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what are you talking about?
that the united states is a class system is self-evident. that wealth opens advantages that lack of weatlh forecloses is self-evident. that the children ot the wealthy are likely to have a higher-quality education than are the children of the less wealthy simply by virtue of the position they're born into is self-evident. that education is shapes not only one's sense of socio-economic and cultural options but also the sense of what you deserve in this life---also self-evident. these are indicators of large-scale, structural inequalities that operate at the core of the american cultural system. what this conversation shifted to for the most part, before the conservative inability to think in structural terms started being performed *again* and so send the conversation hurtling into the ridiculous void that's formed around shit like the bakke decision, was that race and class are intertwined in the united states and that to address questions of racism and its history at this point pitches you toward dealing with questions of class. THAT is a problem, given the reactionary self-serving nature of amurican politics.
class stratification shows itself most obviously in the aggregate...conservatives like to pretend that there are only exceptions. conservative thinking cant address history, can't address structure, and so has nothing to say about class stratification.
so you, scout, ask the wrong question
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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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