I wonder how this analogy might play out for a country that is more homogeneous, such as Japan, China, etc. I know there’s cultural discrimination, caste systems and so forth, but is there a race problem there?
American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
101–110 of 888 posts
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#102Class is not supposed to be much of anything in America. Success is everything.
Success is mostly class. US has a below average social mobility by international standards. https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/1-5%20generations.png
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#103Quoted post unavailable.
> Wealthy black people are worse off than poor white people. Citation desperately needed.
There are some data regarding worse outcomes for children (especially boys) of wealthy black families, compared to poorer white families.
For example, they are more likely to go to jail. [1] I believe there may be similar data regarding income/wealth outcomes as well, but the best I could find quickly relates to middle class black families, not wealthy ones. [2]
Of course, this doesn't mean the families are worse off overall, but it does tend to indicate that there are some things working against black families, even middle- and upper-class ones.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/poor-...
2: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/how-bla...
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
furthermore they focused on race specifically because dividing Americans on class never failed repeatedly.
It's because class in America has always been fluid, with people going from poor to rich or middle class, and from rich to poor, based on their life decisions, and seizing opportunities. Perhaps the current events have strangled these opportunities for enough people so class can now be used to divide the population against itself?
An alternative explanation of decreasing class mobility is simply that an extended period of relatively high class mobility has left most people presorted into the class they belong in.
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#105It’s not ‘society’ that’s focused on race, it’s advantage-seeking politicians and journalists who live in a bubble that are.
Race virtually never comes up in daily life for the rest of us…
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#106Racism was literally invented so the working class would fight one another instead of rising up against the elites. Look up Bacon's Rebellion in 1676.
I highly doubt racism was invented.
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#107The political parties use race because it divides people. They don't use class because they don't want what happened to the French Aristocracy to happen to them; they'd rather have the proletariat fight amongst themselves than to target the "real problem."
In the US rich black people, hispanics, and asians are just like rich white people...but with different decor.
Actually I prefer rich white people, because they do care about the aesthetics of the public arena. Public service etc isn't just lip service for many of them. The whole of Western Europe and the wealthy enclaves (and high-end suburbs) of America are a testament to that aesthetic. That ideal, as shown by Currier & Ives and Rockwell, are the world as it should be.
In Asia and Africa the rich are literally walled in, probably because they're always aware of the threat of violence towards them.
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#108LMAO at these journalists pretending they're so surprised to find this. As if they had no hand in creating this environment... and as if this wasn't the whole point to begin with. The upper class owns journalism and this state of affairs was very much the goal.
The goal of whom? Please don't vaguely hand wave about the .1%. Who specifically with means has had this goal? Because without any kind of evidence or idea of who is doing it, it just sounds like a conspiracy theory. I ask because whenever I see instances of the ultra rich trying to control the narrative, it always comes off as obvious and ham fisted. The obvious rebuttal is "well you don't see when they succeed", bu…
The rich and powerful, who are able to make it about race and not about money and power.
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#109LMAO at these journalists pretending they're so surprised to find this. As if they had no hand in creating this environment... and as if this wasn't the whole point to begin with. The upper class owns journalism and this state of affairs was very much the goal.
Quoted post unavailable.
Is there any evidence that there was some sort of orchestrated effort to have a sudden change in rhetoric?
Or are these graphs just reflecting the rise of the social justice movement, which the news would obviously report on?
Basically this doesn't really tell us anything about cause and effect.
Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class
#110Part of the American dream is that the feeling that there is no rigid social class. Everyone is a millionaire down on their luck. You only need to work harder or be more clever—ideally both.
To some extent, it is true. Realistically, however, it is rare to move more than one or two income brackets from where your parents were when they were your age.
Race in America, however, is fraught. The history of racism is recent, overt, and systemic. It is impossible to deny the history of racism unless you are an idiot. The question is what, if anything, can be done about it that actually improves things. The answer is probably very little. Affirmative action is problematic and has some negative side effects, but it has probably been a net positive for society. It will also probably be struck down as it is now negatively and unfairly impacting another minority group.