care about Church-State issues. What I probably underestimated is the extent of the racism, sexism, and hatred to “pc dialogue” among many in the secular community.
It’s fair to say that, for the first time in American history, the Nones making their influence felt on the presidential nominating process.
-Mark Silk, Spiritual Politics, “The Year of the Nones“
I am aware that some communities such as men’s rights activists and even groups of white supremacists can be a draw for secular men. And I think that is what drives Trump’s high numbers among the Republican nones, who are primarily young men. Two-thirds of Republican nones are men according to Pew’s Religion Landscape Survey.
Mark Silk interprets the Pew poll findings as part of a “year of the nones”making their influence felt on the presidential nominating process.” I partly agree with that interpretation. It is true that the nones are becoming larger portions of the parties’ coalitions. But the secular movement keeps waiting for the parties to knock on their doors instead of trying a hostile takeover of party structures. What I mean is that nones are not being organized as political blocs but rather as individual voters who happen to coincide in their preferences for particular candidates. That is no way to gain any sort of clout.
While I think the none vote will be decisive, it is less clear if politicians will care until there is a coordinated effort in the secular leadership to exploit their strength in numbers. In that sense I would modify Silk’s “year of the nones” to the “year of the none” because it is the coincidence of individual nones what may become decisive in this primary season, rather than the collective undertaking of the nones to affect the ouctome of the elections.
Image Source: ABC News
Feature Friday: What’s Race Got to Do With It? Race & Intersectionality in the Atheist Movement
My participation in the Secular Social Justice Conference
This Year Race Trumps Religion
My good friend and old colleague Dr. Mark Silk calls the end of religious identity politics a couple of weeks after declaring the Religious Right dead. Personally, I think race is trumping (no pun intended) religion this year, but as the natural progression (regression?) of an ideology rooted in white Christian supremacy. He writes:
In a crazy political year, perhaps we have one thing to applaud: the evident end of religious identity politics. Evangelicals have been decidedly lukewarm toward preacher’s kid Ted Cruz and fellow-traveler Rubio, and they showed no interest whatsoever in Mike Huckabee this time around. Jews, so far as we can tell, are not particularly feeling the Bern. And Catholics barely gave Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum the time of day.
I’m not so sure this end is a reason to applaud. The Republican Party is a Christian Party -or a party for certain types of Christians. All the candidates openly praised god, the Christian version of it. While it is true that some candidates were more a part of the Christian/Religious Right than others, at this point in history every potential GOP candidate knows what religious buttons to push.
Since all of them love Jesus, they have to differentiate each other by expressing who they hate the most. The foreign policy proposals of all the GOP candidates are about blowing up anything that is outside of our borders. Only Trump stands out by viciously (and explicitly) attacking and threatening violence against their domestic others: religious minorities, black, brown, red, and yellow, independent women. That’s why Trump is so appealing. And that’s no reason to applaud.
Photo credit: Donald Trump at 2015 CPAC. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Racial Diversity and the Future of the Secular Movement in Free Inquiry
That’s the title of my new piece in Free Inquiry [subscription requited] as part of a volume dedicated to discussing “How do we Sustain the Growth of Unbelief?”
From the abstract: “Seculars of color are more numerous than ever, but movement groups may need to offer broader programming to attract them.”
My main argument, that on paper secular Americans look like a socially and racially progressive group that seems open to address the concerns of secular Americans of color. But while…
. . . [i]t is possible for the movement to address the needs of the growing secular population of color. The question is whether the movement is willing to make the necessary adjustments to become a major force in American society.
Most days I am positive that we have the ability of organizing a racially inclusive movement. However, it depends on acting on stated thoughts and opinions on matters of racial and social justice in polls and prioritizing these preferences in a way that they reflect not just the opinions of many members of the community at-large, but also as guiding values and principles for the movement.
Other articles were penned by Tom Flynn, Ryan Cragun, Barry Kosmin, Christel J. Manning, Jesse Max Smith, and Phil Zuckerman. That’s pretty good company.
The LatiNone 