How Does the Davis Bend Experiment Validate Accusations of Racist Fear Among Those Opposed to Redistributing Wealth?

Calling Pres. Barack Obama a socialist makes about as much sense as claiming that Sarah Palin's big problem is that she was overburdened with education. If the polices of Barack Obama can be termed even remotely socialist, then it is absolutely fair to describe the administration of George W. Bush as America's first fascistic Presidency. The association of Barack Obama with socialism is far less understandable than the Far Right tagging him with the dreaded notion that he is all for the redistribution of wealth. It is one of those cases of situation irony that the very same political party in America that instituted the most notable case of wealth redistribution is today the political party that views it as the most notoriously noxious of Barack Obama's mad plan to create the Union of Soviet Socialist American States. The secret to understanding what scares conservatives the most about Barack Obama is substituting the word "racist" every time you hear one of the use the word socialist and applying it to the speaker rather than the target of their misplaced ire.

Do you know your America history? Yeah: Okay, then turn this mess off and write a 2,000 word essay on how the Davis Bend Experiment relates to massive collective fear among conservatives in America today. The Davis Bend Experiment took place on the heels of the end of the Civil War and Lincoln's death when six plantations were seized by the Union Military. One of those plantations belonged to a guy named Jefferson Davis. You can see his image engraved onto the side of a huge rock near Atlanta. Oh yeah, he was also the leader of the Confederacy. If you ever needed a reason to wonder why the KKK is still powerful in Mississippi, just look to the Davis Bend Experiment. Land seized form superior white guys and handed over to freed black slaves! Hey, come on, whose idea was this? Oh yeah, the Republican Party. Go figure.

Over the next year these lands were further subdivided and the freed blacks were able to do something that their former owners had never been able to do in their lives: turn a profit without the help of slave labor. You can clearly see why Southern conservatives feared the redistribution of wealth back then: it made them look like idiots!

Well, the same holds true today. Rich white people just can't stand having their ignorance pointed out by successful poor people of all colors who, as they are so fond of saying but not actually thinking, just need to get on with it. The experiment was to be short-lived. Less than two years later Pres. Andrew Johnson gave the land back to the treasonous slavemasters. Call it the Re-redistribution of wealth. Apparently only white guys who own black guys were allowed to get rich.

The Davis Bend Experiment may be a footnote in American history, but its legacy lives on. When one percent of the nation has more money than the other 99 percent combined, there is something decidedly wrong with NOT redistributing wealth. Does anyone actually think, for instance, that George Steinbrenner was 99 times more responsible for the success of his Yankees championship teams than guys with names like Munson, Jackson, Piniella and Jeter? Apparently so, since more people are opposed to Occupy Wall Street than support it. Or so the liberal press would have you believe, anyway, right? Liberal press. Yeah, and Michelle Bachman was even more overburdened with education tan Sarah Palin.

The point being that the opposition to the idea of redistributing wealth really does have racist overtones to it. Not just with white fear of black freedom, but with white fear of Asian stoicism and Hispanic energy. Whites who are as poor as they are stupid continue to support those who look like them in numbers far greater than those who support those who struggle to live within the same means.