Headline ‘O the Day: Feature not bug edition

I have written for a long time that the fact that the public sector helped build the black middle class over the past four decades is one of the main reasons the right wing hates it so much.  I’ve heard the racist talk for years when I’ve stood in line at the DMV and the Post Office or overhearing conversations about “the problem with teachers.” (You don’t hear it as much about cops and firefighters, but all you have to do is look at the lawsuits against “quotas” to know it exists.)  These people consider government work largely a “welfare program” and resent the fact that public employees have good benefits and decent salaries because they are undeserving. And by “undeserving” they mean black. 

Racism isn’t the only explanation for the right’s hostility to public sector jobs. But it underlies much of conservatism’s ongoing loathing for government which many of them see as catering to the lazy, undeserving poor (even those who work for a living!).  If the government benefits African Americans in some way, regardless of whether it also benefits whites, some people are against it. 

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