A professor at a two-year public university in Wisconsin co-wrote a paper earlier this year claiming that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker won three elections and built support for his robust budget reforms by drawing on — wait for it! — racist symbolism.
The professor is Dylan Bennett of the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, reports EAGnews.org.
Bennett, who appears to be highly white, co-authored the paper with University of Washington Ph.D. candidate Hannah Walker, who also appears to be notably white.
The paper, initially published in April 2015, is entitled “The Whiteness of Wisconsin’s Wages: Racial Geography and the Defeat of Public Sector Labor Unions in Wisconsin.”
Bennett and Hannah Walker argue that Scott Walker, a Republican, incited “racial symbolism in the policy contest over public sector collective bargaining rights” in his long but successful effort to pass Wisconsin Act 10, a 2011 bill which addressed a then-projected $3.6 billion state budget deficit by reforming public-sector unions.
The response to the Republican governor’s budget-cutting legislation was protests galore and three years of losing lawsuits.
The two authors construct their argument calling Walker a racist by observing that the city of Milwaukee is home to the largest concentration of black people in Milwaukee. As in many metropolitan areas, many of the suburbs surrounding Milwaukee “such as Brookfield and Waukesha” are chockablock with white residents. Thus, the white scholars contend, any effort to reduce the scope of government is racist even if — especially if — proponents of limited government never use any overtly racist language.
“Governor Walker engages a strong, populist message directed at a vague popular majority with an exclusive claim to common sense, morality, and hard work,” the academics suggest. Such talk is “covert racism” that only professors like Bennett and Hannah Walker can see.
Also racist is the phrase “Midwestern work ethic.” Any aspiration to “put the government back on the side of the people again” is racist, too, the self-proclaimed critical race theory scholars explain.
“In the tradition of covert racism such appeals to common sense, morality, and hard work are references to whiteness,” Bennett and Hannah Walker charge concerning Scott Walker, according to EAGnews.
Scott Walker’s avoidance of racial terms or anything concerning race is, in fact, damning proof that Walker is a terrible racist, the authors also proclaim. (RELATED: Latest Scott Walker Scandal: His Spokeswomen Are WAY TOO HOT)
“Language terms do not simply denote plain reality, but rather also connote varied associated meanings,” the paper asserts. “The political project of defeating public unions for economic reasons was thus also a project for white Wisconsin voters to defeat Black Milwaukee.”
Further, the white authors say, the lack of evidence of any racism whatsoever in various letters to the editor during the extended political battle over Wisconsin’s public-sector reform actually demonstrates “unmentioned white privilege” and the “latent whiteness of the anti-union voter.”
Near the end of the academic paper, Bennett and Hannah Walker admit that they “cannot directly test the presence of racial animus held by individual voters, and its relationship to support for cuts to public sector spending.”
Bennett earns $46,977.69 per year on the taxpayer dime and and appears to have signed petition for Walker’s recall.
He lives in Kewaskum, Wis., EAGnews notes. The safe, idyllic village 45 miles north of downtown Milwaukee is 96 percent white, according to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Of the total population of 4,004 residents in Kewaskum, just 19 of them are black.
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