W.E.B. DuBois wrote at a time of breathtaking social change, a time not unlike our own. The black social critic, activist and writer documented how African Americans fled the bitter roots of sharecropping in the Jim Crow South only to find themselves at the margins of the bustling industrial economy of cities in the North like Philadelphia. The railroad ushered… return to article
-
subscribe to print magazine
-
email this article to a friend
-
Reader Comments (19)Page 1 of 1 pagesA good article that reminds us that there is still inherent racism in this country with respect to access to resources that can improve one’s economic standing. Learning of the antics of Verizon and SBC, the two big telecom corporations who opposed the spread of free wi-fi access, has enraged and I will now switch my cell phone service to a different provider. I praise the leaders of Philadelphia for taking a stand against segregation in access to economic resources and attempting to make internet connectivity more egalitarian.
Posted by Liberal on Aug 24, 2005 at 12:19 PM I agree with Liberal, but would substitute “class” for “race”.
I would support affirmative action if based on economic level rather than race, for instance. As OJ and Michael J have so pointedly demonstrated, more than equal justice is available to blacks. If they have money. . .
The race thing is just a red herring.
Posted by wolf on Aug 24, 2005 at 2:05 PM Wolf- in this country, class and race are essentially the same thing. You can accurately predict one’s relative economic standing just by knowing their race. There is no question that blacks, hispanics, and Native americans are the poorest groups in American society. Having a class-based affirmative action program wouldn’t really be any different than a race based one.
Posted by Liberal on Aug 24, 2005 at 4:19 PM I don’t know what the answer is to affirmative action, but I do know that if you look at it like a race, then your perspective may change. If you are told you can run in a race, but everyone else has started preparing and running way before you, what is your mindset? You are also told that they also get to start at a place closer to the finish line than you. You are also told that if you complain that your starting place is behind your opponents, and that you want to start at the same place that you are asking for special favors because you aren’t as good as your opponent. You may be a little frustrated. So you are given the chance to run in the race, but you go in knowing that you are already behind and farther from the finish line.
Affirmative action is an attempt to make up for the fact that white families have had more time to build wealth, and achieve. Generations of success breed success. Generations of blacks not allowed, blacks not hired, blacks lynched, and blacks prohibited breeds poverty, dispair, and worst of all lack of hope.
Posted by Moni on Aug 26, 2005 at 7:11 AM Moni - While race based AA would only help blacks (whether they needed it or not), class based would help everyone in need (by definition).
In your race analogy above, i suppose i do not believe the initial starting conditions of the race is “fair”. The poorest “racers” may not have shoes, for instance. AA should provide shoes to everyone in need - not just to blacks (especially if they already have spiffy shoes) but to anyone in actual **need**. . .
Posted by wolf on Aug 26, 2005 at 9:26 AM Wolf - You make a very interesting point. As can be seen with the Supreme Court cases involving race based affirmative action in higher education admissions decisions of the last couple of years, race can no longer be a reason for giving a boost to minorities. However, a socio-economic based AA policy, aimed at giving the poor a little aid, whether they be white or black, is the fairest way to give help to those that need it.
With continuously rising health care costs, costs of living, and wages that are subpar, it is becoming increasingly difficult for low-income individuals/families to improve their plight. It is sad to see that poverty hits certain minority groups the hardest, but it does affect whites as well as blacks, asians as well as latinos. What’s even sadder is the Bush administration’s tax cuts to big corporations, none of the benefits of which have ‘trickled down’ to the people that need it.
Posted by lostlib on Aug 26, 2005 at 2:52 PM oh, goody. MORE identity politics. The rich folks sure must like you. You are helping them a lot by helping to keep the political focus on race and other identity politics groups.
Anything to keep the focus off of class and money.
Posted by cryofan on Aug 27, 2005 at 8:14 PM The focus should remain on race to deal with the unique problems of each ethnicity before trying to deal with the whole. America began as a colony of indentured whites, but as it achieved nationhood it became a race-based economy primarily supported by plantation labor and molasses distillation which led to 100% taxation of black labor. As a consequence the only resolution to over 200 years of this inequity must be rewriting the constitution, redifining citizenship, reparations to slaves and indentured servants, nationalize all utilities and the oil industry, free health care, free education, guaranteed employment, amnesty for drug offenders (because the CIA with executive blessings induced America’s drug epidemic)guaranteed housing, a redistribution of the wealth and a shift of foreign policy from imperialist designs on the Middle East to improve third world countries quality of life.
Posted by docjohnson@email on Aug 28, 2005 at 6:35 PM docjohnson- And just how do we provide reparations to slaves and indentured servants, since they are all dead? The rest of your post is basically a call for socialism, something that in practice usually is an abject failure.
The article is rather absurd. This has nothing to do with race, it is economics. Most of us don’t have “access” to private jet ownership either.
Posted by chopper on Aug 28, 2005 at 8:49 PM The (p)resident has said, pardon the paraphrase:
‘build the pie higher.’
The answer is to free up resources the rich are hoarding (more so every day). Of course, resources become skimpy when the greedheads maneuver to take vast quantities, to say nothing about the rich. When the MICox (a distinctive, I hope, coinage on the unfamiliar phrase(!) Military Industrial Complex) soaks up more than 50% of all the taxes, we know it’s crumbs for the rest of us. The answer to discrimination, whether based on race or poverty is to GIVE THEM MORE MONEY. Put the money in their hands. It is that simple.
Liberal is right, though. The specifics of race discrimination are, well, specific. The AA (Affirmative Action) laws were supposed to give resources to discriminated groups rather than outright money grants (boiling down now), and it is the essence of racism that white people resent it. One cannot ‘see’ discrimination unless one is a victim (generally speaking, of course, with people like Liberal as enlightened exceptions).
Were it not for the MICox soaking up everything in sight, we would see how rich this country really is, and would demand a fairer shake.
Hmmm, I’ve said enough, if not well.
Posted by lbyland on Aug 29, 2005 at 3:14 AM Ibyland- “crumbs for the of us”? You seem to think wealth and resources are just something laying about on the ground, and human effort and enterprise have nothing to do with it. Reading something such as Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics” would clear up a lot of your misconceptions.
Posted by chopper on Aug 29, 2005 at 7:14 PM Whites nor Blacks should fear open discussion about topics of race. The author of this article prefaced it by describing hypethically what a famous black man and Harvard prof.’s opinion would be regarding the digital divide. Since OJ’s acquital however, white egocentrism has been reluctant to keep an open mind about any black opinion, and at the same time their paranoid miopia marched us right into this depleted uranium quadmire in Iraq. The LAPD and CIA both know that Nicole and Golman’s killers were bisexual, sadistical serial killers who were intimately involved with both as well as the mossad. The Nicole Brown’s phone records prove OJ’s innocence but were hidden from the public and juries. See www.ojcoverup.com. Once again radical problems require radical and honest efforts to resolve. America defined its race problem in article one section two of the US Constitution. The Preamble of the same document is a socialist mainfesto. Until the interlopers show some humility, lock up the women and sleep with one eye open.
Posted by docjohnson@email on Aug 29, 2005 at 7:32 PM docjohnson- Do you have any real evidence to support the paranoid fantasy in your last post?
Posted by chopper on Aug 29, 2005 at 7:47 PM Chopper if it sustains your ego to hysterically critize issues that most Americans have trouble dealing with, by all means soothe your soul. When you awaken however see www.suppressed-evidence.com.
Posted by docjohnson@email on Aug 29, 2005 at 7:54 PM docjohnson- I briefly visited both ojcoverup.com and suppressed-evidence. ojcoverup.com seemed to be one of many paranoid websites that one can find on the internet. Suppressed-evidence seemed to deal mostly with refuting claims against evolution. Not sure what that has to do with your somewhat bizarre fantasy about OJ. Regardless, I don’t reject paranoid fantasies to sustain my ego. I reject them because they have no basis in reality. The extreme right used to have the market cornered on improbable conspiracy theories (trust me, I grew up around them, & I say that as one who is a conservative) but I’ve noticed in the last decade or so the left has become increasingly prone to paranoia itself. Interestingly, I know people who manage to believe the rightwing and leftwing conspiracy theories simultaneously. If you also start posting about black UN helicopters or a secret government plot to confiscate all our guns then I’ll know you’ve really gone off the deep end. And there are always the ones that aren’t easily quantifiable as either left nor right, such as the alien bodies and crashed spaceship that the Air Force supposedly has stashed at area 51. And yes, I’ve met people who fervently believe those too.
Posted by chopper on Aug 29, 2005 at 8:48 PM Chopper, you responses although quite predictable, still deserve some clarification. I suggest you refer someone you trust to the two web sites I recommended and maybe the will shift your paradigm. End of discussion.
Posted by docjohnson@email on Aug 29, 2005 at 8:57 PM Whatever doc. You are entirely predictable yourself. Best wishes.
Posted by chopper on Aug 29, 2005 at 9:19 PM I think both race and class are important variables...in terms of social policy, I think socio-economic status should be given more weight as a determining factor, but in terms of grassroots activism and the like, I think that attention must be paid to both variables and the overlap between the two. Look at the Women’s Movement, for instance. The mainstream feminist groups were made by and for middle to upper-class white, relatively well-educated, heterosexual females. The image still engrained on the public consciousness is that of Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan giving talks about gender inequality. These feminists did important work, but their narrow focus on the interests of women in their class effectively excluded other women--"those women"--from their midst. It took the work of lesbian feminists, queer theorists, and all around intellectual firebrands like bell hooks to make the women’s movement and movement for *all* women (and others oppressed by the gender system/patriarchy). Its really a question of getting the “whole picture” and including as many people as possible. The view of a city from a Penthouse is decidedly different than the view one would get of the same city from a duplex or a mobile home or a prison cell, but they all equally important and valid...they contribute to one another. For affirmative action...I think social class should probably be the deciding factor. I’m from the South, and based on what I’ve seen, class trumps race in practice. A well-educated african american may not get quite as much esteem from her peers as her white, male counterpart, but she sure gets a whole lot more respect and “rewards” (prestige, power, wealth) than the blonde-haired, blue-eyed “white trash” that runs the factories, drives the buses, etc. (Interesting note: “poor white trash” is, I believe, one of the few remaining slurs that remains acceptable, even among “liberals”.) Being poor isn’t a crime, but we sure do punish the poor as if it were.
Posted by theresabetterway on Sep 1, 2005 at 1:19 PM theresabetterway-to be blunt you sound patronizing and confusing. The problems of race and class are not indistiguishable nor is one less important than the other. It’s like cooking a souffle, all parts are perfected first and then brought together for the final entree. Movements fail primarily because one subgroup thinks its issues are more important than the other. We all fight on different fronts with the same focus. Affirmative action has always been more symbol that substance, and has more than not benefitted white women more than any other group. For this country to truly prosper as a united nation and be respected world wide as a leader in human rights and democracy it must start by correcting the imbalance and the inequities of its past among its own citizens and in particular African-Americans because historically we have been the most disenfranchaised.
Posted by docjohnson@email on Sep 1, 2005 at 9:22 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
register a new account »Posting Security
Also by Roberto Lovato
- The Whiteness of Wi-Fi
- Big Liberty is Watching
A century after Orwell’s birth, reality overtakes his classic.
Popular Discussions
- The 9/11 Faith Movement
Many Americans believe 9/11 was a conspiracy by the U.S. government
1968 posts since Jul 11 06 - What’s the 411 on 9/11?
891 posts since Dec 21 05 - Democrats: It’s the War
659 posts since Nov 1 05 - Was the Presidential Election Stolen?
459 posts since Jun 19 06 - A Fundamental History Lesson
The rise of National Socialism proved politics and religion don't mix
426 posts since Oct 10 05
© 2005 In These Times | Reprint Policy | Privacy Policy | Powered by Expression Engine | RSS Feeds
