Merf. Thinking is Hard.

For those relegated to non-being, to even appear is a violent act.

Diffuse White anxiety, anger, and alienation over economic inequality and vulnerability, and the apparent inability of government to address these concerns had two effects. First, they bolstered Whites’ susceptibility to anti-Black political appeals. Without a sophisticated understanding of such topics as labor economics, class mobility patterns, and public finance, the potential salience and apparent reasonableness of coded racial claims about wasteful welfare spending, high taxes, and threatening crime grew.

Second, White anxiety encouraged certain elites to mount an active racial project scapegoating Blacks (and, in some cases, other out-groups like immigrants). Here capital punishment and longer prison terms were cases in point. Whatever the effect of death penalties and stricter sentencing on Black crime rates, the crucial impacts of global competition, economic growth, and other such forces on employment opportunities and thus crime cannot easily be controlled or even discussed.

And the mainstream culture provides such a plentiful stock of myths, symbols, and homilies about individual responsibility. In this context, it made sense for some political leaders to craft a racial project emphasizing capital punishment and longer sentences, along with cutting welfare, affirmative action, and related policies that disproportionately affect Blacks—remedies conveniently congruent with some of the most vivid images on the nightly news..