you know, the big problem isn't racism, it's classism.

[Hell in a Handbasket]

think about it. it's not that whites dont like african americans- they are okay with people as long as they're 'like us' (Condi Rice, anyone?).

all these social problems are rooted in classism.

[seabeyond]

1. if only, but nah, i am living in racism.

people are saying it out loud now a days. not even an effort to hide or disguise it. i have had three people in like a week say they are racists and have the right. or bigot is what i called them, and they agreed

i do agree classism is an issue to.

shit i am just all the way to we arent accepting of a single thing that is not who we are. total intolerance of all

[Hell in a Handbasket]

2. fair enough. but on a larger scale

i suspect most of these issues are class based.

[Stuckinthebush]

3. Racism, classism, and sexism

all intersect.

No one is more important than the other. They are all very important and need to be addressed as a group.

Racism is compounded by classism, which is compounded by sexism.

Let's work on all of them.

[dflprincess]

4. Racism is a way to keep a class divided against itself

At the time of his death, Martin Luther King was planning the Poor People's March on Washington and I've always wondered if that had something to do with his murder. You get a whole bunch of people together that find out their economic circumstances make them more alike than their skin color makes them different and there's going to be a problem for the establishment.

[mitchum]

8. What you and Dr King said!

Exactly

[mistertrickster]

10. Correct, and his outspoken stance against the Vietnam War.

As long as he stuck to registering black in the South, he was okay. But when he spoke out against Vietnam, he got gunned down. Coincidence? I think not.

[NEOBuckeye]

11. The way Bush is going, we're ALL going to be very poor, very soon

In a manner of speaking, we could be reliving the late 1960s all over again within the next few years. Perhaps it could bring about a second chance to enact what Martin Luther King was going to do back then. When Bush and his elitist, aristocratic ilk manage to bring the economy crashing down, no amount of race-ism, sex-ism, or any kind of "ism" will be able to shield them, or the truth, from the people.

[tinanator]

5. its altruism, or at least those who are incapable of it

that is the dividing line. Bigotry fits better than racism sometimes.
the root issue is altruism.

[libodem]

6. Class ism is becoming a problem

remember when the pundits began to bash equal opportunity, when 'government' suddenly disassociated from protecting equal rights? When suddenly if you believed if a man was black and he had the same education, you still had to consider him qualified to compete for a job, if he was competing against a white guy.

[mitchum]

7. Racism is just the paint job covering the structure of classism

until we learn that it is all about class, we will never win

[mistertrickster]

9. YES! I've been saying this to anyone who'll listen. Money is the great

equalizer. The idea that Oprah has fewer options in her life because she's a black woman and some trailer-trash white boy is part of the "white male power structure" is absurd.

It's one of the absurdities that emerged during the 60's liberal-chic that went in for "victim identities" instead of traditional economic class interest. When wealthy, educated women told working class males that they were victimized by men, we lost practically every hard-hat in the country. When feminist academics with their cushy airconditioned offices, their six hour a week teaching "load" and their year long sabbaticals, complain that they are discriminated against because the university doesn't offer a "lesbian studies program" while the all-male construction crew outside is swinging sledgehammers in the worst kinds of weather, you have a disconnect from reality that gets reflected in the ballot box.

We split ourselves along gender, racial, and sex orientation lines instead of what really matters, economic class. It led directly to the right-wing backlash: if blacks are liberal, rednecks must be conservative; if gays are liberal, then fundamentalist Christians must be conservative; if feminists are liberal, then traditional stay-at-home moms must be conservative.

By putting "identity politics" above economic interests, we cut ourselves off from the working class and farming communities that were always the democrats' biggest strength.

We blame the conservatives for the politics of division, but look at the radical liberals in the late 60's and 70's. "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" (Gloria Steinhem) could not have been phrased better for sending white males into the arms of Ronald Reagan and his embrace of everything Joe Six pack loves.

You can't tell half the population that they suck and expect them to back you up at the ballot box. It's time to get back to what really matters--what every political thinker with any real clout clearly identified from Machivelli to Marx: it's the money.

[Djinn]

13. I get the feeling you may get trashed for some of that

but for me, what you've said is bang on. When I was at Uni (out of a class of 60 only 3 of us didn't go to VERY exclusive private schools) and some of the whinning about discrimination was hard not to laugh at - these where the most pampered and protected people in existence yet they saw NO contradictions or hypocrisy in their CONSTANT denigration of the working class as a whole.

[mattclearing]

12. MLK took this tack shortly before he died.

I bring this same point up every now and then, that race is a smokescreen to hide the true conflict in America; class.

This is why the media pilloried Al Gore for speaking of "the People vs. the powerful" in his 2000 DNC acceptance speech.

They accused him of class warfare, but it's long past time we started fighting class warfare against the Republicans, because God knows they've been fighting it against us for the past forty years.