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folk have problems with the american class system. for some, the way to deal with this is to pretend the class system isn't there; the alternative, which american conservatives trafficked in for many years, is to simultaneously pretend there are no structural features that shape the class order in order to enable a fantasy world in which one's socio-economic position is a function of one's gumption or of some other inward characteristic--it ends up as some fucked up calvinist thing where one's chosen-ness is reflected in one's socio-economic position. more money=more virtue; less=less. there are several functions to this--the self-evident one is that this viewpoint erases social factors in producing and reproducing class and along with that erases any political meaning to it. if there's no political meaning, then there are no political solutions.
i've found it ironic for a long time that this view of class had currency amongst more conservative folk at the same time as the economic ideology that was of a piece with it was exacerbating class divisions and undermining the socio-economic status of working people. it's like there was some solace to be had in impotence.
american capitalism is a brutal form of a brutal system. most of the arguments concerning the way in which race and class have intertwined in the states outlined above seem to me hopelessly naive.
1. the claim that the impact of poverty within significant segments of the african-american community can be coherently addressed with bromides about "standard of living" as if all that mattered was income level takes an absurd, narrow, pseudo-empirical aspect and confuses it with the whole. you want a better measure, look at mortality rates. look at incarceration rates. conservatives have "dealt with" the intertwining of race and class in particular as it has impacted on segments of the african-american community by radically expanding the percentage of that community that's in prison. that's a social program conservative style. conservatives have "dealt with" this relation by presiding over a shocking mortality rate amongst african-american men in particular in poorer urban areas that makes of poverty as it interacts with racism in the states as bad or worse than anyplace on earth. depends what you look at as a measure i suppose. what's clear is that more conservative folk who tend to have difficulty thinking in terms of structure use this same truncated ėmpiricism" to see only what they want to see in terms of social measures.
2. traditionally the people who have opposed addressing the consequences of class are those who benefit from the existing arrangement--and in the states the most obvious manifestation of it is spatial segregation--and the most obvious correlate of that is disparities--and often quite appalling disparities--in the quality of education--which makes of spatial segregation a direct and extremely efficient motor for the reproduction of class. have a look sometimes at the way in which school desegregation played out in the 1970s. there's a good book about the process in boston called common ground--what you had basically is a petit bourgeois contingent which opposed it vocally and on grounds that ran very close to racism--then you had the silent opposition of the middle class, which simply sent their kids of private schools. attention came down on the people from, say, charlestown and southie---but the actions of the more affluent were every bit as political. and the main battle that was lost over this question of desegregation had to do with defining the areas that were to be effected by it---in the end, what happened is that class boundaries were left entirely as they were, and kids were shuffled from one shitty school to another--while out there on white island, everything remained as it had been.
so don't talk to me about "suburban idealists"---the idea isn't even worth spitting on.
3. racism has long been a tool that has been used to shortcircuit attempts to address problems of class. different people have at different times carried shit for the dominant order in this way. now the most vocal are the conservatives who are attracted to that position on populist grounds---but the bigger politics of class condenses around questions like "property values" and "good schools" and "safe neighborhoods"---and that is the more odious kind of politics because the folk who play these games dont have to see what they're doing as political at all.
what's being talked about here really is a project to change the way class works in the united states. the way class works is often barbaric, but folk who like to feel good about america blah blah blah tend not to look real hard at this sort of problem because looking leads to thinking about history and thinking about history leads to thinking about choices and thinking about choices leads to thinking about alternatives...and then you may start thinking that something is deeply, structurally fucked up about this glorious land, and seeing that makes it a little harder to participate in the endless circle-jerk of feeling good about america blah blah blah.
and this thread so far is an interesting little mircocosm--it's hard for questions of class to get traction because theres a segment of the population that would prefer to think these aren't really questions, or that they're an entirely different type of question than they are.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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