American Politics Only Pretends to Work

[Celerity]

The most underappreciated obstacle to political change is the dreary doom loop of institutional process that only bolsters a broken status quo.

https://newrepublic.com/article/195911/political-change-broken-status-quo

https://archive.ph/ngi5U


Maryland Governor Wes Moore speaks to attendees at the South Carolina Democratic Party's Blue Palmetto Dinner. Sam Wolfe/Getty Images

There is a pervasive feeling—rising up from the precarious working poor, through the illusory middle class, and now even brushing the edges of the elite—that something in America is broken. The carefully curated illusions of American life, which held just enough weight to seem real for much of my millennial lifetime, are beginning to collapse. These illusions were constructed in the shadow of post-Reagan neoliberalism, just as the rot began to eat away at the gains of the postwar economy. Poverty and racism have always made liberty and justice feel like empty promises for many, but for protected classes, the illusion could endure. So much so that by the time I reached college—coinciding with the first term of Barack Obama—it was fashionable to declare that we had entered a post-racial America.

Now those delusions lie bloodied in the street. We have seen law-abiding citizens snatched off the street, a billionaire oligarch turned loose to deconstruct the civil service. Meanwhile, that chasm between those with more than enough and those with nothing keeps widening. If there was an “Obama legacy,” then it’s mostly vanished. The optics of progress have failed to mask its absence.

On May 16, Maryland Governor Wes Moore—a Democrat, a Rhodes scholar, and the only Black governor in the country—sent a letter to the president of the Maryland State Senate, vetoing a bill passed by the state legislature that would have created a reparations commission to study the economic and social case for compensating Black Marylanders for the enduring harms of slavery and its legacy. The headlines suggested betrayal. “Maryland Governor Vetoes Reparations Bill,” read The New York Times’ headline. “Gov. Moore vetoes bill creating a state commission to study reparations,” wrote The Baltimore Banner. But the governor’s letter tells a more nuanced story. “I strongly believe now is not the time for another study,” Moore wrote. “Now is the time for continued action that delivers results for the people we serve.”

The sentiment that a substantial body of research exists bears out. The evidence is already there. The impacts of slavery, redlining, racial violence, and economic exclusion have been documented in study after study by universities, think tanks, and government agencies alike. The racial wealth gap in America—which is a topic that does not want for robust news coverage or analysis—remains staggering: The average white family holds nearly 10 times the wealth of the average Black family. In cities like Baltimore and all across the country, formerly redlined neighborhoods remain poorer, sicker, and less resourced than their white counterparts. Economist Sandy Darity, the Brookings Institution, and the Federal Reserve have all produced rigorous economic models showing the effects of slavery and other racist programs on Black wealth and showing how reparative programs could substantially narrow these disparities—even lengthening the lives of Black Americans.

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