This...
...Is an excellent piece on racism, esp. the casual racism amongst white liberal types.The writer makes some really good points--bounce-up-and-down-pointing-at-the-screen-and-going-YES-THIS! points--and makes them in accessible, relatively jargon-free language, yet. (Wow, who knew it was possible to write about racism and social justice from a
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I think there possibly is a US/UK divide wrt attitudes to class, but not as much of one as I always used to hope. Americans in the poverty trap seem to have a far worse time of it than UK folks, mostly because of the healthcare issue. It is possible to become royally fucked up by poverty in the US a lot faster and in new and special ways simply because of the whole no-NHS issue. It's terrifying. (I have nightmares about American friends getting hurt or sick or needing abortions, and wake up wanting to cry.)
There's something very odd going on with class in the US, which I don't spend enough time over there to grok properly. Um. There are definately white poor people in the US (a lot of the heathen & pagan folks I interact with are on/near the poverty line). But you sort of wouldn't know it to hear not-poor white people talk. I don't know why, it seems so odd.
Partly I guess "my" Americans tend to hail from groups afflicted with the non-voluntary downward mobility that Ballasexistenz wrote about*--they haven't downshifted, they're just sick/disabled/trans/queer/have mental health needs, and can't upshift no matter what--which groups are, of course, invisible for the most part.
But there's also some weird stuff going on whereby poor people just vanish anyway; they exist only as a sort of negative space, as reasons for not wanting to take the Greyhound or shop at Walmart. The bad clothes and the bad teeth and the bad skin are brought up for laughs, then it all just goes poof. Blargh. Sadness/rage.
*http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=584
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Yeah, totally - I just realized when I said 'Americans' up there I meant 'middle-class white Americans'! I don't think that classism doesn't exist in America, or that class and race are synonymous in the US, but... class seems to be less obsessively represented/talked about in the US liberal mainstream than it is in the UK? It's a whole set of strange translations, which sometimes work and sometimes... don't, and now my brane has gone to sleep and I can't figure out what I mean anyway, so I'm going to stop.
(Though I am quietly beaming to myself at being called awesome by someone who IS IN FACT hirself awesome. Hee.)
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It's not just the healthcare issue. It's the fact our entire social service system is a giant pieced together patchwork of services that may or may not actually come together to form a quilt.
(Not to mention how much variation there is by state. That's a whole other issue.)
There are definitely white poor people in the US (a lot of the heathen & pagan folks I interact with are on/near the poverty line). But you sort of wouldn't know it to hear not-poor white people talk. I don't know why, it seems so odd.
I think at least some of this is visibility. Poor whites are often rural/small town, poor minorities are in cities and sometimes highly concentrated in particular neighborhoods.
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