It took a little while, but the race card has finally been played in the Wisconsin budget battle. 

As responsible governors and legislatures around the country are working diligently to solve their budget woes by bringing public sector salaries and benefits back in line with the private sector, their Democrat beneficiaries, union leaders and fellow leftists are scrambling to defend the otherwise indefensible.  Failing in the arena of ideas and logic the left called out the rank and file, organizers and thugs to intimidate reform minded leaders and create a pageant of oppressed public servants for the MSM.  Now that they have failed in their attempt to crush the reform movement they have dropped the race card on the table, a sure sign of desperation.

Writing at alfcio.org, Steven Pitts (labor policy specialist at UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education) said “as events in Wisconsin and across the country are showing, the demand for austerity is a subterfuge and a frontal assault on public employees.”  He added that:

This attack casts a particularly sharp blow to the black community.  Before the recession, 18 percent of black men and 23.3 percent of black women were public employees, making this sector the leading employer of black men and the second leading employer of black women.  In contrast, 14.2 percent of white men, 19.8 percent of white women, 7.5 percent of Latinos and 14.9 percent of Latinas were public employees.  It is important to note that these are national figures.  In urban areas with large black populations, the role of the public sector in providing good jobs and creating a middle class for the black community is undoubtedly greater.

Mr. Pitts who conveniently fails to mention the role of EEOC policies in creating the favorable percentage of African-Americans in the public sector workforce, continued his tired and discredited rhetoric by saying:

The persistent reality of racial inequities regardless of the state of the economy reminds us that in our quest for a just society, economic justice and racial justice are intertwined.  The union movement cannot limit its battles to fights for family-sustaining wages and a voice at work.  The fight for dignity at work includes a fight against all forms of racism in the labor market.

 

Advocates for racial justice cannot limit their economic demands to calls for job creation and anti-discrimination enforcement in the workplace.  Without the collective power that unions can exert in the labor markets and at the ballot box, employers will drive wages to the lowest possible levels and subject workers to arbitrary whims.  They also will discriminate against people of color and sow divisiveness among workers.

Those who have never worked in the private sector and been subject to discrimination based upon their ability and the quality of their work will always see the logical and well proven success of private enterprise as unfair and predatory.  The Marxist mantra “from each according to their ability to each according to their need” continues to be fully embraced by those who choose to view their own failure as the result of evil conspiracies designed to exploit and victimize the downtrodden. 

February 26, 2011

paboehmke@yahoo.com