Race and Class

The discourse after Katrina on how the response to the flooding of New Orleans indicate racism and neglect of blacks gives me a sad case of deja vu all over again.  Deja vu because it contains some truth, but also deja vu because it repeats a common distortion in our discourse of race and poverty.

Because right-wing political correctness has put discussions of class out of bounds, and the left has swallowed it hook, line and sinker. We use race as a proxy for class.  That is statements such as "this policy is unfair to blacks and other minorities" are used instead of "this policy is unfair to the working class and poor".  For brevity in the rest of this diary I will use "black" as a substitute for "backs and other minorities".

Several pernicious effects come from this craven bucking under the to right's definition.

First, built into the statement "this policy is unfair to blacks" are the implicit assumptions that all blacks are poor and all poor are black.  This immediate pollutes our dialog on social safety net issues because for whites it makes poor people "them", rather than us.

The most pernicious effect is the message it delivers to poor whites.  When they hear the "unfair to blacks" mantra, their reaction is "Hey what about us -- don't we count or do you only pay attention to the ......"  You can fill in the blank word.  I grew up in a poor white neighborhood and all to often the blank begins with "n", but even if you use the "b" or "aa" words, it is a bad message.  The poor whites then look at the corporate cronyism of the right, the fixation on race of the left, and conclude that neither party gives a damn about them. So they vote on cultural issues.

The poor whites of Jefferson Parish, a suburb of New Orleans, were also left to sink or swim.  We have to include them in our dialog.  Forget the right-wing PC, use the "class" word.