AT K - K Answers - Michigan 7 2023 CPSW

Antiblackness Group 1
Arnav Aggarwal, Anagha Chakravarti, Corrine Gormley, Kirsten Kelly, Arnav Maddineni, Tatum Milone, Sofia Shah, Ruby Werber.
rich people crush the alt
The rich wont let liberalism go easy
Steven F. Hayward, 1-8-2014, I am currently the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University's Graduate School of Public Policy. From 2002 to 2012 I was the F.K Weyerhaeuser Fellow in Law and Economics at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, and senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. I have also taught at Ashland University in Ohio, and the University of Colorado, Boulder. I am the author of a two-volume narrative history of Ronald Reagan and his effect on American political life, The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964-1980, and The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution, 1980-1989, and also the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, published in 14 editions from 1994 – 2009, and its successor, the Almanac of Environmental Trends.How Did The Democrats Become The Party Of The Rich?, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenhayward/2014/01/08/how-did-the-democrats-become-the-party-of-the-rich/?sh=59d792ab3f60, rkwerbs
If you brought back either of the Roosevelts—Teddy or Franklin—from the grave, the most astonishing thing they would find is that the “malefactors of great wealth” have become the benefactors of today’s liberalism, and Democrats have become the party of the rich. In the economic crisis of the 1930s, the rich hated FDR. Most of today’s rich love Barack Obama—so much so that Washington D.C. area airports ran out of space to handle all of the private jets flying in the well-heeled for both of his inaugurals. Forget the “limousine liberals” of the 1960s and 1970s, sending their own kids to private schools while advocating forced busing for everyone else; behold today’s burgeoning class of “Gulfstream liberals,” who jet about the globe while fretting about global warming.
What accounts for this astonishing state of affairs, and what does it mean for our politics in this age of supposed concern over economic inequality?
To be sure, labor unions (along with trial lawyers) still provide the majority of the Democratic Party’s campaign funds and organizational muscle on election day, but it is the super rich of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, combined with the super rich of Hollywood, who command the priority attention of Democratic Party leaders these days. Of the ten richest zip codes in the U.S. eight gave more money to Democrats than Republicans in the last two presidential cycles. President Obama doesn’t go to union halls to host fundraisers; he goes to posh Wall Street townhomes, the Hollywood hills, or to Tom Steyer’s house in Pacific Heights. Steyer, a billionaire investor and wannabe George Soros, is the perfect model of today’s rich liberal, and shows where the balance of power on the Left rests today. Organized labor wants the Keystone pipeline built; Steyer, who imbibes deeply the green Kool Aid, is adamantly against Keystone. Note who Obama is siding with.
Yes, but haven’t many of the leading plutocrats, such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, embraced higher income taxes? Yes, they have, but one important fact has escaped notice: higher income tax rates will not touch the bulk of the fortunes of today’s plutocrats, for the simple reason that the great bulk of the accumulated wealth of Gates, Buffett, Silicon Valley and Wall Street consists of appreciated asset values—not ordinary income. Few seem to be aware that most of this wealth has never been taxed, and in the case of Buffett and Gates, who are taking advantage of the charitable foundation laws, will never be taxed. Even a return to Paul Krugman’s nirvana of 90 percent marginal income tax rates of the 1950s would do little to reduce the wealth gap in the nation.
At a time when the Democratic Party is moving leftward, away from Bill Clinton’s relatively centrist economic outlook, what explains the growth in the ranks of super-rich liberals? (Or, to flip the Thomas Frank title, what’s the matter with Connecticut?) It is worth noting that many of today’s leading liberal super-rich are not heirs of fortunes, like Stewart Mott and various Rockefellers of previous decades, whose liberalism could be attributed to personal guilt over unearned wealth. Most of today’s super rich liberals are financiers and entrepreneurs, like Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin. Liberal guilt is not entirely absent from the mindset of the new rich, as can be seen especially in the mindless mantra that the rich have an obligation to “give back,” as though they “took” something in creating wealth by serving the marketplace with dazzling innovations like computer software and internet marketplaces.
There are several parts to this story, but perhaps the most significant is the presumption of the new rich today that they’re simply smarter (look at how fast I got rich?, they think), and today’s elitist, technocratic liberalism appeals to their superficial intellectual vanity. As a one-time critic of the new super rich once put it, “they found it hard to imagine that there might be any social ill that could not be cured with a high SAT score.” (That critic was Barack Obama, in The Audacity of Hope.)
The dependence—if not slavishness—of Democrats on the new super rich is best revealed by the dog that isn’t barking in the current liberal crusade against economic inequality: where is the call for a straight up wealth tax? Where is today’s Huey Long, who in 1935 proposed that no one should be allowed to keep any wealth beyond $50 million—or perhaps, he suggested, only $10 million. Whatever the figure, Long said, “it will still be more than any one man, or any one man and his children and their children, will be able to spend in their lifetimes; and it is not necessary or reasonable to have wealth piled up beyond that point where we cannot prevent poverty among the masses.”
Where is the voice of Huey Long in today’s supposedly populist liberalism? Long’s $50 million wealth limit, adjusted for inflation, would be about $850 million today—still more than anyone could spend in a lifetime. But not even Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders will go there. (The only person who has mooted the idea so far, ironically enough, is the quixotic and still befuddled David Stockman.) Why not? Probably because any such proposal would make Republicans out of the Hollywood and Silicon Valley crowd in a big hurry. The scene is another good reminder of the hypocrisy of modern liberalism.
solidarity/group org k2 their !s
Solidarity building is pivotal to combat anti-blackness – challenging racist tropes through cooperation with other minorities spurs movements for effective social and political reform.
Li 20 [Anita Li; Professor of psychology at Western Michigan University ; 10-19-2020; Solidarity: The Role of Non-Black People of Color in Promoting Racial Equity; PubMed Central (PMC); https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7571298/#maincontent; 7-24-2023; AA]
Both allyship and contributions to systemic racism, especially in the context of injustice and mistreatment of Black people, are not limited to White individuals. Systemic racism is the large-scale and inescapable hierarchical system of oppression devised by White people and specifically directed at minority racial and ethnic groups (Feagin, 2006). As such, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) (Garcia, 2020) suffer disproportionately due to inequities created by White people with relative social power, thus resulting in a system where BIPOC are disadvantaged in both social and public policy as a result of racist framing, ideology, attitudes, and discriminatory habits and actions. Due to assimilation, people of color can also engage in the same racist ideology (e.g., non-Black people of color opposing the Black Lives Matter movement). The purpose of this article is to invoke introspection and promote solidarity-aligned behaviors for non-Black ethnic and racial people of color within the field of applied behavior analysis and facilitate a cultural evolution to reduce racism and prejudice toward Black individuals.
Cultural evolution may imply competition as a result of selection; however, cooperation is needed for evolution to construct new levels of organization (Nowak, 2006). Wilson (2007) proposed three distinct characteristics of human evolution: cognition, culture, and cooperation, where cognition and culture only emerge as a result of cooperation first. Therefore, to build an antiracist culture, it is critical that all members within that culture begin to cooperate with one another by engaging in acts of solidarity. The importance of demonstrating solidarity is to unify and ameliorate collective suffering. Solidarity is defined as “unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on common interests, objectives, and standards” (“Solidarity,” n.d.). What is a display of solidarity? Solidarity is overt actions that challenge (and in some cases, punish) preexisting racial attitudes, model antiracist verbal behavior, and demonstrate equivalences between injustices faced by Black and non-Black people of color. As Matsuda et al. (2020) reviewed, implicit racial bias persists as a result of longer prior social learning histories. Therefore, changing attitudes and perceptions of adults may be harder to measure and achieve on an individual basis, but engaging in specific overt antiracist actions also help model appropriate and desired antiracist behaviors more pragmatically. Antiracism is not the absence of racist behaviors, but rather the ideas and behaviors that actively promote racial equity (Kendi, 2019).
Anti-Black Attitudes in Culturally Diverse Households
One way to engage in solidarity-aligned behaviors is to consider and change verbal behavior. Linguistically diverse individuals should also consider their verbal behavior in both English and their native languages. For example, in Cantonese (a dialect of Mandarin Chinese), the term 黑鬼 (hak gwei) is commonly used to refer to Black people. This loosely translates to “black ghost.” Yet, the term 黑人 (hak yun) literally means “Black person” but is not used as often. Some attribute this to 黑人 (hak yun) sounding more formal, whereas 黑鬼 (hak gwei) is more colloquial. Inherently, this subtle choice of language (even implicitly) prevents solidarity to support Black people. Participating in one’s native community, whether in person or online, can help provide discussion, insight, and resources to address race equity within one’s community. Behavior analysts of linguistically diverse backgrounds should facilitate these discussions in both English-speaking and non-English-speaking communities. Fluent native speakers can provide translations and guidance on having difficult conversations with non-English-speaking family members and bridging generational and cultural gaps.
The truth is that anti-Black rhetoric and attitudes continue to be prevalent within communities of non-Black people of color and also affect intersecting racial and ethnic groups, such as Afro-Latinx people (Wade, 2006). The anti-Black ideas, thoughts, and actions within respective cultures interfere with the overarching goal of solidarity. Addressing concerns with one’s families, friends, and community can facilitate a cultural evolution. Recently, there have been calls in the media to address these issues within one’s own racial group (Acevado, 2020; Iyer, 2020; Meraji, 2016) due to the silence or even opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement from groups of non-Black people of color. There are two possible behavioral interpretations for this division: (a) some non-Black people of color living in the United States may have assimilated and adopted the underlying White-dominant attitudes via imitation and reinforcement, and (b) the ethnic or racial group had to deal with their own injustices and mistreatment as a racially oppressed group in the United States. For example, many Chinese Americans were mistreated and discriminated against due to the COVID-19 pandemic (“Coronavirus,” 2020). The harmful rhetoric of referring to the novel coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” and spreading rumors that the Chinese government manufactured the virus has resulted in harming Chinese-owned businesses and Chinese Americans being targeted and physically harmed. Another example is related to the demonization and mistreatment of Latinx immigrants, resulting in distress, fear, and violence, such as the directed attack of the 2018 El Paso shooting (Hutchinson & Mallin, 2020).
As such, the members within the group may feel resentful or be complicit as a result of oppositional, hierarchical, and comparative derived responding and engage in thoughts like “We didn’t protest or riot when we were discriminated against,” or “Nobody spoke out for us,” or “We need to focus on our own problems first.” Unfortunately, these sentiments are not uncommon from Chinese and Latinx group members regarding the mobilization of the Black Lives Matter movement (Florido, 2016; Meraji, 2016). These thoughts may be a product of confirmation bias, where individuals selectively attend to verbal behavior and events that support their position, and the erasure of Black advocacy in the media, such as the case of Patricia Okoumou’s protest of the detention of migrant children in the United States (Aguilera, 2019) and the influence of Malcolm X on Asian American activism (Kochiyama, 1994).
Although the pain that individuals and groups as a whole face is valid, raw, and real, it is dangerous to compare injustices, as it begins to facilitate competition rather than cooperation. Historical contexts and conditions will vary between different racial groups, and non-Black people of color will naturally be more aware of the issues experienced by their own racial group. However, racial data suggest that police brutality is disproportionately greater toward Black people, resulting in the significant damage to and suffering of Black lives, and should be addressed as a public health crisis (Alang, McAlpine, McCreedy, & Hardeman, 2017; Charles, Himmelstein, Keenan, & Barcelo, 2015). To address a public health crisis, cooperation, over self-interest, is critical and needs to be accelerated (Goldberg, 2020).
Mechanisms of Cooperation to Increase Solidarity
There are mechanisms of cooperation required for evolutionary change: direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network selection, and group selection (Nowak, 2006). These mechanisms are also applicable in the context of culture change. Direct reciprocity is when two organisms have opportunities to cooperate with one another. One may cooperate now in the hopes that the other will also cooperate in return. This is akin to mutual occasions of reinforcement. Cooperation in this case can look like overt verbal behavior that empathizes with and validates the other’s feelings or overt verbal behavior or action that corrects racial inequities such as microaggressions or other forms of mistreatment. By individuals cooperating initially, it may increase the likelihood that the other member will do the same. By engaging and interacting with members of other races, each member is likely to contact reinforcement from the other as a result of repeated encounters, and this can result in increased cooperation and thus benefit both groups. Indirect reciprocity, on the other hand, does not mutually benefit both members. One member may be in a position to help the other, but there is no chance of repeated encounters or opportunities for the other to return the favor. After an individual contacts direct reinforcement as a result of direct reciprocity, the act of cooperating itself may become a conditioned reinforcer. Therefore, indirect reciprocity is related to rule-governed behavior and conditioned reinforcement, underlying the cognitive aspects of antiracist actions. If an individual cooperates with another despite not receiving an immediate reinforcer, the individual can model desired behaviors to other members who engage in social referencing. Network reciprocity is the extension of cooperation to multiple members within a group, where the benefit of cooperating outweighs the risk or costs, much like a metacontingency. The outcome of both direct and indirect reciprocity can facilitate overall group gains and initiate a cultural shift. Finally, group selection is related to cultural selection. Cooperative group behavior as a whole is more likely to be more successful than a group of competitors or defectors. The reason being is that the payoff of cooperating is much higher overall and contributes much more to the group than those who simply do nothing to reciprocate. A group of defectors, in this case, can be conceptualized as individuals within a marginalized racial or ethnic group that does not offer solidarity or engages in overt acts of antiracism.
The more likely it is that members of non-Black racial and ethnic groups participate in acts of cooperation with Black activism, the more likely they will contact reinforcement. In doing so, these members will continue to cooperate, even without immediate socially mediated reinforcement or benefit, which will contribute to antiracist cognition. By extending these actions to more members, inevitably like-minded groups will emerge and, ultimately, create a paradigm shift in cultural practices.
state good/k2 their !s
The state is key to give Black voices in law change
Kelley&Denvir 7/6 – Robin D. G. Kelley is the the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA, and the author of Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression, Daniel Denvir is the author of All-American Nativism and the host of The Dig on Jacobin Radio, (“The Black Radical Tradition Can Guide Our Struggles Against Oppression”, 7/6/23, https://jacobin.com/2023/07/black-radical-tradition-class-struggle-oppression-us-history-racism-freedom-dreams)//CG
You write that urban rebellions in organizations like RAM laid the foundation for the Black Panther Party’s emergence in Oakland, and that the Panthers diverged not only from cultural nationalists but also from other revolutionary nationalists on the left. What made the revolutionary vision of the Panthers so distinct?
ROBIN D. G. KELLEY
Bobby Seale and others were members of RAM. In some ways, the Black Panther Party adopted almost all the elements of RAM’s thinking as a ten-point program. What made them distinctive was their embrace of Cruse’s idea of internal colonialism, recognizing black people as a colonized people. They were anti-capitalist and socialist. Not only did they support self-determination, but they also turned to the United Nations as a greater authority than the US state and talked about having a plebiscite for the right of black people to secede.
The Black Panther Party was also formed against the ongoing state violence that black people were experiencing. One way that they argued for to reduce police violence was to replace the police with elected groups for public safety that would help and protect people in the neighborhoods, as opposed to just reforming the police. From the very beginning, the Panthers believed in building alliances across racial lines. The rainbow coalition that emerged in Chicago under the leadership of Fred Hampton was an example of Panther politics moving in that direction.
Engaging the state is key to allow blackness in politics to exercise civic power freely
Spires 19 – Derrick R. Spires is Associate Professor of Literatures in English at Cornell University, (“The practice of citizenship : Black politics and print culture in the early United States”, Chapter 2, 2019, Proquest)//CG
White and black activists alike were often ambivalent toward the “complexional” nature of these conventions. William Whipper, J

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