Corruption and Class Struggle: Life in Today’s Arizona
Posted by Mike E on January 13, 2011
“Corruption, elite domination, and white favoritism are the most important factors in understanding Arizona’s strange political history, including this latest episode. But class struggle against it is key to understanding why the nation’s strangest state may soon be in the vanguard of struggles for real freedom. Those involved in such struggles stand like saguaros in this beautiful state, even as the snakes and scorpions scurry about us.”
Thanks to Jed for pointing out this essay. The piece first appeared on Facebook.
Corruption and Class Struggle:
What It’s Like to Live in Arizona Right Now
By Joel Olson
With the passage of the notorious anti-immigrant bill SB 1070 last spring, the outlawing of ethnic studies as of January 1, the gutting of the school and university systems, the collapsed housing market, the high unemployment rates, and now the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, you might be wondering what it’s like to live in Arizona right about now.
It ain’t easy.
But it helps to put Giffords’s shooting in historical perspective, which is defined by two things in Arizona: corruption and class struggle. And ironically, this perspective gives me hope about the radically democratic future of my home state.
Arozona Gov. Jan Brewer -- demonstrating the classic hard-eyed white racist look
Arizona’s economy was founded on the “Five C’s:” copper, cotton, cattle, citrus, and climate (tourism). These C’s were controlled by big mining and agricultural interests and real estate developers. Corruption was commonplace as they manipulated the political system for their benefit.
A group of these capitalists, called the Phoenix 40, controlled state politics until the 1970s, when the political establishment opened up some. But even after their rule, the state capitol has always been a place to lie, bribe, and scam your way to what you want. If the names Don Bowles, Evan Mecham, AZ scam, Fife Symington, or the Keating 5 (which included Senator John McCain) mean anything to you, then you know that corruption is as plentiful as the parking here. And I haven’t even mentioned Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio or State Senator Russell Pearce, the tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum of racist nativism.*
SB 1070 and Giffords’s shooting, in other words, are but the latest of a storied history of corrupt cowboy capitalism.
Such tomfoolery is part of the class struggle in the Grand Canyon State. Three classes matter in Arizona: elites, the white middle class, and the working class. The elites come mainly from the agriculture/mining, tourism, and construction/real estate sectors (with an emerging tech sector). They are the masters of the corruption I described. But in a system of majority rule, elites need a junior partner to dominate. This is where the white middle class steps in.
The white middle class is the engine of suburban development here. The new housing developments, strip malls, and big box stores that pop up almost daily (until the recession, at least) are built for and fueled by this class. Many in this class run small businesses related to the main sectors of the economy, such as ranching, construction, landscaping, and pool maintenance. Many are retirees who used to manage businesses in other states. This small business atmosphere contributes to the libertarian, Barry Goldwater-style political culture of the state.
For years, this relationship has been mutually beneficial. While legal segregation never took deep root in this state (most of Arizona’s explosive growth took place after Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954), unofficial practices have kept many neighborhoods and schools comfortably white for decades, and the best jobs have been traditionally denied to Chicanos and Natives. (With a Black population of just three percent, the racially “out” groups in this state have historically been Chicanos, Mexicans, and indigenous peoples.) Politicians have successfully tied these practices to the laissez-faire economic policies of the elites, giving whites the sense that their success is due strictly to their own work ethic rather than being facilitated by white privilege. As a result, many white middle and working class Arizonans identify with the success—and conservative politics—of the elites.
This collusion has created an anything-goes capitalism mixed with a suburban consciousness. Call my state the Wild West or suburban hell—they’re both accurate to a large degree.
But the partnership has been fraying in the last two decades. Pressures to diversify corporations, universities, and governments have led elites to support various multicultural initiatives, which middle class whites resent. (Arizona voters in November voted to outlaw affirmative action by a wide margin.) The state’s Latino population has outpaced white growth, and the state is now nearly one-third Latino. Areas that were once comfortably white now have Spanish-language business signs. More and more schoolchildren have brown faces—even in the “good” schools. Cars roll down formerly white streets bumping music whose percussion comes from a tuba.
Further, middle class whites increasingly see elites in collusion with the Brown working classes rather than them. They have reasons for believing this. Agriculture, construction, and tourism all depend on a highly exploitable, low-paid working class, which makes migrant labor desirable. Undocumented labor makes up 27% of all construction workers, 60% of agricultural workers, 25% of restaurants workers, and 51% of all landscaping workers in Arizona. This sets small business interests—who usually can’t take advantage of such labor—into a tizzy. It sets off many other middle and working class whites as well, who feel that “they” are stealing “our” jobs. This is the political power behind SB 1070—a law that Arizona’s elites largely oppose.
The frayed alliance between these two classes has created the political mess this state is in today. It is the story behind SB 1070, HB2281 (the anti-ethnic studies law), the elimination of affirmative action, the attack on the public education system, the attack on public workers for enjoying “Cadillac” pension plans, and Giffords’s shooting. The alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, is not only of the white middle/working class, his addled mind is a gross exaggeration of its contradictions and confusions. Of course Loughner is probably crazy, but his mental health—and even his ideology—are not the point. What matters is that the conflict over this frayed class alliance—and all the political vitriol it has generated by Tea Partiers and others—pointed his illness toward Gabrielle Giffords.
In the face of this mess, it is the working class—largely Brown, largely poor, largely poorly educated, largely ignored—that represents the best hope to build a new Arizona within the corrupted shell of the old. Exploited by the elite, despised by many whites, and largely shut out of the political system, this class has had to make its own way through the state’s crazy political landscape.
With a weak Democratic Party, a labor movement crippled by “right to work” laws, a small civil rights contingent, few political nonprofits, and almost no organized left, Arizona’s working class is turning to grassroots democracy, operating outside the “official” political channels and fearlessly making political demands that challenge the pillars of laissez-faire capitalism itself. This path they are carving is quite possibly a model for working class struggles throughout the nation.
Take the grassroots fight against SB 1070, for example. The Tierra y Libertad Organization in Tucson has been a leader in opposing SB 1070. But it is also creating a new model of democracy. Declining to become a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, they raise funds through the community, which they use support their struggle for the self-determination of its base communities. In Phoenix, Puente has organized the major immigrant rights demonstrations in Arizona, but they are also organizing neighborhood meetings throughout the Valley of the Sun. In Phoenix and Flagstaff, the Repeal Coalition (I’m a member of this group) demands that all persons in a global economy be free to live, love, and work wherever they please, and they demand that ordinary people have a full say in those affairs that affect their daily lives. The undocumented workers, moms, and college students who make up the group don’t seem to worry that these demands are deeply radical and disrupt the very functioning of Arizona politics as it currently operates. These groups work with others, such as Border Action Network, No More Deaths, and Arizona Interfaith, that are organized in a traditional nonprofit format but nevertheless encourage face-to-face democracy and are courageously fighting 1070 and myriad other evils.
These working-class struggles suggest a new Arizona. They suggest a world in which working people decide the fate of the community, not the rich. They suggest a world in which democracy rather than white privilege decides how to allocate resources. They suggest a world in which borders are tools of the bosses rather than walls that “defend sovereignty” or “prevent terrorism.”
This class will not win for a while. The elites and the white middle classes are yet too powerful. This coming year, Arizona politicians will gut the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, defund public education until it barely operates, and do many more stupid things. But as elites and the white middle class continue to bicker, the Arizona working class continues to learn lessons, develop leadership, practice grassroots democracy, and make demands that seem “unreasonable” today but might tomorrow become as obvious as the multiplication table.
Corruption, elite domination, and white favoritism are the most important factors in understanding Arizona’s strange political history, including this latest episode. But class struggle against it is key to understanding why the nation’s strangest state may soon be in the vanguard of struggles for real freedom. Those involved in such struggles stand like saguaros in this beautiful state, even as the snakes and scorpions scurry about us.
* * * * * * * *
Joel Olson has lived in Arizona for over 25 years. He is a member of the Flagstaff Repeal Coalition and teaches political theory at Northern Arizona University.
* For the uninitiated or un-Arizonan: Don Bowles was an Arizona Republic reporter who was murdered by a car bomb in 1976 while investigating connections between Arizona elites and the Mafia. Evan Mecham was a racist governor (he was a John Birch Society supporter) from 1987-1988 who was impeached for obstruction of justice and misuse of government funds. The Keating 5 were five U.S. Senators, including Arizona Senators John McCain and Dennis DeConcini, who were accused of corruption in 1989 for illegally intervening on behalf of Charles Keating, whose Lincoln Savings and Loan bank collapsed, causing thousands to lose their life savings. “AZ scam” was a bribery and money laundering scandal that several state legislators were convicted of in 1991. Fife Symington, the governor of Arizona from 1991-1996, was impeached and indicted for 23 counts of fraud and extortion.
Mike E said
One source of racist hysteria in Arizona:
Here is a snapshot of the demographic trends:
In other words, Arizona will become majority Latino over twenty years if there is not some ugly wave of ethnic cleansing.
And here is another graphic representation:
In other words, there is not just “fear of a brown planet” — but also a sense among rightwing reactionaries that the demographic shift can bring a change of political and economic system — even toward radical politics of socialism and communism.
And in fact, it is not just the rightwing who believe that a U.S. with a non-white majority is a better terrain for radical social change.
EnCee said
It’s revealing to see the development of politics in Arizona in contrast to other parts of the country. This piece puts things in a different perspective than I would have thought about, thanks for posting.
In a way what the author describes is a setting where the lack of political development has led to a relative weakness that has let the right wing attack and win some temporary battles. At the same time, it also seems like the potential for something different to emerge puts the working class people in Arizona ahead. In some sense I think other areas of the country might be behind exactly because we have such established political forces. In Los Angeles, Chicago and New York the more progressive, radical or forward thinking elements have had to battle it out with the established liberal forces of the Democratic Party and the unions which follow them. In this way Arizona might be ahead in developing their struggle because they have not had to deal as much with these elements in a strong manner. There has of course been tensions. The big marches were an example of that. But, at the end of the day, when the politicians and their party goes home it is the grass roots organizations that stay and have to do the hard work. Because of the entrenched power of the more moderate and liberal forces in other parts of the country this does not allow much room for growth and development on the grassroots level. Arizona may be different, though, and it will be interesting to see how things develop.
(A crude analogy for what I’m thinking might be other times in history when the relative weakness of the bourgeois forces in relation to the revolutionary or national liberation forces had opened an opportunity for the more radical forces to develop, struggle and win a battle for leadership.)
The flip side of this is the extreme right wing nature of what they are dealing with in Arizona. There are manifestations of this in different forms across the country. The heated nature of the struggle in Arizona with its polarized class struggle may be pushing this struggle ahead at a faster rate than in other parts of the country. Keeping a close eye on this will be important as there are many lessons to learn. At the same time I also wonder if we will learn anything at all. What I see happening now in Arizona and on a national stage reminds me of what we had to deal with in California when Pete Wilson was governor. Prop 187 practically tried to ban undocumented immigrants participation in civil society and eventually Prop 209 ended affirmative action. We have also faced the continued deterioration of our schools and universities just at the time when the demographics of the state is skewing more toward brown skinned people. However what did we learn from that? What did the nation learn from that? In California we were able to bounce back a little just because of the sheer demographic reality. But, it took years for this reality to become manifest and there are still very powerful enclaves of white supremacy in many parts of the state. You can’t count on demographics nationwide however. Maybe in Arizona, but even that is not something you should count on.
Looking at Arizona and nationwide I can’t help but wonder why we are going through this all over again while hardly being any better organized. If we don’t learn the important political lessons we need to then I fear it’s going to be hard in most parts of the country for decades to come.
EnCee said
That graph also reminds me of another fact about the changing nature of society. The working class is becoming more brown. This has been alluded to in many articles, like on social security, which point out that a demographically smaller, younger and more ethnically diverse working class is going to be supporting an older, more white retirement population with their taxes and as the engine of the economy. Not only that, but the workers in what are typically thought of as “working class” or blue collar jobs are going to be disproportionately people of color even more so than today. Service workers will also see this demographic shift (and its contradictions) become even more apparent.
Nelson H. said
Let’s be thorough and name the original “c” of Arizona’s capitalism: colonialism. Excellent article, thanks for posting.
Mike E said
In the interests of precision and truth, I’ll bite: I don’t think that Arizona is a colony or one part of a “colonized” southwest. To assert that would be to stretch the word “colony” until it was stripped of specific meaning.
It was stolen from Mexico (a century and a half ago). It has a remaining population from those days of conquest. It has drawn in a considerable population from nearby Mexico (to be exploited by capital).
When I was last in Arizona i studied the expulsion of Mexican miners from Bisbee around World War 1 (the 1917 Bisbee Deportation). But by that point as well, the Mexicans exploited in the mines were immigrant workers from Mexico, not locally colonized people, in the main. (I.e. there is a distinction between Chicano people and the “land grant” Spanish people of the Southwest, and the subsequent waves of Mexican immigration.)
This does not mean that the borders are involate — or that a future revolution might not involve land transfers in the Southwest. But it is to say that the Southwest is now (distinctly) internal to the U.S. — and that the form of national oppression in the Southwest does not take the form of a continued “colonization” of part of Mexico (the way, say, Hong Kong was a colony of Britain, severed from China).
Thoughts on this, Nelson? Can you help us get into this?
But I don’t think the “colonial” model is useful for understanding today’s development
suzyrice said
[moderator note: we don't usually allow conservative commentary on this site -- mainly because such arguments are not what we are focusing on. But in this case Suzy's comments are an interesting reflection of the wider debate, and we will leave them up.]
Honestly, the hatespeech on this site could fill a nation all of it’s own and I hope it isn’t my good ole U.S.A.
The entire post here and comments are all focused on ethnic supremacy. Your entire reference about other human beings as to America is your various considerations and discussions about “majority Brown people” revealing a concentration and single focus on proliferating one ethnicity over all others: your own, “Brown people.”
I don’t know anyone in the U.S. who walks around worrying about “the Brown people are going to be a majority if we don’t seal our borders.”
What most Americans, to the contrary, DO worry about is national security.
If you’re in the U.S. illegally, whether Brown, White, Plaid or Rosey, you’re violating our laws and pose a number of severe concerns to American citizens: safety concerns, security concerns, financial concerns, crime concerns (safety again), resource concerns, academic and intellectual concerns, religious concerns, so much more. The concerns are not about someone else’s “Brown” ethnicity, but about their character.
An illegal alien (Constitutional term, that’s what the Constitution defines as anyone in the U.S. without legal sanction/permission) is a person involved in “bad behavior” as to character, indicates dubious ethics, causes citizens concerns on so many levels, the least of which is their ethnicity or someone’s race.
And please remove my graphic from your site, which you’re hotlinking to somehow; I’ll try to ban your site from hotlinking but it would instead be the considerate thing for you to do to remove it from your site. Hotlinking is theft, and it’s very, very rude. Note I didn’t ask whoever posted it (“Before Amnesty, After Amnesty” above) what their skin color was and I don’t care, either.
* * * * * *
Why don’t you all complaining about our national sovereignity apply for LEGAL ENTRY into the U.S. and apply for citizenship? Why aren’t you working to fulfill those requirements? Whoever told you that sneaking, stealing and lying your way into another country was even remotely respectable?
Remind me to ask Mexico what would happen to me if I snuck into Mexico, stole an identity and “papers” and went about lying to anyone who asked what my situation was there.
I think that of all the problems caused by illegal immigration in the U.S., the biggest thing that annoys most American citizens is the lying, cheating, stealing and complaining about not being able to take more that goes on by the illegal alien appeasing interests. Every single resource an illegal alien uses and enjoys in the U.S., is paid for by a U.S. taxpayer whether they approve of it or not, and it’s money paid that they need for their own children and futures.
boris said
@ Mike E:
I think you are liquidating (ignoring, overlooking) the indigenous question. One-fourth of the entire territory of Arizona is covered by Indian reservations, including parts of the border itself. See for example the position taken by the Tohono O’odham nation on SB 1070.
Even putting the topic of the liberation of the Chicano people aside, and looking solely at the conditions of the First Nations, it is clear that more is at play than neighborhood / school / employment segregation (which Olson highlights). All of the key phenomena associated with the colonizer-colonized contradiction, in the specific form of US white settler-colonialism, are present: regional underdevelopment, comprador bureaucrat capital, the land question, and the lack of national independence.
There is a complicated relationship between Chicano and First Nations people (e.g First Nations people remained indifferent for the most part to the Chicano land struggle in the 1960s, as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz describes in her book “Roots of Resistance”; there is a struggle among Chicano people of whether to identify with indigenous or Spanish heritage).
This relationship will have to be developed consciously through struggle, as the key task in developing multinational unity in this settler-imperialist US society involves primarily forging unity among different oppressed nationalities, not unity with whites.
You wrote: “This does not mean that the borders are involate — or that a future revolution might not involve land transfers in the Southwest. But it is to say that the Southwest is now (distinctly) internal to the U.S.”
Saying that the Southwest is now internal to the US (what about the history of state-to-state relations with First Nations? the existence of broken treaties?) is precisely imho to assume that the borders are involate and to forever put off the question of land til “after the revolution.”
On the contrary, the land question is a present day question, hence the need to investigate the *ongoing* struggles over the use of land and natural resources in the Southwest, e.g. the struggle for water rights in Black Mesa, the struggle against uranium mining by imperialist enterprises. None of this is very controversial – much of it takes place through the courts – the Left just needs to pay attention.
Nobody in Particular said
@suzyrice
Well Suzy, immigrating to the USA legally is…well, I’ll show you.
The link provides an up to date flowchart of the tedious, broken mess that is the modern process of legal migration.
My question to you is simple, actually-say you weren’t from the USA. You live in a third world poor corrupt shithole rife with violence. Every day you send your kids out to the crappy local school while oyu owrk for ten back-breaking hours to afford enough beans and tortillas not to die of starvation, you pray to Madonna that a gang flush with money from the Drug War’s inflation of drug cartel profit margins or a paramilitary death squad flush with US-money doesn’t rape them and then gouge their eyes out for sport.
Are you honestly telling me you’d let some damn law stop you from fleeing such a nightmare? From potentially giving your kids a decent life?
Nate said
Suzy, aside from many other things, it’s hard to take you seriously when you say “illegal alien” is a “constitutional term.” It’s not. Here are two different links to the U.S. constitution:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States_of_America
Neither the word “illegal” nor the word “alien” appear, let alone the term “illegal alien.” The U.S. actually had no federal policy of regulating who could migrate into the US until 1875. A partial exception is the Alien and Sedition Acts passed in 1798 (incidentally, opposed by Thomas Jefferson). These expired not long after they were passed and were not about control people’s entry into the US but rather were tied to the government wanting to deport citizens of countries the US was at war with. So, you’re misinformed.
You’re also misinformed when you claim that migrants use resources paid for by US tax dollars. I don’t have the reference on hand but there was a study done by the Center for Urban Economic Development in Chicago a few years ago that found that migrants actually tend to use services much less than other people and that they tend to put $1800 more into the economy per year. Personally I think it’s a morally repulsive idea to say that someone can only reside somewhere if their residence is economically beneficial to the area they reside in, my point is only that here too you’re ignorant. Your views are based on misinformation or lack of information. That would be funny if your views were about something innocuous but views like yours are all too common in the US today and they have terrible effects on people’s lives.
I also want to say: I’m white and a native born U.S. citizen and I agree with this blog post. My race and migration status shouldn’t matter at all but I say this because you seem to think that this blog post and people who agree with it must be migrants and brown people. That’s kind of funny in a sad way, because you’re calling people racist and yet you assume that anyone who writes and agrees with stuff like this must be brown and a migrant. I care about these issues because I care about justice. U.S. immigration laws are unjust and your views are despicable.
If anyone’s interested, I highly recommend Mae Ngai’s book Impossible Subjects, it’s a history of U.S. immigration law. There’s also a very good book about racist laws against Chinese immigration, Laws Harsh As Tigers by Lucy Salyer.
chicanofuturet said
Despite the vague language employed by the author,all in all I think the article is very good.
JO writes-
“Corruption, elite domination, and white favoritism are the most important factors in understanding Arizona’s strange political history, including this latest episode. But class struggle against it is key to understanding why the nation’s strangest state may soon be in the vanguard of struggles for real freedom. Those involved in such struggles stand like saguaros in this beautiful state, even as the snakes and scorpions scurry about us.”
Corruption,elite domination and white favoritism of course are inherent aspects of US Capitalism-it’s ruling class-in every state.These are very general descriptions open to wide interpretations.”Strange”is subjective and can be found everywhere in the US.Arizona has no monopoly over strangeness.
As a California native I heartily can testify to that..
“Corruption,elite domination”.
Even the Right wing,the Tea Party people use similar language when criticizing “big government” and “special interests”.
I’d like to add…in my opinion “White favoritism” is a euphmemistic substitution for the word “racism”.
To say that these factors- Corruption,elite domination and white favoritism..
“..are the most important factors in understanding Arizona’s strange political history, including this latest episode.” is a significant understatement-inexact and imprecise.
The most important factors in understanding Arizona’s history are rooted in it’s history of the theft of Native lands-genocide of it’s native peoples and stolen Mexican territory.
Racism in it’s doctrinal forms of “Manifest Destiny” and the “Monroe Doctrine” justified the wholesale slaughter of Native peoples and the robbery of their land.It also provided the justification for robbing Mexico of it’s northern territories.
This robbery and genocide opened the flood gates for white settler colonization and domination of the southwest resulting in eventual vicious and brutal oppression,exploitation and repression of Red and Brown people who were there long before the white european american invaders came on the scene.
Tragically,this situation continues to this very day.
“But class struggle against it is key to understanding why the nation’s strangest state may soon be in the vanguard of struggles for real freedom.”
I respectfully and (regretfully) disagree with the JO’s analysis here..
In the case of Arizona,class struggle is NOT the key to understanding why Arizona may soon be in the vanguard of struggles for real freedom.
In my analysis,if there is to be any significant change in Arizona,it will not be patterned on the Marxist model of class struggle,rather it will be a variant of Mexican Chicano Nationalism,the struggle for self-determination in alliance with Native Americans.
An objective sad reality-the white left and communist forces in Arizona are relatively insignificant,uninfluential,small,weak and isolated.(There are also some historical problems of racism and paternalism involved in the evolution of this situation.)
It is more likely their future role will be as allies in solidarity with the larger movement for Brown and Red self-determination(possible demands for some type of Mexican Chicano autonomy as well as demands of comprehensive Native sovereignty over their lands with the right to expel,prosecute,sue and imprison white corporate bandits,exploiters and polluters).
I predict the future “vanguard” in Arizona and the southwest will be mostly composed of Mexican Chicano Native American Nationalists whose main demands will be centered around self-determination and autonomy.Not class struggle or communism.
Only after the demands of this first historical phase are realized will the next stage be set for class struggle,civil war waged within these political bodies for socialism-a socialist republic.
This is when Marx will rise like the mighty Phoenix from the ashes..
boris said
@ Chicanofuturet:
You wrote: “In the case of Arizona, class struggle is NOT the key to understanding why Arizona may soon be in the vanguard of struggles for real freedom. In my analysis, if there is to be any significant change in Arizona, it will not be patterned on the Marxist model of class struggle, rather it will be a variant of Mexican Chicano Nationalism, the struggle for self-determination in alliance with Native Americans.”
The line of argument here involves a false dichotomy.
National struggle is class struggle: it is composed of an alliance of different classes, there is contention between these different classes on who will lead the national struggle, and it is directed against particular classes.
National struggle can be led by communist ideology or it can be led by various kinds of nationalist ideology. The latter is not given and only becomes fact when communists abdicate their responsibility to lead the revolutionary national movements, liquidate the national questions, and fail to understand the living dynamics of US society as a settler-imperialist and white supremacist society.
The demand for self-determination is a demand that is raised by communists.
Further, who says that nationalists are bound to lead the struggle in the Southwest?
There is a history of oppressed nationalities in the US endogenously developing their own communist forces (the BPP, the Young Lords, and so on), without any initiative, “guidance,” or interference by the organized white left. Many do not look to the white left for models, but to their own national histories in the US and abroad, to Latin America, to other countries around the world, to the formations of indigenous people in struggle.
Being outside of the white left does not make one a nationalist.
And, being part of the white left does not make one a communist. More likely, it means that one is a subject of a different kind of nationalism, the more powerful kind: US white nationalism, its many unspoken assumptions, and its “imperialist economism” (e.g. failing to give priority to the struggles of indigenous people for land and independence, failing to understand how class is determined by nationality and sex, having an understanding of US history drawn primarily from Howard Zinn and his attempt to create a left narrative palatable to white progressives).