Let’s denigrate the working class, shall we?
I’ve got a problem with the way the MSM is caterwauling about the racism of white working class voters. Yes, racism among the white working class exists, hell yes it exists–having grown up in a blue-collar household in a county flush with poverty and crystal meth, I can speak to that.
But I have a major problem with the way “working class” or even “small town” are being used as euphemisms for racist, uneducated, backward, ignorant. Focusing on the supposed small-mindedness of the working class lets the white educated middle/owning classes off the hook, as if they have moved beyond such trivial matters of race and can pat themselves on their polo shirt-clad backs for their progressive, post-(fill-in-the-blink) attitudes. Insert fart noise.
The fact is that the middle and owning classes are chock full of racists, despite the privilege of a university education in which (generally) overtly racist language is not tolerated or at least not smiled upon. My theory is that the upper echelons have benefited enormously from perpetuating divisions based on racism between the white working class/white poor and people of color of any socioeconomic class (but particularly the working class/poor as well). This is something that was noted back in the 1920s and 1930s, when FDR’s plan for federal relief and jobs creation–despite heavy lobbying from anti-racist activists–failed to include non-discrimination regulations around hiring and firing people of color. In a couple of years, those jobs dried up anyway, while white and Black people alike suffered tremendously; the poor and working class carrying, as usual, the brunt of the failed economic policies perpetuated by the capitalist ruling classes. Yet we did not come together then, although our class struggles were very similar. The ruling classes have done an excellent job since then of maintaining that division, playing to white fear about ghettos and crime and so-called welfare queens, convincing the white working class to prop up their appalling greed even as their jobs are sent elsewhere and their communities decay into abject poverty and addiction. Convincing us–HA!–that Ivy League-educated silver-spoon chomping sons of privilege like George W. Bush is “one of us”, even though our reality is closer to Barack Obama’s childhood in an apartment with a single mother.
I am not saying that class status should trump or override other intersecting identities such as race, gender, and ability. Nor am I implying that all people of color are working class or poor. Nor am I discounting the skin color privilege inherent to all white people, regardless of their class status. I just think it’s time for a major reorganization of our allyship, speaking to myself as much as anyone else: rather than align ourselves with middle-class so-called “progressives”, those who tout their “post-racist” or “post-feminist” credentials and get tingly when they think of Barack Obama, we should instead focus our attention and efforts to coalition-building between members of the working class of all colors, “small-town” and “urban” alike. My strong conviction is that we will find it’s not so difficult after all, that common interests unite the groups more than divide them, and that a pretty radical revolution could take place.
Related reading: I didn’t know there was a Center for Working Class Studies. Awesome!
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September 16th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Fantastic.
And yeah, I think the subtle racism of middle-class whites is more dangerous than the overt stuff.
We can deal with overt racism the same way it’s delivered: head-on, blunt and in-your-face.
But the subtle stuff contributes to the growing racist hegemony that exists here… it’s really the same thing that makes some women think that electing Palin will actually matter, when in actuality she’s being used as a figure-head to support the GOP Boys’ Club. Her election could do more to HURT equality between the genders than help it.
And that relates to racism… trust me. Anyway… I totally agree. Classes unite! You’re so Marxist