I’ve written a couple of blog posts in recent months which allege that the policies of the Republican Party are racist. I’m careful not to make any of these allegations about any particular Republican, but rather about the Republican Party as an institution. This is Institutional or Systemic Racism in its most classic form.
And I’m going to expand that accusation here and argue that the Republican Party is the party of prejudice more broadly. In addition to policies which promote racial inequality they also support policies which yield to disparate outcomes for women, LGBT persons, immigrants, non-Christians (especially Muslims), etc.. At the moment their prejudice is directed toward immigrants.
If we are honest with ourselves we will admit that our immigration system did not break yesterday. In fact, our system of regulating immigration into the United States has been broken for more years than Barack Obama has been President. Other Presidents before him, Republicans and Democrats alike, have used Executive Orders to patch the parts of the system where they could help to stem the bleeding. Our dysfunctional immigration system has been the topic of political inaction for so long that we must admit that our Legislature has had plenty of opportunity to take legislative steps toward fixing it, even at the sloth-like pace we witness from their proceedings daily.
I published a blog post in April of 2013 titled Immigration, and I was writing about another Executive Order from President Obama. The President had just announced that his administration would reprioritize the enforcement of immigration laws relating to young students here in the United States. Then, as now, the Republicans were all over themselves trying to get to any available microphone to decry the unconstitutionality of the President’s actions, but they did nothing about it after the bright lights were turned off.
Here we go again with all the Republican threats of retaliation ranging from court challenges to shutting the government down again and all over the same claims of unconstitutionality that they made in 2013 when their threats turned out to be hollow. Wouldn’t it be more productive to just pass some form of Immigration Reform Legislation? I’ve often said that I don’t think there is any Immigration Reform Legislation that our House and Senate could pass, large or small, complex or simple, wide-ranging or limited in scope that the President would not sign immediately. Nope, this isn’t about immigration – it’s about race, the President’s race, but they forgot to mention that he is black.
Institutional racism is a particularly insidious problem because, as I wrote in my blog post on Racism back in April of 2014, there typically aren’t any overt behaviors to prosecute. In this case, I doubt there is a Republican anywhere that is expressly saying that the reason for their obstructionist behavior over the past six years is because our President is black and they don’t want him to succeed because that might invite another minority candidate into the political arena. In their minds the business of government is best left to White, Christian, Straight, Men who were born here in the United States. They seem to think that good government is in their DNA because it has been passed down directly from our Founding Fathers who were White, Christian, Straight, Men born here in what was to become the United States of America. Really! If we look around can’t we find some evidence that those White, Christian, Straight, Men might have mucked things up just a bit along the way? They don’t have an exclusive ability to govern, but they have had a strong lock on the power of government and they have used that power as leverage to get more power in future political activities. Political power is, by definition, unequal. When we think about it, power to influence the behavior of someone else has to be unequal or it isn’t power at all.
Over our history in the United States there are tons of examples where governmental power at all levels has been abused when it comes to minorities of every type. It is happening today just as it has since the birth of our United States of America. The Founding Fathers designed our Federal Government with three, coequal branches and gave each the power to resist encroachment from the other branches. They recognized the importance of making our Federal Government beholden to the People of these United States of America by giving the People the Right to vote for those who would carry out the business of our central government.
An editorial in the New York Packet carried on Friday, February 8th, 1788 was written by either Alexander Hamilton or James Madison. That editorial was to become known as Federalist No. 51 – “The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments” and there is an enlightening paragraph contained there which we should consider here:
“But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Regardless of the author, this passage is one that universally applies wherever the business of government power is under discussion.
Just a couple of weeks ago the People of America elected their Representatives in the House and some of the People also elected one of their Senators as well. So the People have recently exercised their power to influence the affairs of their Federal Government for the next two years, but their preferences have not corrected the dysfunctional nature of our Government. I will argue that until the People of America throw the factions and special interests out of our political process we are doomed to taste the flavor of dysfunction in one form or another. The political parties are not the exclusive source of our dysfunction, but they are the major source of our dysfunction in the Federal Government. At the moment our Executive Branch leader is trying to be presidential as he works to correct some of the inequalities currently in our immigration system. He is a Democrat and his actions are more in line with the political philosophies of the Democrat Party. The Legislative Branch is, and has been for some time, controlled by members of the Republican Party to include members identifying themselves as TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party; a more radical conservative grouping within the Republican Party and the Legislative Branch has been in complete disarray since the mid-term elections of 2010 when a large influx of TEA Party members won their elections. There is dysfunction within each of the legislative bodies and there is dysfunction between the bodies themselves and all that dysfunction is at the behest of the political parties so we shouldn’t be surprised when the institutional racism of the Republican Party dominates the discourse on immigration.
I am reminded that for our Federal Government to work the Legislature must legislate and for that to happen both the House and the Senate must act toward the same ends. Our Legislative Branch has suffered from dysfunctional paralysis for so long that some of us can’t remember when the last time our Government worked properly was. This is all part of the Constitutional design that our Founding Fathers labored to put in place. The Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch are locked in a duel for power that is controlled by the Political Parties and that is the source of our dysfunction.
Speaker Boehner said that President Obama is “damaging the Presidency.” Even if he is right, there is no legislative responsibility to correct anything. The People elect the President and it is the People who have the responsibility to make decisions about his behavior.
Ever since President Obama was elected in November of 2008, the Republicans have criticized and obstructed pretty much everything he attempted to accomplish. It didn’t matter what the issue was because if he wanted to do it – they didn’t want to do it.
As this latest act of political theater plays out, the Republicans will use many excuses, but they will never mention that he is black and that is really what this is all about.
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