Jim Webb and Shirley Sherrod are sending you a message - not color - CLASS

Don't you get it?


http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/03/28/webb/index.html

own.

:sarcasm:

home last summer that it's all about class! Bull$hit!

You're being snookered again!

ETA: His name is Prof. Henry Louis Gates.

Traditionally, poverty has affected people of color worse than whites. The racism comes in for a case like Gates's in that the dumb white cops were in denial about the fact that Blacks can be upper class. What we really need is for poor people of all races to get together. That's some political power there.

Yes he was called there because the caller may have had problems but that arrest was pure chip on the shoulder assholeness.

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me today, I'm also seeing a hell of a lot of racism that I haven't seen in about 40 years.

we are ten years from whites becoming a minority in some areas. That is damn scary. Why you are seeing it.

in taking advantage of that fact.

before it finally, hopefully, dies a slow death.

and that is the truth. It will be about class, and for the first time this country might actually develop, not counting on it, class consciousness.

It will not happen until all the shinnies are suppressed and the real issue comes to the fore.

As is, as much as race is still a very much so fresh scab... that is picked on every so often... it will be about where you were born... right side of tracks, or wrong... in two generations max.

I was just listening to Tim Wise over the weekend and he speaks very directly to this question in his last book.


(I should know better than to try to post an opinion after a long day. lol)

QUICK. And part of the reason... this is quickly becoming a multicultural, multicultural country... where race is still important, but class will be even more so.

That said, while it goes there...that old scab will continue to be picked, and will continue to bleed.

Stating that the issues regarding color are unimportant in this day and age is silently letting racism go on without anyone doing anything about it.

Class is a problem, yes. But, it must not be used to overshadow issues of race in this country. That's what statements such as the OP's above demonstrate--especially when it uses a person of color as a part of that modus operandi.

So no, it's the clueless people who cling on to being colorblind while hiding their own issues regarding race who don't get it. They are the first ones who use class as a way to get out of talking about race.

Race (and ethnicity and religion) has always been used in the US to divide people of lower social/economic class against one another. Divide and rule. I would argue that you're letting the issue of race overshadow the issues of class. Is racism a problem? Undeniably, and the US has a long and ugly history of serious racial issues that are a long way yet from being resolved. But at the same time endemic and multigenerational poverty, lack of educational opportunity, crime, high levels of alcoholism and drug addiction, and all the other social problems that can be associated with class are not specifically racial in nature; race to some extent only serves to pit members of an exploited underclass against one another.

separated.

We would have to see some measure of the number of cases of discrimination caused by race and the number of cases of discrimination caused by class; one set would have to be bigger than the other (Class if OP is to be credited - no, wait a minute - if OP is to be credited, Senator Webb would have to say there are NO instances of racial discrimination outside of class discrimination) AND whatever the size of the two sets, there would have to be not even the slightest degree of overlap.

Unlike some people (several in fact) have been.

It appears that the stats in Senator Webb's speech clearly, CLEARLY say "RACE".

which is why it looks so off the cuff and with no context.

I posted the Salon article about Jim Webb's interest in prison reform to show clearly that he was not someone who was unaware of racial inequalities and in fact is one person doing more than almost anyone else to eliminate and correct it's most pervasive example in our society - the unjust imprisonment of huge numbers of black men.

When I was making the reference to class, not race, I was attempting to say (albeit poorly and briefly) that class disparities run across racial lines and as Shirley Sherrod so meaningfully testified, that understanding is what can bring a true unification of purpose regardless of our various races.

I thought in his own damn the torpedos way, Jim Webb was attempting to re-inforce Shirley Sherrod's message.




While I could be wrong in my interpretation of Webb's column, I believe that his prison reform work provides a strong defense against charges of racism.

divide us.

I feel we need to get people to stop and say, if this is in fact what they mean:
- There is no discrimination (class? or otherwise?) without race.
- or -
- Economic discrimination always trumps racial discrimination.

Are people REALLY saying you have two sets here that do not intersect at all? Or are they saying that there is only one set that determines EVERYTHING else?

That would be absurd, but in today's rhetorical environment it's quite possible.

I just fear that this discussion is going to devolve the way that the Pro-Choice & so-called "Pro-Life" debate did, false dichotomies that paralyzed the discourse into camp followers who pretty much feathered their own careers at the expense of solutions for women and children.

in this country. Unrec.

Edited because I misspelled a word.

there is ALSO a distinct relationship between past economic status and future economic opportunities.

By definition, a Right IS a Right BECAUSE it applies universally to all persons, regardless of any other trait. Something that applies more here and less there is not a Right it is a privilege.

If freedom from discrimination is a Right, then it applies to ALL, even the Poor, and if it doesn't apply to ALL, then it is a PRIVILEGE and no matter how much a person, or persons were in fact discriminated against, for whatever reason, in the past/present/future, if they claim somekind of exclusive "Right" to be free from that discrimination, more so than any other person, that's not a Right it IS a Privilege and I, for one, do not support Privilege.

CLASS is the dividing line.

Hopefully, Ms. Sherrod will be in a position with a megaphone to get tis message across and be heard.

Here is my journal entry about this:
"Shirley Sherrod’s True Revelation"
Posted by bobbolink in General Discussion
Thu Jul 22nd 2010, 08:57 PM
Shirley Sherrod’s True Revelation
by Valerie Elverton Dixon 07-22-2010

The controversy over the injustice done to Shirley Sherrod, the African-American woman whose comments on race were taken out of context, misreported, and who was fired from her job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not capture the essence of her personal journey. While we focus on the media and the craven haste of her dismissal, her testimony fades into the background. Shirley Sherrod’s testimony is that she came to realize that the major problem in the United States is not race, but class.

~~snip~~

One day a white farmer came to her office for help. She says he came with an attitude of superiority that was off-putting. She decided to put him in touch with a white lawyer she thought could help him. When she learned that the white lawyer refused to do all he could to help the man save his farm, she called everyone she knew who could help the man. In the end, she was successful and the man was able to keep his farm.

The episode was a revelation to her. She realized that: “It’s about the poor vs. those who have. It opened my eyes.” In her speech she goes on to recall the history of race in America. There was once a time when both blacks and whites worked as indentured servants. The moment slavery for life was instituted only for blacks, the racial divide was established and has haunted this country from that day to this. Shirley Sherrod’s revelation is that this racial divide serves the elite. The rich get richer, and the rest fight over the scraps and race.

At the end of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, he was in the midst of organizing a Poor People’s March on Washington. He had come to recognize that poor people of every race were suffering the same injustices and living economically marginal lives. It is time to begin again where King ended and refuse to let race divide us as we work for economic justice in the United States and in the world.


Dr. Valerie Elverton Dixon is an independent scholar who publishes lectures and essays at JustPeaceTheory.com. She received her PhD in religion and society from Temple University and taught Christian ethics at United Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School.
http://blog.sojo.net/2010/07/22/shirley-sherrods-true-revelation/