[Peace-discuss] [Discuss] [sf-core] Fwd: yesterday's article on massive racial inequality in wealth

[Marti Wilkinson]

You simply can't use the very small baby steps that have been accomplished
by the civil rights and other movements to pooh-pooh the very real social
constructions that class, privilege, and racism still play in society. It's
about as ignorant as suggesting that the abolition of slavery somehow
magically translated into equal treatment for free blacks. It was a
progressive step, but the racism surfaced in other ways such as in the rise
of the KKK. Now we have conservatives who are forming tea parties and
targeting organizations like ACORN. How much funding did ACORN lose as a
result of some selective editing of video and a full scale witch hunt by the
GOP?  Perhaps it's easy to ignore what some conservatives are advocating in
the form of "citizenship" tests (not unlike the old literacy tests of Jim
Crow) so people can earn the right to vote?

If you really believe that we need to give class constructions more
consideration than issues of racism then you are fooling yourself. As
Roediger and others have pointed out racism and class-ism cannot be
separated. California's proposition 209, which was an anti-affirmative
action measure, garnered a lot of support from white women. Proponents of
proposition 8 have worked hard on appealing to both Black and Hispanic
demographics. We can look at the lessons of history from when former
indentured servants were convinced that freeing blacks would threaten their
own standing in the American colonies. How about when Native Americans were
richly rewarded for returning runaway slaves to the plantations? What
policies that prevented free blacks from traveling in Native American
territory? It wasn't that many generations ago that it was illegal for a
person who had dark skin to be able to read and write, now Arizona wants to
ban ethnic studies programs.

Fast forward to today....how many black people have lost their homes due to
predatory lending practices? It's just another version of the same financial
practices from the 30's and 40's that encouraged 'white flight' and resulted
in segregated communities. How many white kids in Champaign have been issued
citations for public spitting or have gotten stopped for walking on the
street? What about the population of Blacks and Latinos in the prison
systems instead of the justice system? A white kid attending the U of I who
is caught with a bag of weed may be charged with a felony, while a black kid
on the "north end" is likely going to face felony charges. Having a female
representing this county as the States Attorney sure hasn't helped much in
that regards. The power structures in this society depend on racial
inequities in many ways in order to sustain itself.

Speaking of war, African Americans are still the most heaving targeted
demographic for military equipment. Now, if racism really wasn't as bad as
it used to be then AWARE (Anti War Anti Racism Effort) could just simply be
in AWE (Anti War Effort).

If racism really wasn't as bad as it used to be then there would be as many
African Americans, Latinos, and Women pursuing PhD's and directing the
curriculum in university environments. I've heard from people who have
taught at the U of I that the institution can be a hostile work environment
for minorities and it's no picnic to be a part of the system of higher
education there. But, since black students are now allowed to live south of
University Avenue it can be argued that racism at the U of I really isn't as
bad as it used to be.

I guess we can take these small baby steps as a sign that things really
aren't as racist or sexist as it used to be. After all, only in the United
States can we have a Phyllis Schlafly clone as a vice presidential
candidate, and Hillary Clinton (who only took her spouses name *after* he
entered politics) as a presidential candidate. On her own two feet I doubt
that Hillary would have even managed to have gotten a senate seat, or have
been considered as a potentially viable candidate for the democratic
nomination. HRC's "power" comes from her association with a powerful man,
but since sexism really isn't as bad as it used to be then I guess we can
forget that little fact.

Having been brought up during the 1970's and 1980's I certainly was taught
that the civil rights and the feminist movements gave both people of color
and women an amazing range of choices that had been previously closed to
them. Jim Crow was just one of those chapters in the history of the USA that
happened  before my father had lustful thoughts towards my mother.  I am
perhaps amongst the first generation of women who were raised to be
something other than wives and mothers. But I also have seen my fair share
of gender discrimination, and sometimes I wonder if things will be much
better for my own daughter.

I have also seen how some of my black neighbors have been treated by members
of the local police department, and I can't dismiss the death of a 15 year
old boy as being something that resulted from the 'accidental' discharge of
an officers weapon. Why is it that when the wife of surgeon brutally stabbed
her two boys, the police response did not involve the use of a SWAT team?
However, the SWAT team came out to my neighborhood and blocked off a
significant portion of the area, in response to a suicidal black man with a
gun. I live one block south of where Mr. Stewart took his life. I know
someone, who has a daughter working in law enforcement, who noted that if
Ellen Feinberg had been a black woman on the North End her ass would
probably be sitting on death row. But since things aren't as bad as they
used to be I suppose we don't have to consider these things at all.

The comfortable thing for me to do would be to sit on my laurels and look at
history and contemplate how much 'better' things are today in regards to
gender and race. Unfortunately, some semblance of critical thinking usually
gets the better of me.



On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 8:17 PM, C. G. ESTABROOK <cge at shout.net> wrote:

> If the US were "still just as racist as it was 40 years ago" BHO would
> never have been elected president; if it were just as sexist, Clinton and
> Palin would never have been serious candidates.
>
> You can't simply ignore two generations of victories by the civil rights
> and related movements.
>
> At a time when class difference in the US is as high as it’s been in the
> last hundred years, we’re being urged not to talk about what we never talk
> about (the inequalities produced by capitalism) and to talk lots more about
> what we always talk about (the inequalities produced by racism). Why?
>
> One answer, of course, is the absolutely central role race and racism have
> played in our history. But it’s not a very good answer. The growing (and
> accelerating) inequalities of the last 40 years were not caused by racism
> and the catastrophic consequences of the current crash will not be
> alleviated by anti-racism.
>
> Neoliberalism has quite brilliantly encouraged the response to more
> inequality to be a call for more diversity; neoliberalism insists that the
> only inequalities we need to do anything about are the ones produced by
> prejudice. Whose purposes does that serve?
>
>
> On 5/21/10 1:25 PM, Marti Wilkinson wrote:
>
>> /Defenders of the administration (and its filthy war) are eager to brand
>> its
>>
>> critics as racists. If they all aren't racists, then their complaints that
>> Obama is working against the popular interest and for an economic elite -
>> on
>> the war, on healthcare, on the banks, etc. - might not be able to be
>> dismissed so easily./
>>
>>
>> Where did I defend the administrations involvement in the war in my
>> previous
>> statement?  What I'm SAYING is the US is still just as racist as it was 40
>> years ago, but it surfaces in far more subtle ways. I haven't read the
>> latest
>> by Roediger, but there is a book called "The wages of whiteness: Race and
>> the
>> making of the American working class" which also addresses both race and
>> class. There is also "Whiteness: The communication of social identity"
>> edited
>> by Thomas Nakayama and Judith Martin and that is also a good resource.
>>
>> FYI: Greg Brown was developmentally disabled and one of the things that
>> does
>> not get discussed is how often the mentally and developmentally disabled
>> can
>> be harassed/mistreated by police officers.  My brother is disabled and,
>> when
>> he was younger, he was targeted by a police officer until my father
>> confronted the cop and put a stop to it. Mr. Brown could very well have
>> been
>> my brother.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 11:25 AM, C. G. ESTABROOK <cge at shout.net
>> <mailto:cge at shout.net>> wrote:
>>
>> Are you *denying* that "US society is much less racist - and much more
>> unequal - than it was 40 years ago"?
>>
>> Defenders of the administration (and its filthy war) are eager to brand
>> its
>> critics as racists. If they all aren't racists, then their complaints that
>> Obama is working against the popular interest and for an economic elite -
>> on
>> the war, on healthcare, on the banks, etc. - might not be able to be
>> dismissed so easily.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 5/21/10 10:53 AM, Marti Wilkinson wrote:
>>
>> "US society is much less racist - and much more unequal - than it was 40
>> years ago"
>>
>>
>> http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/a-critique-of-walter-benn-michaels/
>>
>>  I really think a lot of white intellectuals like Walter Benn Michaels are
>> truly out of touch with the way things are in this culture today. While we
>> do have a black president, we also have a tea party and birther movement
>> that reflects the ingrained racism that is still prevalent today. The
>> problem
>> with focusing on class differences alone is it gives white self-described
>> liberals a free pass to avoid looking at how their own whiteness (and
>> privilege), plays a role here.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 10:36 AM, C. G. ESTABROOK <cge at shout.net
>> <mailto:cge at shout.net> <mailto:cge at shout.net <mailto:cge at shout.net>>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> US society is much less racist - and much more unequal - than it was 40
>> years ago.
>>
>> In 1970 the election of a black president was unthinkable, but in that
>> year
>> the distribution of wealth (Gini index) was at its least unequal in the
>> 20th
>> century. Today it's back to where it was in the late 1920s, and the
>> concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands is not only continuing
>> but
>> accelerating.
>>
>> "...anti-racism today performs at least one of the same functions that
>> racism used to — it gives us a vision of our society as organized racially
>> instead of economically — while adding another function — it insists that
>> racism is the great enemy to be overcome. But all the anti-racism in the
>> world won't take any money away from the rich and won't give any of it to
>> the
>> poor." [Walter Benn Michaels]
>>
>>
>>
>> On 5/21/10 9:47 AM, Ricky Baldwin wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Very interesting article. Good points. It's always good for Americans to
>> see
>> this kind of discussion and realize we don't do too well when it comes to
>> this kind of basic economic "fairness," no matter how much the blowhards
>> talk about the "land of opportunity." Our system just doesn't serve most
>> people too well - but then, we know that. It's just good to have the
>> numbers.
>>
>> On the numbers, I have to take issue with the "typical" white/black family
>> stats, though - and not just to be picky with words. I think it gives a
>> false impression.
>>
>> The article doesn't say, but if what's meant is "average" (mean) then it
>> isn't "typical" at all in an economy with vast inequalities like the kind
>> described in the article. We can, and do (as the article points out), have
>> a
>> small number of extremely wealthy people and a huge number of people
>> essentially left out of that massive accumulation. What that amounts to is
>> the "average" (mean) is skewed upwards - making it look like more people
>> are
>> better off than we are.
>>
>> "Typical" here could also be median, a.k.a. the middle number if you
>> arrange
>> all the wealth from highest to lowest, but I doubt it. It seems too high
>> given the inequality the article describes. Even if so, I'd argue that if
>> the range of wealth is very wide, then the median isn't very "typical"
>> either.
>>
>> Maybe I'm missing something. I'm not 100% awake yet.
>>
>> Ricky
>>
>> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
>>
>

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