Inequality, Class, and Race in the U.S.

Scott points us to this article concerning economic inequality in the United States, published by Brad Plummer. Among the more sobering statistics are the fact that, by the end of the 1990s, the wealthiest 1% in America earned 14% of the national income and owned a whopping 33% of all the wealth in the country (much of this the result of Democratic senators' deeds when they controlled Congress up until 1994).

Plummer and Scott accurately and wonderfully point out the broad implications of this, but it bears stressing, too, how race factors into this. It isn't a matter of causality - debates over whether "White senators don't care about the poor because they're largely minorities" or "White senators don't care about minorities because they're poor" - such a debate would transcend any productive analysis. What is worth examining is exactly how race and class frequently conjoin in the U.S. You can see it in any major urban center, be it the illustrations we all received in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, or the East Side in Cleveland, or the ghettos in L.A., or even the South Valley in Albuquerque. Hell, it isn't coincidence that a large number of the homeless you see in Denver or New York City or Orlando are minorities.

What is particularly distressing is our failure to connect these factors. It's not just a lack of interest or ability among our politicians. It reaches out to all of those who ignore such problems, and indicates how severe a problem racism remains throughout the U.S., North, South, West, wherever. You don't have to think like David Duke to be racist - relatively very few Americans display the type of racism on display in cinematic dreck like "Crash." But refusing to acknowledge how not helping the poor automatically condemns majorities of minority groups in urban (and rural) centers via lesser education opportunities, urban development, and other programs, is in some ways even more sinister, for it leads a majority of our country to believe there is severe racism without necessarily confronting their own attitudes towards race AND class. Not to get too pedantic here, but if we're to confront racism and inequality (economic, racial, and cultural - after all, what is the fear of Muslims writ large besides the reinforcement of cultural hierarchies with America at the top?), then its time we start confronting ourselves and our politicians over the inequalities perpetuated in the U.S.