Double-Speak

This is a make up.

The quote at the beginning is from Nixon’s electoral campaign,

“’It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States. Dissent is a necessary ingredient of change, but in a system of government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that justifies resort to violence. Let us recognize that the first right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. So I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States’… The late 1960s and early 1970s marked the dramatic erosion in the belief among working-class whites that the condition of the poor, or those who fail to prosper, was the fault of a faulty economic system that needed to be challenged” (Alexander, 46-47).

It only takes a little scrutiny for the racist agenda to come to bear. There is no substance, in those who support colorblindness, but what you allow to go unexplained. “Nixon reported remarked with glee that the a ‘hits it right on the nose. It’s all about those damn Negro-Puerto Rican groups out there’” (Alexander, 47). In 1984 it’s called ‘double-speak’. What’s really happening is a sort of code, partially for others who are inaugurated, but more importantly it’s for the public psyche.

“Despite claims that these radical policy changes were driven by fiscal conservatism… the reality is that government was not reducing the amount of money devoted to the management of the urban poor. It was radically altering what the funds would be used for. The dramatic shift toward punitiveness resulted in a massive reallocation of public resources. By 1996, the penal budget doubled the amount that had been allocated to AFDC or food stamps… The law and order perspective, first introduced during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement by rabid segregationists, had become nearly hegemonic two decades later… Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms… The New Jim Crowe was born” (Alexander, 57).

Hating someone for their skin color is no longer allowed, but social control is fine so long as it comes in civil rhetoric.