First diary. I'm not a great writer, but it really bothers me that to read liberal media, you would assume that:
A: No white people live in poverty.
B: White people are never harassed, beaten, or shot by police.
C: Being white is automatically associated with opportunity, education, and generally being priveliged.
Follow along, because I believe we missed something.
First, yes, African Americans are being shot a ridiculous rates, but if we look at income/class instead of race, a new pattern emerges and we learn that the only color that matters is green. Police tend to brutalize poor people more than anyone else because they can get away with it.
Second, poverty affects everyone. A small percentage of Americans do well enough to live without assistance and a smaller percentage make obscene amounts of money on the backs of everyone else.
Lastly, privelige. I just moved into the first middle class neighborhood I've ever lived in. I grew up in project apartments, my mother worked so much we barely saw her, and we had food stamps and medical assistance. Everyone else I knew was in the same position, and most of them are white. Only now am I beginning to understand privelige is, and it only came with money.
Privelige is no sirens. The only police I see are the ones that live here. It's not being followed by store security. It means writing a check at the grocery store without being put through the third degree. It means my kids can play outside, safely.
I'm not whining.I'm lucky. But if we are ever to see economic justice and real progress, the lens through which we view our issues must change. Racism is a problem, but only so much as it is used to turn us against each other. The real problem is that Americans are being exploited for slave labor and cannon fodder to make a small group of people obscenely rich, and those same people are using our politicians to pass laws that benefit them, and those laws are usually written by corporate lawyers. They use law enforcement to keep all of us in line.
The biggest con in history has been to make us think that our current national and economic disasters are the fault of average citizens. How could we create these problems when our representatives don't represent us? We weren't consulted, and when we speak, we are either ignored, or recognized and they sneak whatever they want in on another bill. For real change, we need unity. That doesn't come by splitting ourselves into groups. It comes from a unified people.
Thanks for listening to me rant.