Author: Damian Mendieta
Amid a flurry of debate over Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget resolution, President Barack Obama attacked the GOP proposal, calling it “Social Darwinism.” Congressman Ryan has highlighted the massive budget cuts of his proposal, saying that they will help relieve the nation of its multi-trillion dollar debt. The budgetary proposal would effectively dismantle Obama’s Affordable Care Act, lower taxes for the upper class and initiate drastic reforms in the Medicaid and Medicare programs, while its proponents claim that less government and less federal spending would benefit the nation in the long run. However, the withdrawal of substantial amounts of federal funding from social services represents a subtle attack on the economic underbelly of the nation.
By cutting funds to social programs, the nation would cease to aid its citizens in economic need, and the majority of those who stand to lose the most are people of color. Census Bureau statistics show that minorities fall below the poverty line at a greater rate than whites in the US, and thus, to cut services for those most in need invariably means adding to the list of the many burdens that oppressed minorities face. The proponents of the GOP proposal have justified their Social Darwinist budget plan by claiming that their goals are simply to improve the nation’s economic situation and reduce the power of the federal government. No major publication will admit that people of color will be the ones who will suffer the most as federal funding is pulled out of social programs.
The President is correct in condemning the GOP proposal as Social Darwinism, as it is nothing less than covert racial oppression at its worst. After all, the most powerful form of racism is passive, quiet and almost nearly invisible.
The term Social Darwinism was coined over 200 years ago, but modern-day iterations of the idea have since covertly shed its original name. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines Social Darwinism as, “the theory that persons, groups and races are subject to the same laws of natural selection.” This form of racial oppression has often been justified as “survival of the fittest” or “natural selection” in social terms, and European colonists regularly used it to defend their unforgivably horrific rape of civilizations of color. By slashing trillions of dollars in social programs over the next decade, this proposal decrees that the people of the United States should effectively be subject to the idea of “natural selection.” The proponents of the GOP proposal hide the racially oppressive aspect of this resolution as they claim that the budget is a counter to large federal government.
Congressman Ryan and other proponents of the bill ignore the fact that the social oppression of people of color will be further swept underneath the rug. To counter the frequent GOP cries against a large federal government, it is false that less government regulation would benefit the nation’s lower classes since often the federal government is one of the few support systems that the poor have to make ends meet.
Programs such as the Pell Grant, a crucial source of federal scholarship funding for over eight million college students, are under attack and in danger of disappearing because of budget cuts. The students eligible for these awards would be hard pressed to finance their endeavors in higher education without help from the federal government. By slashing funds like the $30 billion that go toward annual Pell Grants, $313 billion in food stamps and the $725 billion that help individuals buy health care as part of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the nation would save trillions of dollars, but at a disgusting cost. The GOP proposal will sacrifice the well-being and federal aid for the minority underbelly of the nation to improve the nation’s economic status while reducing taxes for the predominantly white wealthy and increasing defense federal funding.
Ryan’s proposal justifies reducing funds from social programs by saying that the federal government spends too much on ineffective programs. However, in a contradictory move, the GOP resolution will actually increase funding to defense programs and the military industrial complex, one of the industrial sectors with the least federal regulations. As billions pour into military conflicts around the globe, funding sources for programs that encourage domestic prosperity are drying up.
The Ryan plan would expand opportunity and prosperity for the upper-class while leaving the lower classes to hope for a drop of wealth to trickle down. Less government, less spending and less federal control over social services will only serve to worsen the currently challenging way of life for most people of color in the country.
Ironically, Congressman Ryan’s conservative proposal brings up a valuable point the President needs to address: the need for reforms in social security, which is currently in danger of becoming ineffective. When the program was first introduced, the ratio of citizens that provided for retirees was 16 to 1. Last year the ratio was 3.3 workers providing for each retiree. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced social security, he wrote in a message to Congress that social security was an evolving rather than “finished” program. President Roosevelt said, “We shall make the most orderly progress if we look upon Social Security as a development toward a goal rather than a finished product.” As the baby boomers continue to retire, social security will need more funds to provide for our citizens; ironically, Congressman Ryan’s proposal has provided a method of successfully combining progressive ideals and fiscal responsibility.
Social Darwinism is very much the central component of Congressman Ryan’s proposal in that it will reduce tax rates for wealthier, predominantly white Americans while unraveling the social programs progressive political leaders have struggled to implement.
This racist ideology endures because it is brushed aside as a “race issue” and because people live in fear of openly discussing the role race continues to play in the United States. The truth is that while racism is far from dismantled, millions of citizens continue to believe our society has reached equity for all; for that reason, few will associate the hardship of the GOP proposal with racial oppression. Socioeconomic factors lead people of color to depend on social programs for stability, but socioeconomic issues arise from racial oppression. As long as policies and actions such as Congressman Ryan’s emerge unchallenged on their racial oppression, Social Darwinism will maintain a firm invisible grasp on the development of the United States and its people.
Damian Mendieta is an undeclared first-year. He can be reached at mendieta@oxy.edu.
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