Written by Brenda Peterson   

This government shutdown is not at its core just about finances or looming debt ceilings. It is about race, gender, class, and religion. The iconic photo Eric Kantor released of House Republicans sitting across from empty chairs is supposed to suggest that nobody will negotiate with them. What it really shows is how white, male, wealthy, and Religious Right this small clan of mostly Southern Republicans is. This photo reveals the privileged past of the Far Right whose righteous entitlement and “One Way” extremism is turning the Republican elect in our House of Representatives into what looks like a Civil War re-enactment. But we, the people, are really suffering every day on their bloody, ideological battlefield.

If the House Republicans had offered to meet at the negotiating table before this 11th hour photo op, the other chairs would reveal what America really looks like now: A diverse gathering of Latinos, African-American, Asians, Native Americans, and many other ethnic groups; we are half females, and for the first time in American history there are more women in our Congress than ever before. The real America is ecumenical and tolerant in our religious beliefs, including atheists. The majority of Americans embrace gay rights and same-sex marriage. Could some illustrator please Photoshop and color correct this negotiating table photo to include the real America of 2013?

Media reports cover this government shutdown as a battle of “image.” So let’s look at this negotiating table photo image a little deeper. The Republican men chosen to “negotiate” with Democrats for this photo op are:

Eric Kantor R-Virginia
Hal Rogers (R-Kentucky)
Tom Graves (R-Georgia)
Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-New Jersey
Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin)
Ander Crenshaw (R-Florida)
Dave Camp (R-Michigan)
John Carter (R-Texas)

Five out of eight of these white men in the photo are Republicans from Southern states. Every one of these Republican House of Representatives is staunchly against a woman’s right to choose; they all voted against any federal health care that included abortion. Seven out of eight of these white men voted YES to build a fence along the Mexican Border. (Eric Kantor has his eye on a Latino future vote and is more moderate on immigration.) You can track all these congressional voting records on the website: On the Issues. What’s most disturbing is that The Christian Coalition gives 100 percent to all of these men for their voting records, except Rodney Frelinghuysen, who only gets 90 percent.

Ever since the 1964 Voting Rights Act—so recently gutted by the Supreme Court—the South has turned red with rage, rebellion, and religion. It is still fighting a Civil War that was long ago ended by the rest of the country. When I was a high school student in the South, we were required to study Virginia history. Our textbook was a tome with 85% of it devoted to every Civil War battle—from the Confederate point of view. History (His-story) weighed down the textbook; there was only a short epilogue about Virginia’s future. As kids, we played Rebel and Yankee in our snowball and acorn fights. Of course, Yankees were the villains. Our Southern Baptist churches did not, until the 1970s, allow women to vote. Many of our schools were segregated until the 1960s. The Southern Baptist Convention, which dominates the Southern States, has been taken over, like the House Republicans, by a far Religious Right, fundamentalist fringe that has shoved moderates aside like so many sinners.

Here’s another telling image: A New York Times story this week shows a map of those states where the poor and uninsured will suffer the most, even with the Affordable Care Act. This map looks like a Red State bloodbath for the poor. These 26 Republican-controlled states have rejected Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act. All of the Deep South, except Arkansas, has opted out of coverage, even as the Affordable Care Act goes into effect. “The disproportionate impact on poor blacks introduces the prickly issue of race into the already politically charged atmosphere around the health care law,” the article concludes. “Race was rarely, if ever, mentioned in the state-level debates about the Medicaid expansion. But the issue courses just below the surface, civil rights leaders say, pointing to the pattern of exclusion.”

The faces of the white, privileged, male ruling class sitting at the empty negotiating table clearly reflect that racial discrimination. In 2013, they belong by themselves, like a narrow-minded clan. These House Republicans are driven by one obsessive and shameful prejudice: to dismantle our black president’s administration; and to destroy a black man who was democratically elected to lead and to live in their WHITE House—twice. They are racist, sexist, and even though they claim to be Christians, they don’t follow Christ’s simple charitable message, embodied and enacted into law in The Affordable Care Act—to care for those “Because if you have done it to the least of these, my brothers, ye have done it unto me.”

This group of solid white male Congressmen holding our government hostage to their minority rule does not realize how isolated, and yet entitled, they appear to a multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-racial country. They don’t know how unrepresentative they are as U.S. Representatives. These white men don’t realize that they just look like a clan of patriarchs who should be playing poker in their private clubs instead of rolling up their shirt sleeves and working for this big, complicated, and diverse country of ours.

This photo of white men sitting at an empty table should be seen as a “Last Supper” montage. Like in my Virginia history textbook, there will be a very short epilogue for the future of such racists in Congress. Face it, boys: You are now the minority.

Brenda Peterson is the author of 17 books, including the recent memoir, I Want to Be Left Behind, selected as a "Top Ten Best Non-Fiction Books of the Year" by The Christian Science Monitor. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Utne Reader, Seattle Times, and Oprah magazine. www.BrendaPetersonBooks.com