Catch up and catch on!
Parts I and III of this series is on my blog.
Hypothesis for the Open Dialogue On Race Part V: Classism has/will replace Racism as the dominant social issue in America.
"There isn't, and never really was, a "middle class". The “middle class” is the fictional socio-economic "group" created by sociologists for purposes of quantifying certain findings in studies that nobody really cares about or rarely, if ever, uses. The “middle class” is nothing more than poor people living on credit." --------from my "Two Cents" post......
In the 1983 movie “Trading Places”, The well-healed Duke brothers, who own a commodities exchange, are engaged in the classic nature v nurture debate.
Mortimer Duke believes that a well-bred individual will be able to conquer whatever challenges are presented to him, while an ill-bred one will fail even if he is given many advantages over others. Randolph Duke, on the other hand, thinks that the former will degenerate if stripped of his position, but the latter will become a changed man if given the proper chance. To settle the dispute, the Dukes decide to ruin a successful man’s life, allow a poor man to take his place, and observe the results. They wager their “usual amount” (one dollar) on the outcome.
Written as a comedy, the prophetic results portrayed in the film don’t seem quite as funny when you realize that today’s papers are full of the results of what happens to otherwise law-abiding people when they are thrown out of work and into poverty literally overnight. (The fact that the poor man in the film is also black serves to heighten the contrast. Racism is an underlying element, but not the focus of the plot.)
Conservatives do not deny that the poor commit more crimes than the rich. But instead of assuming that poverty causes crime, conservatives, like Mortimer Duke in the film, usually assume that poverty and crime have a common cause, namely the deficient character or misguided values of the poor. Sleeping outside or in a vehicle, soliciting employment, suffering in public from a mental illness are criminal offenses in the United States.
Whites are discovering in growing numbers what most black people have known all along. They are learning that it is a crime to be poor in America. They are finding out that the poorer you become, the more criminal you are assumed to be. They are learning that if you have no job and are so poor that you have no place to live, and you live on the pavement or sleep in a car or in a park, you have committed a crime.
In a country where nearly everyone violates some laws, and many people knowingly run afoul of the law without ever being considered, or considering themselves, criminals, it's against the law to sleep on the streets or in a park.
People who once exaggerated tax-deductible expenses, lied to customs officials, bet on card games and sports events, disregarded jury notices, drove while intoxicated, and hired illegal aliens to work for substandard wages are discovering that they are subject to being profiled as criminals simply because they are out of work.
When the government fails to be responsible to its citizens and ignores the social dynamics of poverty, people will seek alternate, often illicit, means to eke out an existence. As joblessness rises more and more middle class whites will encounter police harassment, abuse, and incarceration simply for no longer being middle class. Jails are full, but that hasn’t reduced criminal activity because the real criminals aren't in jail.
Social repression has increased over the past several decades as evidenced in the willingness to spend more on building prisons than repairing or building schools, and increasing law enforcement budgets while cutting education and social service budgets. During the same time, harsher legal sanctions have been developed and passed by legislators who are apparently blind to the social implications of poverty as an impetus to committing crime.
The current economic crisis and the continuing trend toward the criminalization of poverty will combine to turn America’s middle class into a sort of criminal class and correction facilities will become shelters for the jobless. In many jurisdictions, joblessness will do that to people whose only offense is being broke.
The question is, if this becomes commonplace, will the negative stereotypes and images and code words and symbols based on class, as determined by income, and net worth replace, and supercede, those predicated on the color of one's skin? Will classism be used as a means to deflect, deter, and avoid addressing the issue of racism in America?
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Comments
This is a very interesting post. The American judicial and prison system are part and parcel of a system that enforces the status quo of racial and class distinction. It is very disturbing.
But I wonder if class is quite the same as socio-economic group. My father, the child of immigrants who became the first in his family to get a college education, always said that America was a classless society. I suppose he meant that America was not like The Old Country, where a person was born at one level and no amount of education, hard work, or even success could move them to another level. And he was right about that-- many Americans have done what my father did and used education, hard work, the GI Bill etc, to carve a different place for themselves in U.S. society. (See Sonia Sotomayor.)
But in my experience class is more than socio-economic level. It's based on a complicated language of manners, behaviors, your accent and educational level. Skin color plays a role but is not the only factor. It's something we all can "read" in other people -- and it does give us advantages that others don't have. "Trading Places" (if I remember it correctly) illustrates this, as Eddie Murphy learns how to behave in a world he was not born into.
(Note to self: Put "Trading Places" in my Netflix queue.)
I have friends (mostly white, but also black and Asian etc) who were born to "middle-class" parents who educated and socialized their children. As adults, they chose artistic, socially-conscious or individualistic careers that paid poorly. Other friends have recently lost jobs, or lost big on investments and find themselves in straightened circumstances.
Despite modest means, those people are seen as middle class and enjoy many benefits. They are more likely to be trusted, do better on interviews and in networking, they can speak more effectively for themselves and their children, they can move effectively in different situations. Their kids are more likely to be "gifted" or do well on standardized tests.
Our society is tilted in their (OUR) direction.
I'd be very interested to hear other people's viewpoints on this.
Now that Americans have been put into direct competition with slave labor throughout the world by so called "free trade." many people are now becoming downwardly mobile. There is no way they could not while the current trade system directly creates this.
At the same time millions of poor immigrants have been flooding into the country just when good jobs for the uneducated have been disappearing. RECIPE FOR DISASTER.
Altho... maybe I'm completely wrong, since having an Ivy League degree does not help a Black (or Asian Indian, or Vietnamese, etc.) person feel comfortable walking into a diner in Selma and sitting at the counter (no offense to the non-judgmental folks in Selma!).
And maybe that's what this is all about; the seemingly insignificant, day-to-day parts of life and how problematic they can be when faced with prejudice. Hmm. Let me think on this some more.
Where I live, there is minor amount of it, but for the most part, where you're born is where you'll die. It has less to do with manners, behavior or intelligence and more about the inroads and connections your family name and social associations make for you.
And there is a large unspoken social stigma surrounding women marrying men from a lower socio-economic strata.
Sure class mobility is "possible," but so is the documented phenomenon of fish falling from the sky. However, you don't see me going outside with a net every time thunder rolls.
- I'm not sure I can buy the argument that there is no such thing as "middle class". There was definitely a time in Europe and in the early American colonies where a new middle class was recognized, not poor, but not allowed all the privileges of the rich either. Those from Europe wrote about the huge numbers of the "middling sort" in America and were astonished by it. I think this is important, because it became the small incentive for whites who found themselves with slight advantages to never side with minorities who had less. It gave middle class whites people to look down on, and more importantly, to feel threatened by. It wasn't the rich who threatened to take what they had, but instead the hungry poor. Not much has changed, I believe.
- I appreciate your views on how we've criminalized poverty. It seems obsurd that the homeless can't loiter and can be driven out of town be the sheriff and told to keep walking. However, I would add one idea: That it is not a crime to be poor, but rather to be poor and ask for help. It's not a crime to be a victim of the system, but rather to say that you are.
- It always amazed me how much more forgiving we are of the wealthy that take advantage of the system (when they don't need to) than we are of the poor who do the same (when they're doing it to survive). People ask the homeless man what he's going to do with the quarter he asks for, but we care little about how Exxon spends our thousands. When the rich manipulate the system, they're seen as shrewd players of the game. When the poor do it, they're seen as lazy drains on society.
- I think we're fooling ourselves if we think that class division will supersede race. Don't forget, this country is about to go through a huge demographich shift. In the next 20 or so years, Hispanics, alone, will be the majority. That's never happened peacefully. I predict that the system will begin to help the poor/disenfranchised at a greater level while more whites find themselves without work and homes. BUT...as soon as the economy is back on its feet, and the majority of whites regain their middle class status, the Republicans will regain power and rope in the help for the lower class. Pessimistic, I know, but a historical reality.
- Finally, I think the problem with prisons becoming wharehouses is indicative of a much larger societal problem. We pay NO ATTENTION to prevention. Whether you're talking about the environment, healthcare, schools, poverty, and prisons it's always the same. We tackle problems once they exist, because prevention takes too much work OR thought. Take No Child Left Behind: Every year the federal government underfunds schools and poor, inner city communities. Now, when their schools aren't up to a random standard, the federal government punishes by taking away their funding. The irrational nature of this should be so blantantly obvious, but it isn't to most people. Because we're so surrounded by this way of thinking, that most don't even question it.
WOW...if you actually read all of this...thanks. What a conversation. I don't usually go on like this unless I've been extremely motivated to think about the topic...thanks everyone.
In theory anybody can master the superficial skills of the middle or upper class. Shaw's Pygmalion is a fictional example of how ready we are to accept anybody who can put on a show of "being like us." I say this because we who have internet access and who choose to participate in a discussion on Open Salon are the middle class or maybe even upper class. For the most part, we don't know how to behave like the poverty class. We don't know how to mimic their speech patterns, their dress code, or understand their culture.
I'll go further. We felt comfortable voting for Obama because he's culturally middle-class. He has a middle class accent. He has middle class values. He has an upper middle class education. He has bought into the stated cultural values of the middle class. Get a good education. Give service to your community and country. Marry for love and love your family as it grows. Because he lives this dream better than most of us do, the color of his skin does not matter.
Racism is at its core about class. And class is about power. What hoops do you have to jump through to get the power? And is there a way for people who hold different values (based on class) to work together? Is it necessary for a person to mimic if not live the middle class lifestyle in order for that person to have power in our society?
The Higgins character in Pygmalion was a bully. At this point in history, the middle class is in the role of Higgins. Is that the only way power can be shared?
1. He's not an "angry black". He wants to get past the issue of race. To many middle class whites, that's acceptable, while focusing on continued inequality isn't. He came very close to getting labeled an "angry black" when associated with Rev. Wright. It was like many whites suddenly thought they'd been fooled.
2. More middle class whites were losing their homes and jobs. Therefore, they'd vote any color into office, as long as that person was promising them help. History shows that when the dominant group is in trouble, they demand a helping hand. When the dominant group is doing well, they tell the poor to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Great conversation.
Phaedo: In a growing number of jurisdictions, sleeping outside or in a vehicle, soliciting employment, suffering in public from a mental illness are criminal offenses.
There is much to be said for the assertion made by Noahvose:
"However, I would add one idea: That it is not a crime to be poor, but rather to be poor and ask for help. It's not a crime to be a victim of the system, but rather to say that you are."
Geezerchick's question seems to go to the heart of the matter: "And is there a way for people who hold different values (based on class) to work together?"
Here or some additional aspects of this issue to consider.
How can we reconclie a homogeneous value system with a heterogeneous society?
While it is true that not all black people are poor and not all white people are "middle class", the system, social structure, and culture have conditioned white people to think of themselves as, and therefor presume themselves to be, "better" than any person or people of color. Hence, there are white people in this country who are writhing in agony over the fact that a black man is now President, with the power to appoint cabinet officials and Supreme Court Justices etc...
While the idea of a "middle class" can be historically traced back through medeival Europe, the concept has undergone several incarnations. Historically, the "middle class" was exactly that: the group or class of people who were in between the aristocratic or noble class and the serfs or peasantry. These were tradesmen, craftsmen, artisans, artists, lawyers, bankers and the like who developed a substantive socio-economic strata that was not based purely on the condition or accident of birth but on a learned or acqiured personal skill, inventiveness, industry, and ambition. (Most of the signators of the Declaration of Independence might be seen as members of this group. However, even they saw ownership of property as the basis for participatory citizenship.)
Our economic system has begun to devolve into a rather simple construct of haves and have-nots. There seems to be little or no real or substantive middle is was the case in times past. The middle, if there is one, seems to be based on the capacity to obtain, manipulte and manage credit. There is nothing quantifiable or truly tangible in that quality, as there may have been in times past, a tangible or quantifiable aspect to what being "middle-class" meant.
If having a college degree or certain vocabulary or accent is all that is needed to gain entry into the "middle class" then why has it been so difficult for people of color with the "proper credentials" to be assimilated without first being required to compromise themselves as individuals?
Are there many with a college degree who wouldn't consider
"trading places" with Bill Gates, who does not have a college degree?
There are no truly simple or simplied answers to many of these questions which is why we should continue to discuss and debate and learn from one another. In the end dcvdickens' response may be seen as the most valid of all in that if all of this causes one to stop and THINK: "And maybe that's what this is all about; the seemingly insignificant, day-to-day parts of life and how problematic they can be when faced with prejudice. Hmm. Let me think on this some more." We'll all be a little better off than we would be otherwise.
That, for me, is the real value of this exercise and that is why I believe it should and must continue...
The myth of the "American Dream" has made poor conservative Whites buy into these regressive policies that favor the rich. After all, they don't want to pay high taxes when they become rich--which they likely will bever become. Immigrant groups have been conditioned to believe, whether directly or by osmosis, that being Black is the one thing you do not want to be in this country if you want to be successful.
Class always has been important, but race has been the wedge used to squelch class solidarity. Poor White Southerners fought to preserve a system of slavery that rendered their labor unnecessary, but they figured at least they weren't Black.
In New York City, Irish and Blacks competed for the bottom rung of the social ladder. They seemed like natural allies. Poor Irish who resented the Civil War draft lynched Blacks in Manhattan, and burned down a Black orphanage. They saw Blacks as the cause of their problems, not potential allies. Unions kept workers of color out of the trades for years, rather than joining forces with these workers to strengthen their bargaining capacity vis-a-vis capital.
A word on criminalization of poverty: As Scrooge would ask: "Are there no workhouses? No debtors' prisons?" Prisons are the nation's primary tool of social control. When there is an insufficient number of jobs available--and under capitalism, there never are enough jobs, a reality which is merely magnified during a recession or depression--something must be done to deal with the "surplus population" that Dickens so aptly described. I am inclined to believe that there is a kid in prison somewhere, serving more time for petty theft or possession of a small amount of drugs, than Madoff will ever serve for stealing billions of dollars and ruining lives.
You asked:
"... will the negative stereotypes and images and code words and symbols based on class, as determined by income, and net worth replace, and supercede, those predicated on the color of one's skin? Will classism be used as a means to deflect, deter, and avoid addressing the issue of racism in America?"
I would say probably not. There is already, I think, an assumption, particularly among conservatives (and in the mainstream media, which hangs on their every word,) that people with more money (higher social class) are morally and in every other way superior to people with less money. Black people can join the upper classes -- P. Diddy can move to the Hamptons -- but if he starts too much of a trend, trust and believe his white neighbors are going to sell, pack and move.
What has allowed lower middle class whites to get out of the moral prison of not being rich, like their icons (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, etc. keep telling them they could do any minute if the socialists and race peddlers would stop holding them back) is the notion -- dating all the way back to the slave days, when the vast majority of white people weren't well off enough to own even a single slave -- that at least you're morally superior to "them." Black and brown people have always been "them," (and to be fair, in other cultures, color and class are intertwined, too, which is why you'll rarely find a light skinned "untouchable" in India or a dark skinned Miss Jamaica.) That isn't going to change anytime soon, no matter how bad the economy gets. (If you're a black person who's ever gotten into a cab in New York, or had a clerk in a corner store refuse to put money into your hand in Miami, even when you were in a suit and they were in an apron, or if you've seen any of those nasty text message jokes about Barack and Michelle Obama, you get the idea.) Class and race are bound together in an "opposite marriage" that will last til death do us part.
Just ask Sonia Sotomayor. She is, by all measures, upper class, having gotten there the way Limbaugh and Beck say you're supposed to: up from hard scrabble beginnings, through your own merit. Yet, while Ronald Reagan was a saint for supposedly once living on ketchup, her critics on the right insist that there must be some catch to Sotomayor's "up from the projects" story. She HAS to be an affirmative action baby, and her accomplishments must have been stolen from some poor, victimized white guy. In fact, if you believe the increasingly delusional right, and the media who keeps giving them air time, Judge Sonia and Barack Obama are part of a secret plot to strip all white men of everything they own and hand the U.S. over to Mexico (she's connected to "La Raza," you know...) In order for a black or brown person to truly up his class status and become acceptable to this crowd, he has to walk as far away from overt ethnicity as possible (think the actual Barack Obama vs. the right wing caricature,) or even turn hostile towards it (ie Clarence Thomas.)
So will class be the new attack line, replacing race? I doubt it. From upper class, Harvard educated Obama being an "Arab" who can't talk without a teleprompter, to upper class Sonia Sotomayor being a "brown lady racist," I say get ready for a new era of the victimized white guy, across all social classes, pouring in from the right. But the vast middle, too, will I think, continue to conflate class and race more often than not, as when you hear someone speak or see the way they wear their hair and make a judgment about their class, intellect, etc., black, brown or white.
For a great article on the subject, check out this post on Tapped:
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=05&year=2009&base_name=the_white_men_who_think_theyre
BTW, that's not to say that there are no racist black or brown people, or that lower economic classes are all racists, just that the dominant media discussion frames things in terms of a conflated race/class mix.
Have a great day, all.
I thought I'd add something that happened today in my class. We're actually studying "Hate in America" a historical and contemporary look at perpetrators, victims, and spreaders of hate and racism. I placed five columns on the board (Hispanic, African American, Native American, Whites, Asian American). Then, the class called out sterotypes of each group as I recorded them. Two things about this exercise:
1. In the end, the kids realize by looking at all the stereotypes of the different groups together that many of them are similar for Hispanics, African Americans, and Natives. Then, we discuss how what they have recognized are characteristics of poverty, not race (i.e. drug/alcohol abuse, anger, larger families, neglectful fathers, poor education, higher crime rates, gangs, etc...) They realize that all of those same characteristics exist among poor whites. Therefore, just as this discussion suggests, we look at class and confuse it with race (not always consciously, but always conveniently)
2. When I asked the kids to list the stereotypes of whites, they agreed that whites go to work in suits and carry briefcases. However, when I asked them if any of their parents went to work in suits and briefcases, none of them did. This is very telling. Even though that isn't their reality, it is still how they are taught to look at their potential.
Any thoughts?
"Even though that isn't their reality, it is still how they are taught to look at their potential."
It apears that the kids were vocallizing their denial or nonacceptance of their own discovery: That whites are as likely to manifest indicators of poverty as any other group....But since whites are conditioned in such a ways as to not associate themselves with poverty, the kids couldn't or wouldn't identify with their own reality.....I believe that this denial has as much to do with expectations as it has to do with potential.
Whites are conditioned to believe that they are 'entitled' to participate in the American Dream and therefor expect to be able to do so, whether they possess the 'potential' to compete and earn the right to participate in the process of acquiring the accoutrements of the 'Dream' or not.
Expectations based on a sense of or belief in "entitlement" gives most whites a feeling of superiority and security in the notion that the 'system' is designed, and will operate, for their benefit even when it means that 'others' must suffer the consequences of being marginalized as a consequence.
There is a great deal more that may be said here but I believe I've made my point......Thanks, Noahvose, for that insightful classroom anectdote.