I wrote in my last column that policies supporting the already wealthy have a racial bias in the United States, whether the policies’ supporters mean to be racist or not. But that ignored one big followup statement that a very vocal and annoying subset of liberals could really stand to hear: economic justice does not automatically lead to justice for women, queer people and people of color.
Let’s look at Australia for a second. The country has less inequality than the United States and a lot of policies American liberals would admire. They have very strict gun control, a minimum wage over $15 an hour, and universal healthcare.
They also have yet to legalize same sex marriage and have a very sketchy record on race, to put it mildly. That came to the spotlight earlier this year when Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull feuded with American President Donald Trump over who wanted to take in refugees the least.
But it’s somehow worse than that description implies. The refugees in question are currently stored in a detention camp in some other country indefinitely, because the Australian government doesn’t even want them in prison camps on the continent. They have a history of using those camps, which have long lists of alleged human rights violations stacked against them, to hold refugees and migrants from Asia.
And when the (non-white) island nations around them have done something they didn’t like, Australia has been fast to storm their shores in a U.N. sanctioned “peacekeeping” operation. “Stop the boats” has long been the Australian equivalent of “build that wall.” And then a senator wore a burqa into parliament earlier this month as part of her effort to ban them in the country.
The Soviet Union, probably the closest the world has ever seen to total socialism and maybe another step, repressed its ethnic minorities, was well-known for its queerantagonism (opposition to LGBT people) and anti-Semitism, and was accused of burdening women with full time jobs and all of the domestic work.
The United States hasn’t been immune to the phenomenon either. During FDR’s administration, the foundation of the American safety net was laid and the ability of the state to intervene on workers’ behalf was greatly expanded. A large portion of the infrastructure that exists in America today was created as part of a massive public works campaign. Roosevelt also stuck Japanese-Americans into prison camps without trial and did virtually nothing to combat lynchings or segregation in the South. And while he did fight the Nazis in Europe, he did so with a segregated military.
The point is, historically it’s been very easy to help the common white man and do nothing or worse to help people of color and other marginalized groups. So narrowing the wealth and income gaps aren’t the all-powerful panacea for social ills that some American liberals like to claim it is.