“Race in America is more devastating than the San Andreas fault,” where tectonic plates collide, earthquakes result, and thousands are injured or killed[1].
But race is not the only scar or divide in America: there’s one that dare not speak its name – Class. Rich and poor, the wealthy and the poverty-stricken, the capitalist and the worker, those who own and those who have little or nothing to speak of. But class is un-American, a republic founded against monarchs and aristocrats and the ascriptions of status at birth. The country of the ‘common man’ where every man is king. A great deal of racism is the outer political skin of a political economy dominated by very rich White men who own America. Racism is the politics of divide and rule, long recognized by anti-racists.
Ultimately, the United States class system is racialised and gendered, a complex mix, and at times, a lethal blend that generates contradictions and conflicts on an endemic basis. In this complex structure, White men have privileges, but the very richest – regardless of colour or gender - have great power and make the big decisions and take the greatest benefits. And race proves beneficial in keeping the relatively poor and powerless – regardless of race – in eternal mutual suspicion, a quietly simmering war, while the richest reap the rewards. As Martin Luther King, jr., noted, “the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land.” And he showed that as a system it could and would, someday, be altered by determined political will.
[1] Manning Marable, “Manning Marable's "African-American Empowerment in the Face of Racism: The Political Aftermath of the Battle of Los Angeles",
VEROS, 25/8/2014, accessed on 29/8/2024, at:
https://n9.cl/hbz72
