Eating Jim Crow, the poison fruit.

Great quote from MLK. This columnist used it at an ACLU forum yesterday.

“And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man,”

This Mr. Pitts ( see below) is absolutely correct in my opinion. The white liberals on the other hand make a similar mistake in supporting the Democratic Party and it's representatives, Clinton is the most obvious, but then there is this former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer. Steyer once worked at Goldman Sachs and has fine words to say about former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, another Democrat. Steyer graduated from Yale where he learned about capitalist economics. That and the connections these representatives of the ruling class earn over time has allowed him to accumulate close to $2 billion. His history enabled him to raise lots of money from the moneylenders and other speculators for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and has had fundraisers at his house for both of them. 

Many white (and workers of color) workers, not just conservative ones, recognize that there is no future hanging their hat on people like Steyer or other "liberal" representatives of the 1%. They are not fooled and millions withdraw from politics, some descending in to resignation and apathy becasue they are presented only with these two options, a left and right wing of the ruling class. 

Those white liberals that correctly criticize white workers that support politicians and causes that are against their economic self interest (and racism is against their self interest) need to look in the mirror. I am not familiar with Leonard Pitts and agree with his comments completely, but I am familiar with the know it all superior attitude of the white liberals and their criticisms don't hold much water with me when their "radicals" are former billionaire hedge fund managers and speculators. And they call conservatives stupid. It's more com0licated than that.

The labor officials who hang on to the coattails of the Democratic Party are as bad, offering no serious way out for workers, only a slightly slower death. The message to the white worker from the liberal wing of capitalism is it's your turn to be poor now. Like millions of other workers in this country, I will fight for my class, for other workers to get a job, but not mine.

Steyer and his Harvard wife are no friends of working people and most workers know it. Steyer is seen as a possible lefty savior and Democratic Party player.  Any worker with an ounce of class consciousness would wonder how a billionaire money trader and speculator could be one of ours. Steyer uses the general mood of concern over the state of the environment to boast his liberal credentials.  Yet his general direction and life activity and of those like him is what is destroying the world in which we live. We should not be fooled by his phony claims that capitalism can head of environmental destruction, it is the root cause of it. He's the other side of a nasty coin.

The divide and rule racial tactic must be rejected. Without class unity we cannot defeat the likes of Steyer or Trump. Without class unity we cannot rid ourselves of a social system that will destroy life as we  know it. We have an obligation to our children  (white workers) to heed Mr. Pitts words and fight racism whenever it rears its head. History has hurt us too.

We share the piece below for the interest of our readers it was originally published at: LJWorld.com

Richard Mellor

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Columnist Leonard Pitts tells Lawrence crowd it’s time for white Americans to ‘stop eating Jim Crow’

Photo by John Young. Enlarge photo.

Journalist Leonard Pitts, Jr., delivers the keynote address at the 2016 Free State Forum hosted by the ACLU of Kansas at Abe and Jake's Landing, 8 E. Sixth St.

By Mackenzie Clark

May 21, 2016

Pulitzer-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. addressed a crowd of about 350 people at the ACLU of Kansas’ first Free State Forum on Saturday, calling for a realization that people “don’t need common blood to reach common ground.”

Much of Pitts’ talk, held at Abe and Jake's Landing in downtown Lawrence, focused on issues of race in America, and how those concepts are playing a role in the presidential election. He quoted a lesser-known speech from Martin Luther King Jr. to explain the concept of “eating Jim Crow” — how white southern aristocracy during the Reconstruction era symbolically fed the white underclass.

“And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man,” Pitts said, quoting the speech King delivered at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March on March 25, 1965.

Pitts said these words were a succinct summary of what he believes is the greatest con in American history: rather than provide poor white Americans a living wage, affordable housing, quality schools or health care, the money and political interest in the country has given them “whiteness.”

Historically, Pitts said, when the white underclass would complain about working conditions, the “money” would respond with threats to bring in black workers for less pay. Today, he said, the same principle is still being applied in order to prevent the underclasses from uniting into a powerful force for change, regardless of party lines and other differences, or even imagining the possibility of doing so.

“For a visceral example of this, you need look no further than the presidential election of 2016, in which Republican voters have fallen in love with a preening, narcissistic bully who doesn't even represent the things they’ve always said that they value,” Pitts said, referring to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, who Pitts said has “routinely insulted and alienated Muslims, African-Americans, Hispanics and women.”

“How is it that the party of religious conservatism is swooning for a man who cannot name a Bible verse?” he asked.

Pitts also discussed disproportionate rates of incarceration, traffic stops and police frisking of African-Americans, despite statistics showing that a majority of drug users and dealers in this country are white, and that whites are more likely to be found carrying contraband. He also named nine individual black men and boys who have recently died as a result of police use of force, including Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and Sean Bell.

Pitts concluded his talk emphasizing the importance of the election.

“Six months from now we will find out if the greatest con job in history will take a serial liar and open bigot to White House,” he said. “... We are long overdue for a moment of reckoning in this country, a moment of truth on race and class. It is long past time that we begin to call that con job for what it is and help people to see the intersection between their misery and the misery of those other people who don’t look like them on the other side of town, because Jim Crow is a pitiful excuse for a meal.”