Provocative title, I know. When my friend Elian asked me to address whether racism and classism were separate constructs, or inextricably bound, it just kind of blurted out of my mouth. He loved the line. He's by his own definition, brown, gay and extremely non-pc. He said it was too accurate to not re-use. He laughed his ass off.
I hope you read past it - this is definitely an anti-racism screed.
"Racism is promoted to keep the class caste system in place," I postulated, "It is entirely necessary to keep a set of gate-keepers to that caste system committed to maintaining it. White Uncle Tom's if you will. House-slaves that feel they are somehow better."
Elian is arguing his dissertation right now, in Social Work, with a focus on mental health issues among young people of color as effected by a societal alienation towards them. Or something like that. There's a statistician factor involved too. I'm not even smart enough to describe what he does.
He laughed, and said, "How come you can throw out in a sentence, what I've just tried to discern out of 3 books on the subject and make it make more sense than they do?" Well, duh. When describing something observationally basic (or at least obvious to me) I just use working class terminology.... words people "get" on a visceral level. Sure there is a cringe factor in my words - but its nothing compared to the cringe factor of reality. People of color get fucked over by white keepers of the guard to protect the Owner Class. Its a caste system borne of Capitalism, fed by Capitalism, and so self-reinforcing they barely have to lift a hand to keep it going.
In my view it, goes pretty much like this:
Owner Class: People with so much money & influence, it is truly unfathomable to us
Investment Class: Princes of the Kingdom, who are allowed to oversee sectors of Society, with the return that they will use some of those assets for the "trade" industry that allows the Owners to collect interest and dividends from their gambling.
Middle Class: These are, essentially, the White Uncle Tom's. They get better living quarters, and more security. They pretty much can exist unmolested, and constantly reinforce that they are better, and deserve better than the classes below them.
Low Income: These are the last line of defense for the status quo - the Field Overseers; and as such the most dangerous. They do not have enough, and resent the hell out of it. These are the ones who must constantly be told to blame "others" for their condition. There is no better way to keep them from rising up against the Owners than fostering clannish hatred.
The Poor: These are the people that have replaced serfs and slaves as economic human fodder for the machine. They are painted as less than human, dirty, stupid, unworthy of hiring for a "real job," but good enough to clean your toilets, or toil in the fields.
Racial division has become the path of least resistance for this system. Unlike the scapegoating of the Jews in Nazi Germany who had to wear Stars of David stitched into their clothing, skin color is an easily identifiable trait that can be used to define the castes and make people enforce them without confusion. They teach FEAR of those with darker skin tones - that fear is essential to maintaining the loathing that it takes to subjugate another human being. People have to feel threatened to be cruel.
None of this, I presume, is news to any Person of Color; none of these words are any consolation at all to those who have to suffer this discrimination.
I asked Elian, "Were this country entirely white, do you think there would be no target group?"
We talked of "Spicks, Micks, WOPS and Polacks.. the dirty, drunken Irishmen; there is always an untouchable class in Capitalism. The ones they won't hire for the keeper-jobs, but will let work the smelt pot kilns and mines, the dirty and dangerous jobs. It is necessary for it to work. There has to be such low-paid labor, and no one to object to it for the profiteers to profit. Its not big math, but it is math.
Sigh.
Clannishness is a human trait. Fear of "other" is a tribal thing. A stranger approaches your tiny self-sustaining village, and the guardians go on alert. "Friend or foe?" I get that. I get that in a finite world, we have always had to compete for resources. Hunting grounds, the winter store of grain, our water supply. But, too, we now know where the sun goes at night. We now know that cooperation works much better than competition in a finite World.
Of course, right now? We are addressing the fact that "Wall Street" is THE problem. It is - therein lies that Owner Class. But not solely, the Owner Class operates as "Captains of Industry" outside of Wall Street as well. The only way to address that is to Occupy both.
The thing about Extraction Capitalism, is very simply, that it EXTRACTS. If you are pumping water ($$) up from a finite pool into an ivory water tower above it at a rate of 10 gallons a minute, and only throwing down a teaspoon an hour, eventually the pool runs dry. That's what has happened to our economy. Nothing more, nothing less.
So now? The Low and Middle Classes are beginning to feel what the poor classes have. And suddenly they give a fuck. Not necessarily about the poor who have always suffered that, but themselves at least. We can only hope they are beginning to empathize somewhat. Even the Investment Class has begun to feel the pangs, with the hedge fund explosions. Retirements gone. Investments disappeared overnight. They are in no existential danger, but they sure are not happy. What the Investment Class would like nothing better than is to reboot the system with some regulations to keep their investments safe again.
But is that really what the REST of us want?
You can regulate until you are blue in the face, and it may help the Middle Class, even the Lower Classes do marginally better, but the system itself depends on slave-wages to keep the Upper two in excess. They will continue to suffer. Period. End of Story. Basic Math. Thats why Empires always Fall.
"There will always be the poor," is the biggest lie ever told.
The poor exist because the Keepers, the Uncle Toms and Overseers not only allow it, but reinforce keeping them in positions of no power, no upward mobility, no access to the things which they have been told they alone are entitled. In the case of the United States - this division is almost exactly along the lines of RACE.
If you think we scared them in the 60's and 70's by uniting against the War, and that the Educational System that was once accessible to almost everyone allowed us to see past that childish fear and get to know one another and act as one scared them? OWS is making them shit a proverbial brick. Workers are uniting beyond the false-barriers of race, class, age or sex. If they don't flat out attack us violently? They will make concessions that slightly empower the Keeper Classes once again - enough regulation and kick backs, maybe a CCC type program for infrastructure that will placate the masses of the Middle and Lower Classes. The poor? Essentially the People of Color (and I use that term because it is not just Blacks, but Latino/a's and Native Americans who suffer this fate) will be again thrown under the bus.
I don't want to reboot an Empire that by its nature is doomed not only to fail again, but fails an entire segment of my fellow human beings.
I don't want to just make it kinder, gentler abuse for me and my "sector." (I suffer chronic whiteness)
I want a better system. I want equity for all. I want a Socialist Revolution, based on the fact we are no longer primitive clans fearing everyone, everything and wondering where the sun goes at night. You know, I want us to grow the fuck up.
Do I think Racism could exist outside of Capitalism? Maybe. It sure wouldn't flourish like it does now, with the brainwashing of the Owner Class throwing fertilizer on it. It sure would be hard to "blame" any demographic when we were all fed. It sure would be hard to fear the guy sitting in class next to us in a University somewhere. It sure would be hard to look down on someone like me, who cleans or does yard work for a living were we paid equally for our labors. Sure, a few knuckle draggers might still be Racist - but overall? I think Racism is and always was an excuse used to keep us divided and keep a segment of society as cheap labor. If there wasn't race, they would invent another reason to keep a segment of us as untouchables and ostracized.
Nothing will be right in the World until we all truly stand together, support everyone one of us until no one suffers a moment longer. We have to kill racism and classism.
I may be no rocket scientist?
But I'm NEVER gonna be a White Uncle Tom and allow the Caste System to stand while I draw breath.
That, I swear upon with my life.
Be the Change.
Be the Change.
Believe.