Class and Color in America
One of my favorite college professors used to say that the greatest achievement of Southern aristocracy had been to convince raggedy-ass, one-step-up-from-sharecropper, dirt-poor folks to die for the rich folks’ right to keep slaves.
I was reminded of that tonight, watching some of the poorest white populations of Louisiana and Mississippi railing against the government. These people are still without food, water, electricity, relying on groups like Oxfam and churches and individuals with initiatives and cojones who don’t seem to have a problem driving trucks laden with supplies into areas where FEMA is worried about “stressing the infrastructure”. They seem numb, still trying to work up to rage, stunned to find out that in the larger scheme they seem to have been expendable, just like their black neighbor down the road.
Many of these same folks have spent all their lives making distinctions between “us” and “them”, and making believe that their government check was somehow different than the one handed to a disabled black man in New Orleans. You hear them all over the South, if they trust you enough: them lazy, good-for-nothing ……… breeding kids like rabbits so they can get more on their welfare.
They are not evil folk; they will often go out of their way to help one of their own, no matter what the color. Individuals are fine; there’s a stunning disconnection in poor white southern culture between the individuals they know and the imaginary hordes of “lazy, good-for nothing …….” But the Southern aristocracy then and the modern Republican party now has made it their business to keep the hordes front and center so that they never see the skull beneath the skin: that they are in basically the same social class as the blacks they look down on. Poor. Expendable. Negligible as Russian serfs. It’s only when something like Katrina happens that they are stripped of their illusions, if only for a little while.
Not that the clarity is likely to last. Look at some of the consevative websites; the demonizing of African-Americans in this crisis is already well under way. When a supposed intellectual can make a barefaced racist statement like ” African-Americans have less native judgment” and not even raise a wince among his readership, you know the full effort is under way to roll the poverty issue into the race issue and place the blame on the victim. As long as they can keep the noise machine going, poor white Americans will continue to vote their way. And after the election? Keep them occupied with horror stories about missing white girls and daydreams of lottery tickets.
Somewhere there’s someone with the fortitude and the eloquence to put this case to white Americans: there is a class war going on, and the bad guys are winning. I just hope he can be heard through the din.
September 7th, 2005 at 4:34 am
Beautiful post.
But the Southern aristocracy then and the modern Republican party now has made it their business to keep the hordes front and center so that they never see the skull beneath the skin: that they are in basically the same social class as the blacks they look down on. Poor. Expendable. Negligible as Russian serfs. It’s only when something like Katrina happens that they are stripped of their illusions, if only for a little while.
This is so true but I would say that it’s the entire ruling class of the USA that’s doing it, not just the GOP. I always thought the effort began in earnest just after the Civil War and was the hallmark of the Klan - “You’re poor and you eat dirt, but at least you’re not black. Support us and we’ll make at least that worth your while.”
I also see that message starting to fade as demographics shift and here’s where I will blame the GOP 100%: gay is the new black. They are clearly trying to split the Dems along homophobic lines. I think it will be a more effective long-term hate campaign even than racism since the demographics aren’t going to force it to change. Evil fuckers.
As long as they can keep the noise machine going, poor white Americans will continue to vote their way. And after the election? Keep them occupied with horror stories about missing white girls and daydreams of lottery tickets.
Or as we call it, The American Dream. I like your phrasing better.
Somewhere there’s someone with the fortitude and the eloquence to put this case to white Americans: there is a class war going on, and the bad guys are winning. I just hope he can be heard through the din.
The second Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tried that, he got shot. I don’t envy the next person who sticks their head out of America’s most dangerous foxhole. And the next person won’t have the support of The Church thanks to the Gay Bashing initiative the GOP has put in place.
September 7th, 2005 at 10:11 am
Emma, as there’s a class war buried just beneath the surface of every ‘ism’, your description is exactly as I recall life in the South.
I’ve observed similar sentiments elsewhere - in the North, in the Midwest, in the West - but more intermittently and in smaller doses. The white underclass throughout much of the South, many as you note descended from sharecroppers, is usually larger than the white underclass elsewhere. A few exceptions exist: West Virginia, North Dakota, and a few largely agrarian states, where the myths persist because of the cultural divide between rural and urban, instead of as an outgrowth of slavery.
For any who remain blind to the economic stakes beneath these biases, they ought to review the list of states with so-called ‘right to work’ laws. “United we stand, divided we fall” is as American a sentiment as exists, yet by tying unions to collective mindsets such as communism, the well-off have worked hard to ensure that the underclass remains divided.
And a fair number of promoters of other isms (Protestantism, Catholicism, etc.) have injected similar influences into their religious spiels, suggesting that God’s plan is to provide paradise post-death, so not to worry about the ‘now’.
Such divides may begin out of ignorance, but the interests of the wealthiest always seem to promote a widening of the chasm.
But, at times like these, I always hope to see that ‘mad-as-hell-not-gonna-take-it-anymore’ spirit, rather than the long suffering ‘at-least-we’re-alive-praise-God’ fallback position that plays perfectly to the hands of the biggest predators of all.
Thank you, Emma, for another classic bit of writing.
September 7th, 2005 at 12:22 pm
Blacks have been demonized and dehumanized by the rich for 400 years. The poor have been demonized and dehumanized in fits and starts since before the Civil War, with peaks during the Great Immigration of the late 19th century and the burgeoning of the Labor movement in the early 20th century. So far, we have always gone just so far and no further with this, eventually turning our backs on it and choosing instead to move forward toward justice.
But our choice to do so was usually motivated and energized by, as both Emma and Rob say, leaders who arose to remind us of our humanity and our American heritage. This time, it is reaching a fever pitch and yet no leaders or even potential leaders have arisen. There is a dearth of political courage and a plethora of political cowardice instead.
It may be that the time has finally come when the followers will have to be the leaders, when the people themselves will have to rise up and force their leaders to follow them. That is, after all, how democracy is usually described. A representative democracy relies on the election process, but that, too, has been co-opted by electronic voting machines controlled by a single party.
We are looking at the potential for great unrest here. Divide and conquer is the ruling class’ only hope. I live down here and I can tell you that there has been an anger building up for years. I can also say I think the number of whites who will go with the race divide when push comes to shove is a lot lower than the ruling class thinks. Yes, they’re wearing blinders at the moment, but that’s been true before. What’s also been true before is that when eventually the blinders are ripped away, they will react. It won’t be pretty and it won’t be peaceful.
Emma thinks the poor will go back to sleep again. Maybe, but it won’t last forever. The ruling class knows that. That’s one of the reasons Bush wanted to declare martial law in NO–he was half expecting an uprising. The irony here, of course, is that the ruling class always brings on rebellions by the way they try to stop them; they create the very condition they think they’re preventing.
The way Bush is accelerating that creation, I may even live to see the explosion that is, at this point, almost inevitable unless the country makes a drastic reversal very soon. You can’t imagine the level of hatred that is seething just under the surface down here until you actually experience it. It isn’t focused yet but it’s getting more cohesive every day. All it needs is the right spark and one person to cross the racial divide to make it a class war, not a race war.
I want to make it clear I’m not advocating this–yet–and the intensity of the hatred I see, hear, and feel scares me. I’m reporting, not promoting. But it’s there and denying it isn’t helpful.
September 7th, 2005 at 5:59 pm
I think the number of whites who will go with the race divide when push comes to shove is a lot lower than the ruling class thinks.
I agree. That’s why they went after gays with a vengeance. That’s how they reach across the color line - with hatred. I’m afraid that has legs. Hate always does.