Sat 18 Nov 2017, 11:59 AM | Posted by Mark Langabeer
Angry, white and American – A TV documentary shown on Channel 4 – was presented by Gary Younger, who is British, black and has lived in the US for 12 years.
The programme began with him, attending a conference organised by the Alt-right leader, Richard Spencer. In an interview, he asked Spencer, if Trump supports segregation and the Alt-right ideology. Spencer didn’t think so. However, he did believe that Trump was an American Nationalist. Younger concluded that Spencer is a white supremacist, whose views were not shared by main street Americans.
He travelled to Portland, Maine, a state that appears prosperous and 95% white. However, in recent times it has been blighted by opiate addiction. In the last year alone, more Americans have died from prescription drugs overdoses than in the Vietnam War. The problem of drug and alcohol addiction has resulted in an actual fall in average life expectancy among white Americans. This has been treated as a national health problem. Younger contrasted this approach with the drug abuse among black Americans who are imprisoned in larger numbers than at any time in history.
Younger visited Johnstown in Pennsylvania, part of what has been described as the ‘Rust belt’ after the closure of all the steel mills and coal mines. In the past, most white Americans saw a rise in living standards and had the expectation that their children would do likewise. But the American Dream, based upon capitalism, has not been kind to those in Johnstown.
Younger interviewed Jeff Baxter, who worked in the Steel mills for 30 years. He had voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, but voted Trump in 2016. He felt disappointed by Obama and hoped that Trump will deliver jobs to Johnstown. Younger argues that the white working class have lost out and are therefore increasingly prey to a jingoistic outlook.
Younger then headed south to New Orleans where he observed many confederate flags on display. For him, the flag is a symbol of slavery and racism in general. There he met a woman who owns a museum which was formally a plantation-owner’s home, (a very grand house), and attempts to paint the Confederate General, Robert Jackson in a positive light.
Finally, Younger travelled to Pennsylvania, Mississippi, where three civil rights activists were murdered by the KKK with the collaboration of the local police force in the 1960s
He interviewed a man who at the time was a local pastor and who was himself threatened by the Klan. His explanation for the events of 50 years ago was the whites feared that blacks would ‘take everything they had’. He also believed that aspects of segregation still existed in the South.
Gary Younger drew pessimistic conclusions and summed up his presentation by stating that fear was still winning in America. I think his conclusions were one-sided. The victory of Trump was a result of the failure of Clinton and the Democratic Party to mobilise its own support base. Younger failed to mention the support Bernie Sanders received in the primaries. Bernie Sanders would have been Trump it he’d been the Democratic candidate. His support suggests that, rather than just a swing to the right, there was a polarisation in America between the left and the right.
Trump’s policies will not solve the problems of the American working class whether they are black or white. This can pave the way for the creation of a party of Labour whose aim is the creation of a Socialist Society.
