Groan.
Via Beltway Confidential:
House Democrats hosted an expert on racial messaging and fiscal policy last week, and President Obama commemorated Mother’s Day by implementing her tactic of using corporations as “useful” enemies.
Maya Wiley, founder of the Center for Social Inclusion, taught the House Democratic caucus last Tuesday how to incorporate racial messaging into their defense of government programs during budget fights.
Wiley declared that “typical conservative messaging” is “racially coded” to convince white voters to vote against government spending perceived as beneficial to people of color. (Her organization, CSI, believes that “right-wing rhetoric has dominated debates of racial justice – undermining efforts to create a more equal society, and tearing apart the social safety net in the process” since the Reagan Administration.)
“The opposition usually makes poor people of color or government or both the enemy,” Wiley wrote in her presentation. “Sometimes it is useful to identify a different enemy and even call attention to the attempt to divide us,” she wrote [emphasis added].