{"id":802458,"date":"2019-12-19T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=376234"},"modified":"2019-12-19T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T17:00:00","slug":"opinion-susan-knopf-white-tribalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/opinion-susan-knopf-white-tribalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Susan Knopf: White tribalism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Susan Knopf<\/strong>
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We started as small tribes. Those small bands became settlements, villages, towns and cities. Somewhere along the way, some of us began to feel we lost the essence of what it means to be who we are.<\/p>\n

If you look in the face of a cashier at the grocery store, and she doesn\u2019t look like you, do you feel just a little uncomfortable? What if she speaks with an accent? What if the lilt of that accent makes communication a little more difficult? At what point do you feel irritated?<\/p>\n

This irritation festers into anger, the anger bubbles and explodes like the volcano in New Zealand. But after the dust settles, we must reclaim what is ours \u2014 our country. Our country has always been diverse. And every one of us, including American Indians can trace our origins outside North America. As famed folk singer Woody Guthrie<\/a> penned, \u201cThis land is your land. This land is my land.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the 2004 Democratic National convention, President Barack Obama said in his keynote address<\/a>, \u201c\u2026 there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I say to them \u2026 there\u2019s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there\u2019s the United States of America.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there\u2019s the United States of America.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pundits \u2026 like to slice and dice our country into \u2026 red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I\u2019ve got news for them. \u2026 We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don\u2019t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe coach little league in the blue states and \u2026 we\u2019ve got some gay friends in the red states.\u201d<\/p>\n

They divided us. They gerrymandered our districts. They used bots<\/a> to negatively program our social platforms. They weaponized discourse, sewing inflammatory political discord.<\/p>\n

It was easy. We already had economic discontent. We watched an ever-widening economic gap between workers and bosses. The gap started<\/a> with Ronald Reagan. A prosperous economy under Bill Clinton<\/a>, collapsed under George W. Bush<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Those who do nothing constructive would have you believe the immigrant is taking your job, your life is made worse by the gay couple who now enjoy legal marriage. These are not your problems.<\/p>\n

Our problem is the spin masters who whip us up into a frenzy to distract us from the real work. How do we create an economy with jobs that pay living wages, houses workers can afford, schools that truly educate their children and a health care system that works and is affordable?<\/p>\n

Republicans would have you believe the Democrats are so busy impeaching President Donald Trump that they haven\u2019t done their jobs. Not true. Democrats have passed nearly 400 bills<\/a> addressing these issues. They\u2019re sitting on Mitch McConnell\u2019s desk. More on that next week. Republicans repeatedly spoke of \u201chate\u201d in the House chamber in the debate that preceded Wednesday\u2019s vote to impeach the president.<\/p>\n

Now some 40% of our country think a Democrat is more dangerous than the ayatollah. Why? Democrats represent diversity<\/a>. Diversity upsets white tribalism. We can fix the division the spin masters have created.<\/p>\n

A great way to bridge the tribal gap<\/strong><\/p>\n

AmeriCorps<\/a> already exists underfunded, and under utilized. Let\u2019s expand it. Let\u2019s increase its structure to an austere military-style fitness platform. Let\u2019s encourage all American kids to enroll right after high school. Let\u2019s mix 18- to 20-year-olds from the north, south, east, west, rich, poor, middle class, working class, upper class, prep schools, public schools, black, white, brown, gay, straight, Muslim, Jewish, Christian \u2014 whatever. They get basic health care, $50 a week, three square meals a day, fan out across the U.S. and do the jobs we need done.<\/p>\n

They can work in schools, parks and libraries. Do two years for your country and get two years of post-graduate education. That education can be university, community college or trade school. Anything you want.<\/p>\n

We can even apprentice these young people in fields or trades they think might interest them in their last year of service. But their initial service has one major goal: get them away from their home tribes and show them they are members of a larger, more important tribe.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for us to take back the American dream: equality and justice for all. There are those who believe equality deprives them and their tribe of opportunity. Justice demands equal access to opportunity regardless of identity. Our most important identity: \u201cWe the people.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Susan Knopf\u2019s column \u201cFor The Record\u201d publishes Fridays in the Summit Daily News. Knopf has worn many hats in her career, including working as an award-winning journalist and certified ski instructor. She moved to Silverthorne in 2013 after vacationing in Summit County since the 1970s. Contact her at sdnknopf@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Susan Knopf We started as small tribes. Those small bands became settlements, villages, towns and cities. Somewhere along the way, some of us began to feel we lost the essence of what it means to be who we are. If you look in the face of a cashier at the grocery store, and she doesn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-802458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-30 03:32:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}