{"id":40322,"date":"2011-10-15T12:15:18","date_gmt":"2011-10-15T17:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=40322"},"modified":"2011-11-09T13:49:24","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T18:49:24","slug":"class-prejudices-in-steven-colbert%e2%80%99s-dumbocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/10\/15\/class-prejudices-in-steven-colbert%e2%80%99s-dumbocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Class Prejudices in Stephen Colbert\u2019s Dumbocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/10\/16.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-40326\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/10\/16.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"98\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/10\/16.png 512w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/10\/16-500x95.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Social justice scholars and activists suspect the recent push by many states to require government issued photo identification at the polls is a de facto strategy to suppress voter turnout amongst the poor.<\/p>\n<p>The work of Symbolic Interactionist\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/socant.chass.ncsu.edu\/faculty_staff\/duckpond\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Schwalbe<\/a> helps us understand how prejudices like these institutionalize themselves in our democracy.\u00a0 Powerful elites always define themselves as intellectually and morally superior to lower class others.\u00a0\u00a0 In viewing themselves as the guardians of our republic, these elites view it their personal responsibility to protect our democracy from the undue and corrosive influence of the poor who are implicitly thought unworthy of democratic rights.\u00a0 For example, elites argue the poor are likely to succumb to what congressional Republican Paul Ryan describes as \u201cthe good politics and rotten economics of class warfare.\u201d\u00a0 By constructing the poor as contaminating our democratic process, restraints on voting are justified and rationalized.<\/p>\n<p>In a satirical critique of a 2006 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/08\/10\/opinion\/10ornstein.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>New York Times<\/em> editorial<\/a> about how many other Western democracies have gone to great lengths to maximize voter turnout, comedian Stephen Colbert draws upon the supposed intellectual and moral superiority of the wealthy to explain why America should only encourage the rich to vote \u201cbecause they must know something, they got all that money.\u201d\u00a0 Colbert argues that we should keep the disadvantaged from the polls \u201cbecause the poor don\u2019t have much to offer democracy.\u201d\u00a0 By revealing the class prejudices many hold about both the wealthy and the poor, Colbert uses satire to reveal the real logic driving changes in how we vote.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Jason Eastman is an <a href=\"http:\/\/ww2.coastal.edu\/jeastman\/\" target=\"_blank\">Assistant Professor of Sociology at Coastal Carolina University<\/a> who researches how culture and identity influence social inequalities.<\/p>\n<p>If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2007\/07\/21\/instructions-for-guest-bloggers\/\" target=\"_self\">Guidelines for Guest Bloggers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Social justice scholars and activists suspect the recent push by many states to require government issued photo identification at the polls is a de facto strategy to suppress voter turnout amongst the poor. The work of Symbolic Interactionist\u00a0Michael Schwalbe helps us understand how prejudices like these institutionalize themselves in our democracy.\u00a0 Powerful elites always define [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,85],"class_list":["post-40322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40322"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40325,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40322\/revisions\/40325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}