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Is Classism the New Racism?


Society & Culture  (tags: )

Janese
- 1155 days ago - suntimes.com
Walter Benn Michaels blames the country's poverty on rich white folks and diversity programs that ignore class. Michaels is an intriguing iconoclast
Comments

cynthia m. (35)
Monday December 11, 2006, 6:47 pm
It's always been about who has (and keeps) the money. When they're really rolling, the elite are good are convincing lower class whites that all their problems are caused by blacks and Hispanics. As long as those three groups continue to fight among themselves they're not a bother.

I had a professor who said anyone can go to college now and everyone's equal. Of course, this is a lie in so many ways. It does make a diiference too, if you are paying your own bills and if, after class, you have to go to one of your minimum wage jobs or you're free to go to your tennis date.
 

David Daniels (89)
Monday December 11, 2006, 7:43 pm
It seems while class is spoken of widely in England,in America,Class Divisions are treated like a dirty little secret..No one wants to talk about it. I believe racism is often used to hide classism in America
 

Lynette A. (7)
Tuesday December 12, 2006, 3:37 pm
oh yes people don't bother to talk about it nearly as much here. and when they do it's usally those who have money complaining about how little they have.
 

Janese J. (170)
Tuesday December 12, 2006, 7:23 pm
I agree with you too, David. Unfortunately racism is quite strong in our country, and it does seem to be hidden in classism.
 

Randall Vincent (9)
Wednesday December 13, 2006, 7:47 am
Racism and the Class System are very real things. More often than not, the two ideologies go hand in hand.

I have been deleted from many other sites for bringing real social and scientific evidence into the open and for discussing resolutions to this problem. Is anyone ready for the TRUTH?
 

Sandra W. (42)
Wednesday December 13, 2006, 8:08 pm
excepting the truth Randall is just too scary for most people and as they say ignorance is bliss.if they don't know about it ,it dosen't happen.
 

hippie dude (61)
Sunday January 7, 2007, 11:48 pm
"the reality is that 46 percent of those living in poverty -- almost 17 million people -- are white"
& there it is... i've been looking for that stat for a long time
i had heard it in my social problems class many years ago
but i think it says a lot about classism
or in purely sociological terms, social stratification...

the article also states...
"Perhaps the eeriest study cited by Michaels is one that concludes that the single best predictor of someone's net worth is not their race or their current salary, but their parents' income. It's time we ask ourselves if we have been deluded into believing there is such a concept as the "American Dream," or are we simply reverting back to a feudal caste system?"
duh... when has it ever been anything else?
the deck has always been stacked against the poor
& the concentration of wealth just keeps getting more & more lopsided...
"In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth, and the top 1% controlled 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth

in that richest top 1% you have most of the people that control
government, corporations, education, media, & so on....
these ultra elites & their families before them
have been in charge for a long time...
of course most, if not all, of them are white
& thru history they've used racism as a very effective tool
to accumulate more & more wealth...
regardless, i think the elites are more concerned with wealth & power than color
 
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