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Because among people's worst traits is the pleasure in knowing someone is worse off than you, especially if they are from an identifiable group you already disl
by danans 8y ago
Because among people's worst traits is the pleasure in knowing someone is worse off than you, especially if they are from an identifiable group you already dislike.
Your life might be miserable due to poverty, but you might still view that as a preferable situation compared to another even poorer group getting the same universal benefit as you, even if that universal benefit would make both of you better off.
- Frondo 8y agoThis is also the strategy that white former slave owners used to disrupt a more equitable reconstruction in the South after the civil war. They took all the poor white folks who were feeling a certain class alliance with the former slaves and said, "look, we know you're dirt poor, but at least you're not like those people." And created the race divide that's still, of course, prevalent in the US.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoSure the wealthy fostered those feelings but I think the fact that a war was just waged on their land and lead to their economy being upended and blacks were the only ones who seemed to benefit probably had something to do with it. White southerners weren't going to instantly give up all the beliefs that they used to justify slavery just because they lost a war.
- Frondo 8y agoFor anyone who'd like to read more, W.E.B. DuBois was the first person to write about it, and this is a nice little jumping-off point: https://psmag.com/social-justice/taking-freedom-capitalism-democracy-and-du-bois https://psmag.com/social-justice/taking-freedom-capitalism-d...