#wypipo

America has 51 billionaires who made their money from our profit-driven healthcare system, the only one in the developed world. It’s not only obscene that they’re taking so much money from so many of us who have so little; it’s also killing all of us. We’re among the worst — and most expensive — healthcare systems in the developed world, with Thailand and Ecuador even beating us out. And the reason it stays that way, according to a shocking new study, is because about half of all white people would rather inflict pain on all of us (including themselves) than allow for a system which may also benefit Black people. If that sounds irrational, it is. But it’s also completely consistent with a history that includes white communities closing their own schools and swimming pools back in the 1960s when LBJ forced them to allow Black children in. Sixty-six years ago, on a campaign swing through Tennessee, Lyndon Johnson turned to his press secretary Bill Moyers in a hotel room and explained, with the bluntness of a man who’d grown up watching it work in Texas, why America couldn’t have nice things. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man,” LBJ said, “he won’t notice you picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” Moyers wrote about it years later in The Washington Post, and the line has been quoted ever since because it explained, in one sentence, the entire arc of “conservative” behavior from Reconstruction to Nixon to Reagan to Trump. One group was asked whether white Americans were winning or losing politically. The other was asked whether white Americans were winning or losing compared to racial minorities. Both were then asked how they felt about economic redistribution programs like food stamps and Medicaid, the things that put food on tables and keep people from dying of treatable diseases. The first group’s answers tracked roughly with their income and ideology. The second group, the ones prompted to think about race before answering, turned against redistribution across the board, even programs that would obviously benefit them, even when they themselves were poor.

I sometimes joke that I was an an ally far longer than I've been a customer, and my brain is still very much in ally mode due to years of training and understanding the job. Back in the early 2000s, I was entirely that guy and a dear friend gave me a very stern talking to about being a useful ally instead of a patronizing roadblock (or speed bump). He said, essentially, "If you want to be an ally you can carry water, carry a spear, give your voice, put your body on the line, use your privilege. What you can't do is tell us how to fight our battles."