Class, Not Race 2-24-2013

[ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 7/7/2025] 

 One thing I see in prison are the divisions along class. For those of you who drank too long the Kool-Aid of America as a classless society need to go to the library and read The Great Gatsby, or anything by Edith Wharton (besides Ethan Frone). Or tour Newport News, Rhode Island.

Money divides us. I almost wrote education, but money gets us an education. Is there a connection between declining wages and declining academic achievements?

Gore Vidal argued in many of his essays we have an oligarchical government. Walter Karp wrote about this oligarchical government in Indispensable Enemies. I think their warning may now be proven right.

Whites and Blacks and all of this country's other ethnicities ought to pay attention to these words of Michael Eric Dyson from Can You Hear Me Now?

If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive, he would talk about the economic inequality and fundamental social injustice that is ethnically based and racially informed - but also class based, because poor white people themselves have been duped by politicians who don't have their best interests at heart.

Chapter 9: Justice and Suffering

We Americans conflate class and race because we are so simple-minded. We can no longer afford simple-minded solutions to our problems or the fear derived from bad consciences.

sch 

[7/7/2025:

One thing missing from prison is information. No Google. I would have liked to see what others thought about the books I noted above. Now, you can do that by following the links provided in the text. I feel the ideas here remain valid. sch.]