The US hasn't even tried to make an ultra affordable EV. Not even an attempt!

Instead, we make Cybertrucks that no one wants, and then work the refs to kneecap better, smarter companies, to try and prevent anyone else from being successful at doing it.

Every day, I hear people prattle on about how the US Venture Capital industry is so innovative and forward-looking. Yet of all the billions spent (wasted), none of them were smart enough to fund a company making ultra low cost EVs.

@NanoBookReview

If what you said were true, then they wouldn't be so afraid of letting those cars into the market. Because people would just choose the Western cars. Free market and all that.

But what you said is not true.

And we know that, because we see what happens in markets where both Chinese and Western EVs are available for sale. People at the entry level choose the Chinese cars.

And the BYD Dolphin has a *higher* EU safety rating than the BMW 5 series.

https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/112428503861892994

@CptSuperlative @OrionKidder

💯

And unions don't just have a "history" of anti-Black racism. They have a present tense of it too.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/inq2/more-perfect-union-trade-construction-racism-pennsylvania-20220830.html

🤔And probably a future of it as well!

Anti-Black racism has to be addressed directly. Even within a union.

🤔"Unions are better than DEI!" is a very confused statement. Because unions and DEI address completely different problems.

One important thing that effective DEI does, is address anti-Black racism. It makes the workplace tolerable for your Black coworkers (if you have any).

Every public school teacher in the US is in a union. And yet, Black teachers and Black students experience massive amounts of racism from those teachers. Because unions aren't a magical answer for anti-Black racism.

Without understanding how race, gender, class, and the law intersect, we are severely limited in our ability to achieve gender equity. Bad actors that understand very well how these concepts intersect, will use that knowledge to win the long game.

This is why racists are banning the teaching and study of this intersectionality.

Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality. Read her stuff.

Arm yourself with the forbidden knowledge! 👍🏿
https://youtu.be/XfBzTTFLNz4

And much of the "progress" on closing the gender pay gap of the past 50 years, has been closing the gap between college educated white and Asian women, and college educated white men.

This is a good thing! But it's not the whole thing. On the US' current trajectory, Black women will not achieve pay equity until the year 2369. For Latinx women? The year 2451.

https://www.aauw.org/resources/research/race-and-the-pay-gap/

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

I haven't made it to Black History yet. I'm still on white US history.

Q: Enough about racism for a second. Take a break! I'm worried about gender issues in the US too. For example, why is the gender pay gap in the US so large? It's one of the worst in the OECD!

A: You know why. Racism! In the US, the pay gap between white men and white women, is smaller than the pay gap between white women and Black and Latinx women.

https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm

#BlackMastodon

We can't achieve racial equity without achieving gender equity. Black misogynists are not enough.

We can't achieve gender equity without achieving racial equity. Racist feminists are not enough.

Only 26% of Black employees work in white collar jobs, and only 19% of Latinx folk. It's quite rare for a Black woman to be a white collar worker.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2018/home.htm

So when US politicians talk about reconnecting with "Blue collar workers," they really mean "White business owners in the trades"

Most of the real unions (trade unions), endorse left leaning politicians. I'm not sure why this is surprising for so many people. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. American Federation of Teachers. Plumbers and Pipefitters. National Nurses Union. Etc,

Most of the police unions, endorse far-right politicians. Again, not sure why this is surprising either. 🤷🏿♂️

"Blue collar" and "working class" are code words designed to evoke a particular demographic of *worker*, not *types of work*.

I reject the "pink collar" designation entirely. Some people use that term to draw a distinction between the type of service work that Black and brown women often do, and the type of service work that white men usually do. There are ~500K plumbers, and ~5 million nurses. Both industries are ~10% Black, but ~90% of nurses are women, and ~96% of plumbers are men.

There are about as many Black women nurses, as there are white men plumbers in the US. But no one talks about winning the nurse vote. 🤷🏿♂️

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a champion of white women's rights. But she knew so little about white US history, that she said Kaepernick's protest was "dumb and disrespectful." Then she made it worse in her apology by saying she was "barely aware of the incident or its purpose" and that she should have "declined to respond."

A Supreme Court Justice of the United States. Unaware of how every Black person in the US experiences the police, and the most important civil rights protest of her generation.

RBG couldn't see what Black women tried to tell her: that racist men don't care about your reproductive rights. Or parental leave. Or affordable childcare.

Trying to address sexism without addressing racism, is doomed to failure, as it has failed throughout US history. Susan B Anthony fought for white women's right to vote, while fighting just as hard against all Black people's right to vote.🤡

She started a pattern of self-defeating racist feminist voting that persists to this day. 🤷🏿♂️

Students of US history understand what Lincoln knew: One reason you can't have slavery in some parts of the country and not in others, is because slaves run to the free parts.

But many of those same students don't realize that you can't block women's reproductive rights in some parts of the country and let it be legal in others. People travel to California. This frustrates the racists.

The racists are coming for women's rights everywhere. Nationwide. And they will use racism to accomplish it.

The most common age for a Black person in the United States is 27.

The most common age for a white person in the United States is 58.

Black folk vote ~90% Dem. White folk across all age cohorts, are closer to 50/50, with most GOP.

Think about this the next time someone says, "Older voters are more conservative."

Everyone that works in elections in the US knows this but pretends not to know it.

This is why GOP campaigns focus on voter suppression.

This is why I, and so many other Black voters, are so often right about who is going to win a US election, and your favorite statistician, or election pundit, is so often wrong.

Your polls don't matter. Campaign promises don't matter. It's all about turnout. And turnout is all about voter suppression. And voter suppression is all about racism.

Without understanding US racism, your election predictions will always be woefully wrong.

This is also why people have been saying since the '60s "Young people are less racist and more progressive! As the older generation passes on, things will get better!" A comforting idea.

But you can see from looking at the demographic graph, and seeing the way that White Americans of all ages vote, why this predicted "shift to enlightenment" didn't happen in the '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s, 2010s, and it won't happen in the 2020s.

Unless we change it.

Reposting this as the old one's on my abandoned mastodon.cloud account, and I don't want people to go there.

And every time someone writes an article with some bad statistics pretending that either people get more conservative as they get older, or younger generations are "less conservative," I'm going to show this again.

Younger generations can get Blacker and browner.

Or we can reduce voter suppression.

Or let Black and brown people live longer.

If ~50% of white voters of all generations reliably vote for whoever is the most racist candidate on the ballot, but only ~10% of Black voters do...

Then how do you think Trump will do with young voters?

Why are Dems always talking about the "youth vote?"

Why does voter suppression (which is aimed at Black communities) tend to affect young voters more?

These questions aren't hard to answer.

I'm going to keep sharing this info until it sinks in.

Young voters do not get significantly more or less politically activated. Voter suppression gets more or less effective. Ballot drop boxes and mail-in voting, prevents suppression.

People do not become more conservative as they get older. There is not an increasing difference between white GOP and Dem voters as they get older.

Black people don't live long, and many brown voters aren't born yet.

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

I'm still not talking about Black history. I'm still talking about white US history.

Q: Why do Black kids not do well in school? Is it because their dads are uninvolved and uncaring parents? Bill Cosby and Herschel Walker told me that, and they are good and wise men that we should listen to! It's Black dads' fault! Boo Black men!

A: No. Black kids only do poorly in school *in extremely racist countries.*

#BlackMastodon