From within this blatantly racist flooding of the veins of mass culture, and consequential anesthetization of mass consciousness, rarely does a discussion surface of this country's history of rampant systemic racism, discrimination, poverty, exploitation, victimization, and undemocratic practices that have created the conditions within which violence is inevitable.Īs the political right maliciously undermines the basic tenets of democracy by attempting to colonize public consciousness and everyday life, progressive educators urgently need to move beyond the extremely limited and antiquated debates and models of desegregation, resegregation, and multiculturalism, and recognize the dire need for nurturing communities of struggle that are not directed toward assimilation into the myth of meritocracy in a so-called "American melting pot" or toward any false sense of racial or cultural essence and unity.
However, such short-term solutions not only obfuscate the larger causality of social unrest, "deviance," and resistance, they also work to immunize the realities of oppression in our society against criticism. Blacks and Latinos, for example, are constantly targeted, criminalized, and thus scapegoated as entire populations that are culturally violent and antagonistic to the "fundamental values of family and community." In the cacophony of this media blitz of images of Blacks and Latinos involved in crime, the call for more police and prisons becomes the great societal antibiotic. From this perspective, violence is attributed to particular marginalized ethnic and racial groups.
One of the most insidious insinuations lining the political rhetoric and flooding the mainstream press is that the current wave of violence in our society is a major cause rather than a byproduct of our social demise. However, attempts to confront those in power in this country who readily use educational institutions and the media to bombard society with a complexity of distorted images and mis/disinformation in order to reinforce forms of internal and global domination are often met with the accusation that one is being anti-American, or Marxist.Īmong the plethora of social myths that are propagated by the right presently in power in the United States are claims that working women are responsible for the destruction of "family values" and that welfare recipients, immigrants, and so-called "illegal aliens" are to blame for this country's enormous debt.
The propaganda and indoctrination used in Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union have been castigated in the United States as the malignant seeds that spawned violence and an abuse of power. will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.Īll propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself.
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