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    Saturday Night Rant

    By David Seaton on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 1:00pm |

     The American left, which is afraid to touch "class politics" has gotten lost in issues of race and gender.


    The real problems of the United States are not about race or sex: they are about social class.

    Race and gender are issues that cloud the vision and divide disadvantaged people and keep them from seeing their common problems as... common problems. This is part of the "genius" of the American system: its talent for endlessly dividing, co-opting and distracting dissent.

    Being poor is what marks Americans, their children and grandchildren, for failure and desperate lives, not race or  gender.

    For example, American women of color like Michelle Obama or Oprah Winfrey are firmly entrenched in the upper-middle class despite being "victims" of both racism and sexism. It is to their credit that I'm sure they both see that the real victims of the American system are the poor (especially the children) of all colors and sexes. Unlike most other developed countries, in the USA it is almost impossible for the disadvantaged to escape from that condition. Adequate resources are simply not being spent on health and education.

    Today, things have been reshuffled, instead of a society where race inevitably determines status, we live in a society of sharp class divisions, a society where class, except for those with inherited wealth, is based on educational attainment and that educational attainment itself is in great part based on the parent's social class and the income that comes with it.

    Within living memory the sons and daughters of the line workers of unionized American manufacturers, who showed aptitude for study, could go to excellent state land grant universities and their brothers and sisters who didn't like school could look forward to the same decent life as their parents had enjoyed... That didn't last very long did it?

    In today's America it is very difficult for an American from a poor family of any race, no matter how intelligent he or she might be, to get a first class education or, with parents (or single parent) working at two jobs, the supportive and stable family life to be able to concentrate on their studies and thus escape from poverty. Endless discussion about whether gay couples should be allowed to adopt children or whether abortion should be legal and very little discussion about providing subsidized nurseries for the children of working mothers, as happens in most developed, western countries.

     

    This is not going to happen all by itself.

    What is needed to "change" America is a "citizens" movement, patiently built brick by brick from the ground up on the lines of Martin Luther King's civil rights movement that would put as much pressure on the politicians as the different lobbies and PACs do.

    By its very nature a "movement" cannot be left in the hands of politicians, who, as part of their function, must make concessions and compromises every day of their lives.
    David Seaton on Dagblog

    Comments

    it has always been class and caste to me; since I was a little kid.

    But classifications upon race and gender and such become the perfect tools for the oligarchy that owns the means of production. The demagogues are so well rewarded in this country for spewing out thier hate and bias. ha

    I wrote something about CREW wasting resources on an examination of 20 grand taken by Christine O'Donnell from her campaign chest over a two year period.

    I mean talk about de minimus!!!

    If the left could just improve their propaganda network. We should have had a tea party movement. The open distaste of Wall Street was at its height just two years ago. The sins were so apparent.

    But the party that was responsible for the sins of Wall Street, the party that was responsible for the fall out, the party that was responsible for the cover up leading up to the crash of 08...that party ends up reaping the benefits from the discontent it created.

    We have go to find a better propaganda campaign.


    by Richard Day on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 1:38pm

    What irritated me so about the Obama movement during the elections, and many of my readers didn't understand at the time, was that it exemplified for me the most classic maneuver of the American system's playbook: neutralizing and homogenizing any energy it fears. We have seen this happen over and over again. I call this the "Elvis joins the army" ploy. With George W. Bush the left was energized, now it seems neutered. I hope I'm wrong and misjudging him unfairly, but Obama appears to be a lightening rod used to carry off the energy of the left harmlessly into the ground.


    by David Seaton on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 3:13pm

    I suspect that the race and gender divides were largely designed to convince the majority white population that the real bad stuff was all happening to some one else.


    by Michael Maiello on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 1:44pm

    Destor:

    When you say "I suspect that the race and gender divides were largely designed to convince the majority white population that the real bad stuff was all happening to some one else...." 

    then I think you were typing so fast that you skipped a pivotal word. Because -- think about it, please -- you can't have "gender divides" and also, in the same sentence, allude to "the majority white population..." Eh?

    So that surely what you meant to write was: " I suspect that the race and gender divides were largely designed to convince the majority white MALE population that the real bad stuff was all happening to some one else...." 


    by wws on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 5:14pm

    Yup, that's what I meant.


    by Michael Maiello on Sun, 09/26/2010 - 1:06pm

    Kiss


    by wws on Sun, 09/26/2010 - 4:06pm

    This egregious expression of affection was intended for Destor.


    by wws on Sun, 09/26/2010 - 4:23pm

    With respect to race, ethnicity, country of origin, and sometimes religion, I think you're right that it's really more about class. However, differences in how societies treat women can't really be chalked up to class, can they? I'm asking this respectfully as someone who doesn't consider himself to be a student of anthropology or psychology (I know more about the latter than the former), and am basing this on the precept that women and men are born into social strata at about the same rate.


    by Atheist (not verified) on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 2:00pm

    I am not saying that race, ethnicity, country of origin etc are not important problems. They are, of course. What I am saying is that poverty and class differences are more important today. There has been so much improvement in all the questions of race and gender, but at the same time social mobility is freezing up in the USA and inequality is growing and the principal victims of this are children of all colors and creeds, which is to say the future of the country.


    by David Seaton on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 2:07pm

    I agree with you, David, that class inequities are, and have been a serious issue in American society. But I also agree with Atheist, who has a really good point -- regardless of class or ethnicity, job  for job, women still earn less than men do and still have more household/childcare responsibilities. Their healthcare costs more and they receive less social security. Forty years after the big effort, there is still not an ERA.

    NYT op-ed columnist, Gail Collins, has written a wonderful new book: American Women: 1960 to the Present which, like her columns, was composed after careful research, then rendered in her easy-going, good natured style. I urge all of you  -- male and female, to read it. You will learn something new, in every chapter, I promise. 

    I know I did. Which surprised me --  because I've read and, in some cases, met Friedan, Millet, Steinem, Faludi, Wolf et al. So I thought I was really informed about the facts to which this book refers -- after all, Collins is talking about the era in which women my age grew up, went to school, faced choices about career versus marriage, made those choices, sometimes reversed them and ended up where we are today. But apparently, there was a lot I missed that Collins covers: the role played by black woman activists in the late 50's and early 60's, as only one example.

    For some of  you -- David and Dick, for example -- this is a book about the experience of your female peers as compared to the experience of your mothers. For those of you who are younger -- Destor, Genghis et al -- it is about your mothers, aunts, older sisters. But no matter how young you are, there is probably no one blogging on Dag who has not experienced, even vicariously, much of what this book covers. 

    Please read it? And then weave your conclusions into threads like this one. OK?

     


    by wws on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 3:57pm

    Of course gender can be a component of poverty. A single parent home, with a working mother (of any race) with only a highschool diploma is surefire recipe for child poverty.


    by David Seaton on Sun, 09/26/2010 - 7:12am

    Here is an interesting link that shows that racial lines in the USA are more or less the same as the always were. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315078/Race-maps-America.html

    The question for me is class and poverty. Single parent families headed by women are where child poverty is concentrated. This is certainly not a racial question.


    by David Seaton on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 2:27pm

    David: I am perplexed; how is this a response to the comment I made? We may be in agreement but, if so, I need your help to see how.

    Combine your focus -- class -- with race and gender and what you get -- not only per class, but also per ethnicity -- is women, on their own, with children -- at the bottom of the economic pile about which we are concerned. Because women with children have more expenses and responsibilities than do men who, comparatively, either do not have children or who walk away from their responsibilities to them.

    One might think that it would be black men at the bottom. I know I did, having read all the articles, over all the years, about joblessness, and rates of incarceration, etc. But that is precisely why I ask that you read Collin's book. There are surprises contained therein and, among them, is the economic advantage gained by exercising the perogative (whether constructive or destructive) that is still asserted by men, to women, in which women did and still do collude.

    So tell me, please -- what am I missing in your message?

     


    by wws on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 5:08pm

    David,    There is a movement to push back at the upper classes in the country.  Most of it is flying under the media radar screen right now.  Younger generations don't buy into the wedge issues that motivate their parents and grandparents to vote against their best interest.  They see their elders as being selfish and not caring about the generations that will follow them. They understand that today's society is unwilling to invest in the future well being of all its people.  The average age of the viewers who watch Fox News is 65 years old.  The meidian age of viewership gets older each year.  That in itself tells me the younger generations don't like the message of their propaganda.  New leadership hasn't really gotten a foot hold yet in the political process but it will as soon people get over being mad.      


    by trkingmomoe on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 3:21pm

    Of the things that I see changed is the more class conscience that people have become as well as the addition of another class that did not really exist during the 1950s and 1960s. Those that currently make six figure salaries and live in McMansion  gated communities.  Which incedentally make up the vast majority of the extreme right/ tea part people.

    This was not the case when I grew up. You had the rich, middle class and the poor. And as far as we were concerned, it was the rich and everybody else. That is the only real distinction I remember. But you cannot remove racism from the picture. It is still here and in the south especially so.  Those attitudes really have not changed that much among the older white south.

    It is in my opinion that a mixture or race and class has a lot to do with the way politics are going.   And it's not that the these neuvo riche upper class people are against helping the poor as a group, they resent helping poor Blacks and Latinos mostly.  Since they can no longer single them out, they lump them together as "poor, lazy, etc." but it should be obvious just who they are talking about.


    by cmaukonen on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 3:24pm

    Any blog that attempts to deal with, at a minimum, race class and gender is going to invite an almost too broad approach.  I understand your point about poverty being the primary driver which as a society we need to focus. One has to look at early childhood education stats to know that the area one needs to approach if one is too approach any area is poverty.

    Yet I will, for simplicity sake, I will address gender.  There is more than just the simple acts of discrimination based on gender.  It goes to the core of the idea of how we understand who we are, as individuals, and as a nation.  Not to promote my own blog, but I would turn to the suicide of Billy Lucas who was tormented because he didn't fit into the dominant paradigm about what a male is, what masculinity is.  And the very fact that those tormented him believed they were in the right to torment him shows a prevailing paradigm of the heterosexual patriarchy is all to embedded into our collective consciousness.

    I would argue that any hope to deal with the issues of poverty has to be based on the idea that we need to undermine this paradigm.  We cannot move forward, enlightened, if we continue to ignore our overall collective understanding of the world and how we come to understand as Judith Butler would put, the bodies that matter.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 6:35pm

    One of the ways in which the public is kept from seeing common problems and acting on them is the deceptive art of distraction. Just recently...past few weeks no less...there's been a big furor over Don't Ask, Don't Tell. While it's an importanrt issue that needs to be discused, it was used to purposefully distract public attention away from where it should be focused. I'm sorry but the economy and job creation are far more important at this point in time. Unfortunately, DADT was effective at distracting public attention and thus cooled public angst at Congress's inability to address the issues above and beyond Party rhetoric. Simplistic talking points serve no purpose other than to molify public anger serve no useful purpose in debating the issue, but that's all the public is given and no choice but to accept lack luster performance with deviations and distractions thrown in to keep the public intellectually off balance and confused.


    by Beetlejuice on Sat, 09/25/2010 - 6:37pm

    It has never been more clear that the political strategy of Republicans and neoliberal Democrats is at its core a joint movement to neutralize and destroy the egalitarian and leveling impulses of the traditional left, and make sure those ideas never again play the role in American life that they once did during the postwar heyday of the New Deal and organized labor.  They would rather that we endure 10% "structural" unemployment for years rather than give an inch on undoing the Reagan revolution, redistributing wealth and approaching our economic problems in the same way FDR would have approached them.

    And it's clearer than ever why this is happening: the people who create conventional wisdom in this country are personally threatened by egalitarianism and redistribution.

    Democrats have been told the eschew and disdain class warfare, and aim at some purple state "lift all boats" magic.  But Republicans and corporate-owned Democrats fight the class war on a daily basis - and keep winning it.


    by Dan Kervick on Mon, 09/27/2010 - 3:37pm

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