By William Spriggs
House and the extremes of the Republican presidential candidates are a threat to that consensus; as they seek to redefine the nation in terms of religion, race and country of origin.
So these people don’t like comparisons of Republican rhetoric about Syrian refugees to the Statue of Liberty or 1939. As Thanksgiving approaches, and its historically inaccurate mythology of being tied to the pilgrims and Pequot Nation should be a reminder for the current group screaming the most about accepting refugees to ask Native Americans their thoughts.
And, too many balk at a comparison of Donald Trump’s appalling call to force the registration of Muslims as a comparison to a threat of additional steps reminiscent of America’s own sin of forcing Japanese Americans into camps during World War II. And, of course, those same people bristle at comparisons to Nazi Germany’s registration of Jews.
In his letter from the Birmingham jail, written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the clergy of Birmingham, who objected to his tactics, Dr. King lamented that it is not the hatred of the bigots, but the silence of the supposed friends of liberty and justice that leads to evil winning. The apparent inability of the Republican Party to police itself and censor the fomenting of hatred and division will hurt America. And business interests that believe they can contain and manage the irrational forces of hatred are greatly mistaken. People pushed to being irrational cannot be reasoned back to sanity.
Unfortunately, some Republicans only recognize Trump as a threat because they believe he can’t win a general election. They fail to see the deeper threat the whole party faces by pandering to hatred.
That pandering to hatred took an ugly turn in legislation earlier this week. The Republicans in the House voted unanimously to bar the Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) from doing its work to monitor discrimination in auto lending, which hits workers of color, particularly, hard. Unfortunately they were joined by 88 Democrats.
Sub-prime auto loans, those made to people with credit scores below 660, have jumped by $110 billion in the period of March to September of this year. Most of those loans have come from auto finance companies, outside the traditionally better regulated banking and credit union sector. Of course being able to buy a car is vital to workers trying to benefit from the record string of months of job growth America is experiencing. Hobbled by high unemployment and the disproportionate impact of the foreclosure crisis, African American and Latino workers also suffer from damaged credit scores as they look to buy cars and connect to jobs. This has made those communities vulnerable to predatory behaviors by auto finance companies preying on them.
The vote in Congress to strip the CFPB of power to address this growing problem is an attack on the African American and Latino community. It is not playing victim to be appalled by such actions.
But just as hatred against refugees and immigrants only hurts America; so, too, as we saw with predatory lending in housing, does discrimination in finance. Auto loans will not bring down the banking industry as happened in the housing market, but it will bring down the auto sector; one of the few bright spots in the recovery for high wage jobs. The business community will not win, in the end, on this one.
