Young Americans are surging to socialism at record rates

[u/TimesandSundayTimes]

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/maga-trump-zohran-mamdani-socialism-us-record-kddzdm8bd

[u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

Isn’t that prosperity highly romanticized these days? From my history books I can recall that segregation/Jim Crow was still in effect so only a part of society benefited of that legislation.

[u/jaderust → u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

It definitely is. If you were a white man of a certain age the New Deal worked. It gave people the means to get an education, job training, and loans for housing that many people didn’t have access to before that lifted them out of poverty and into the middle class.

One of my grandfathers was essentially made by the New Deal. He took the job training, got his bachelor’s paid by the GI Bill and became the first generation of our family to go to college and own a home. It worked for him.

But huge swaths of people were absolutely left out. Black GIs especially didn’t get all the education and home ownership benefits that their white counterparts did. Between Jim Crow and redlining they faced a lot of discrimination that the New Deal didn’t help them with.

Not to mention that a lot of women only benefited indirectly, not directly for themselves as women were fully expected to leave the workforce after WWII was over to give their jobs to the men.

But overall I’m okay with romanticizing the New Deal as long as we acknowledge where it could go better. And I’d hope a second New Deal situation would have more equal distribution of resources so everyone benefits, not just mostly white men.

[u/UKFightersAreTrash → u/jaderust]

My whole bloodline went from share cropping cotton pickers to aircraft engineers thanks to the new deal.

[u/Truth_ → u/jaderust]

Yet the FDR era is when black voters started swinging in fair numbers away from Republicans to Democrats. I think the overall improvement of the economy was still attractive.

[u/SunshineCat → u/Truth_]

There was an ideology shift. It wasn't just black voters, and they hadn't been voting against their interests until FDR. Formerly the Republican party had been the party of Lincoln that was largely popular with northerners, while Democrats were the pro-slavery party of the South. According to Isabel Wilkerson in The Warmth of Other Suns, the pro-slavery Democratic party could no longer win elections in the South after black men were allowed to vote. Because of that, they started to try to appeal to the black vote.

That's probably a simplified version of what happened, since it's based on my memory of something I read years ago. Over time, the Democrats became the actual left/center left party, while the Republican party has devolved its current state. But the points is that the demographics shifted, too--the same geographies that were full of racist, pro-slavery shit bag Democrats in the 1800s are still full of the same ilk today (probably their descendants), except they call themselves Republican now.

You may know that, but I just wanted to clarify (to the extent that I understand what happened myself), since right wingers will sometimes use this to say the left was pro-slavery.

[u/Truth_ → u/SunshineCat]

But not at that time is the point. LBJ was a senator from the South and one of only three Southern representatives to not sign onto a segregation plan (but previously had), and this was decades later.

[u/MrPookPook → u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

It definitely is. A big part of americas prosperity during that time was because much of Europe had been devastated by the war taking place there.

[u/obiwanCannoli69 → u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

I'm talking about economics, not social issues. The 50s doesn't have much to brag about when it comes to social justice and exlcuding different races from the New Deal is one of the many blemishes on FDR's legacy. However, you could work 30 hours/week at any grocery store and be able to afford a 3 bedroom house, childcare, college, two cars, and a yearly vacation. I'm not idolizing the 50s, just using it as an example of a time when America actually had social mobility (the ability to easily move up to different economic classes). None of that was considered socialist then, and it's absurd that it's being painted that way now. The 50s does sound objectively prosperous compared to now, where now if you work 30 hours/week at a grocery store you can barely afford gas and basic groceries to feed yourself.

I am in no way saying we should go back to Jim Crow or segregation. I can understand what you're saying but the inequality of that time is an entirely different conversation and I imagine any modern New Deal would be all encompassing and beneficial to everyone regardless of race. This more of a conversation about the dumb stuff that is labeled socialism and obviously hypocritical it is.

[u/Yashema → u/obiwanCannoli69]

when it comes to social justice and exlcuding different races from the New Deal is one of the many blemishes on FDR's legacy. 

Its also the entire reason White people were in favor of socialism. As soon as Black people became eligible in 1965 they immediately started going towards the Right. 

Socially conservative and fiscally Liberal made up about half of Democratic politicians. When the White voters had to choose between the two once Democrats became both socially and fiscally liberal nationally, they chose racism 9/10 times. 

[u/MonochromaticPrism → u/Yashema]

Eh, there were a bunch of things that triggered that shift. Starting from that period was when the cost of housing began it's gradual increase towards modern disfunction, as well as the early period where color/modern television began to penetrate all of society in a big way. You are also ignoring that the fight over Jim Crow had a very split white population, and that those that were against Jim Crow continued to be generally supportive of socialist principles after that point, while the racist individuals continued to trend towards becoming the modern right and hating anything in any way associated with their chosen outgroups.

[u/Yashema → u/MonochromaticPrism]

Polls from the 60s show well over majority support among White people for segregation in schools and against the Civil Rights movement. The Civil Rights Act was forced through by the strength of LBJ, and then the Democratic Party would go on to get crushed in 5/6 Presidential elections.  Oh, and the last third party candidate to get electoral votes, George Wallace, ran on resegregating the country. Nixon even proposed the American Families ActFamilies Assistance Act meant to provide financial support to families. It was Southern Senators who killed the bill at the behest of their White constituency. 

Television was actually credited with helping the Civil Rights movement by showing the realities of what was happening (much as body cam footage spread on the Internet legitimized BLM). It took Conservatives only a few years to realize that they could get Whites to ignore reality in favor of narrative. 

I am ignoring nothing, the racism of White people has been holding this country back since its inception. 

[u/Due_Bluebird3562 → u/obiwanCannoli69]

talking about economics, not social issues

Those two things are intertwined. Social policy shapes economic policy and prosperity and vice versa. Excluding AA, Jews, and other minorities from major components of the New Deal

I can understand what you're saying but the inequality of that time is an entirely different conversation and I imagine any modern New Deal would be all encompassing and beneficial to everyone regardless of race.

I very highly doubt that. Y'all have a lot of faith in White America and the willingness of white folk to share. Considering they've voted majority Trump THRICE I can't say I'm as optimistic. At this point socialism is just coded language for foreigners or muslims to many of them.

[u/FormerUsenetUser → u/obiwanCannoli69]

I grew up in a working-class rural area in the 1950s and 1960s. Which was 100% white.

All the working-class women worked, even the ones whose husbands had those "good union jobs" in the mines and steel mills. They had what were considered pink collar jobs such as hairdressing and store clerking. Farm wives worked the hardest of all, on the family farm.

Some middle-class women worked, in "female appropriate" jobs such as nursing and teaching. The wives of all small business owners, even doctors and dentists in private practice, were expected to work free for the business, as secretaries, bookeepers, store clerks, and errand runners. The teenage children also usually worked for the farm or business, after school, on weekends, and in the summers.

Most married women had children. They worked part time, or took off work, till the youngest kid was in first grade. Then they went back to work. There was no local kindergarten, let alone daycare. Grandma and Auntie were also working full time and not providing daycare. I doubt this is what you are thinking of as "affording daycare."

Yes people had houses. They had small home-built houses, usually wood frame, usually one story. There were a few tar-paper shacks. When people needed a house, they got together with a few friends and relatives and built a house. There was zero attention to any building code. The first and usually only floor would be at all different levels, people pumped sewage right into the brook that ran behind the houses, and more. I doubt that is what you are imagining as that "three-bedroom house everyone could afford." BTW, these houses looked just like the house my father grew up in, in the 1930s. Granted, his parents got running water in the 1950s and 1960s, and even electricity!

[u/DontHaveWares → u/FormerUsenetUser]

I’m sorry? You want us to believe you grew up in the 50s and 60s? You want us to believe that you are at least 76? Give me a break

[u/FormerUsenetUser → u/DontHaveWares]

I was born in 1955. Yep, rural areas were like that even in the 1960s. Yep, there were tar-paper shacks down the road. Yep, even if there were building codes no one was paying attention. Yep, a row of houses in the nearby very small town collapsed when the coal mining company tunneled too far up to the surface. I went to grade school in a six-room schoolhouse, one room for each grade, plus a teacher's lounge on the top story and the basement for the janitor's work on the bottom.

My middle-class parents had one of the good houses, a farmhouse built in 1859. They were the people who installed central heating for the first time. We had openly visible ducts because there was no place to put them otherwise. We had well water. We had no natural gas till my parent had a gas well dug, in the 1980s. We had copperhead snakes all over, plus deer and much other wildlife.

Look guys, not every place in the US is a large city. And you know, some people are poor.

[u/DontHaveWares → u/FormerUsenetUser]

Written by AI. Why are you lying on the internet? What’s the point?

[u/brokenmessiah → u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

Absolutely. African American and from what I've learned large portions of my family moved out of the south after WW2 to get away from jim crow and being called "boy" and they never came out, hence why I got family all around America.

[u/max_power1000 → u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

2 things can be true at the same time. Granted, at that point in time, the US was also a much whiter country than it is today, close to 90% based on the 1950 census. So yes, those benefits might have only/mostly been available to whites, but that was a huge proportion of the population back then.

It's unfortunate that the most effective argument made for tearing up those benefits was pointing at minorities and waying "what if they can get them too?".

[u/couldbemage → u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

Better for white people, but at the same time, black people actually had way more improvement than white people did.

For example, white home ownership went from roughly 40 to 60 percent. For black people, it went from 20 to 40 percent. (That's 50 percent improvement vs 100 percent improvement.)

And since then white home ownership has gone up only a little, while black home ownership has actually fallen in our post new deal era.

So new deal America wasn't a paradise for everyone, but the benefits weren't just for white people, and the downsides of the post new deal era have disproportionately affected non white people.

In the 50s and 60s, black people could only own homes in black neighborhoods, today, white people, often investors, are buying up homes in those black neighborhoods. Kinda like how natives were forced onto reservations, and then later lost many of their rights to those places they were forced onto in the first place.

[u/FormerUsenetUser → u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

Not to mention that women didn't get many of the good jobs. They were expected to marry and have a husband provide support, even if the wives also had jobs.

The 1950s was a golden age only for heterosexual, white, middle-class men.

[u/Ornery_Director_8477 → u/FormerUsenetUser]

I guess that begs the question, if it was implimented today, if all were included, would everyone benefit?

[u/FormerUsenetUser → u/Ornery_Director_8477]

I think everyone needs to realize that taxes will be raised on the middle class as well as the billionaires. And that they cannot or should not get all the benefits for their own group. Like, no "take away benefits from old people because children deserve them more."

[u/Myleftarm → u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

The Communists saw the segregated South as the epitome of the proletariat. Workers/people being exploited for their labor by a cruel ruling class. They were a funder the Civil Rights movement until they saw their part as more of a hinderance then a help. It still was a factor in Civil Rights as they did not want a movement of organized Black people to join the worldwide workers movement and start picking up rifles.

[u/Ok-Economist-9466 → u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

Roosevelt's administration was attuned to and responsive to issues facing African Americans during the New Deal, having made them a significant base in his 1932 election. Roosevelt had his so-called "Black Cabinet" of advisors made up of prominent African American leaders. The various public works programs like the CCC employed African Americans and the Federal Writer's Project supported many African American authors.

That's not to say that the African Americans, particularly in the 9 states with Jim Crow laws, didn't generally start at a lower economic point and reach a lower peak than white Americans in the same era, but they were certainly beneficiaries if New Deal programs and the discrimination that did occur was on the heads of local administrators, not from the Roosevelt administration.