Let's settle the Race OR Class question because there IS no question, OK?

[omega minimo]

"The problem with segregation across the nation is what it does is it concentrates inequality along income lines. And it is the combination of race and class that becomes the magnifier of this vulnerability.... I would say that whether it's by design or default, let's go with the default. But still the design behind the default is the fact that we have very unequal opportunities by racial lines. And it's the combination of race and class that is different from just being poor or just being black."

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/july-dec05/race_9-5.html

RESCUE EFFORTS AND RACE
September 5, 2005
Realaudio available

Gwen Ifill hosted an excellent discussion on this "question" of how the rescue efforts were affected by race.

"As we looked into the faces of the people who suffered most from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, it quickly became clear most of those on rooftops, the porches and in the shelters were black. Rap stars raged about it and it became Sunday dinner table conversation around the country.

"So did race and class play a role, implicitly or explicitly, in determining who suffered and how, or if, they were rescued?"

The guests were:
- Wade Henderson, the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
- Dawn Turner Trice, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She's just back from chronicling the story in Mississippi.
- Marta Tienda, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, where she writes about race, poverty and social policy.

They each had a unique and valuable perspective. Good discussion. I would like to quote Marta Tienda here, because she very simply and eloquently addressed the points that many at DU have tried to convey-- and yet the "debate" goes on. It seems that, at some point, progressives and Democrats might simply "get it" and get on with the work to be done.

It's a matter of fact, not opinion, IMHO. :evilgrin:


MARTA TIENDA:
When I first saw the initial photos on Tuesday of the devastation, my first reaction of the faces that were appearing was, my heavens, this has tolled disproportionately on the most vulnerable. There's no question the entire city was affected, but it was not only New Orleans, it was other places.

The fact of the matter is that the combination of race and class has brought forth -- magnified the impact of this catastrophe, because they are more vulnerable. They could not vote with their feet. They could not drive off in some Suburban car, pack up their most precious belongings and hope for the best.

They basically had their lives on the line, and an inability to respond. This is the legacy that we have left in this country with segregation persisting across... especially in some of the large cities. New Orleans happens to be one of the cities that has a disproportionate at number of African-Americans. It has not yet been affected by it and re-contoured with the new immigration, and it has persistent high levels of residential segregation.

The problem with segregation across the nation is what it does is it concentrates inequality along income lines. And it is the combination of race and class that becomes the magnifier of this vulnerability.

GWEN IFILL: What do you say to people who say that this is really all about class and race is just an incidental factor when you talk about this?

MARTA TIENDA: No, there's some allegations that this was by design a racist response. I would say that whether it's by design or default, let's go with the default. But still the design behind the default is the fact that we have very unequal opportunities by racial lines. And it's the combination of race and class that is different from just being poor or just being black.

<snip>

I think the government needs to -- this is a call to action. They should have been doing triage in terms of who are the most vulnerable and move actively along those lines. But I think this event has triggered on the backs of these poor victims, brought it into sharp relief that we have persisting segregation in this country and its consequences are pernicious.

[undergroundpanther]

1. Get the sociopathic

racist authoritarian,Must win always,bullying,manipulating,secretive, elitist fUCKS out of power..The problem is we have OUR MORAL INFERIORS running our lives and running our government.These people are INCAPABLE of being ethical,comassionate,admiting failures, being fair or honest. They see everything as a ZERO SUM game win or lose. They are sociopaths and are imoral and racuist elitist fucks unworthy of trust or anything.

[omega minimo]

3. How to get Americans to face the brutality of this administration

if they won't face the brutality in New Orleans?

[gumby]

2. Screw Gwen Ifill.

She's a major tool. Phooie!!

[omega minimo]

4. Guests were good

Lots of tools these days.

[gumby]

5. I've got such an aversion to her

that I couldn't really read all of the link.
Guess it's a personal thing.
You do know that Gwen and Condosleezyliar are big buds?

[omega minimo]

6. Yeah, I heard sumthin about that....

Gwen and Condi. Geez, talk about aversion. Not even Swamp Rat could make CR look more evil than she already does.

I valued Washington Week In Review until in the past year it has become SO scripted and bogus-- I may be slow but I catch on eventually.

[brindis_desala]

7. The problem IMO is that since capitalism is predicated upon

the exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few, profit having a de facto upward trajectory and therefore wages a downward unless some strong mitigating factor is introduced the most vulnerable in society will always be at risk to the greatest ill whether it be depression, disease, or natural disaster. The component that augmented Katrina's tragedy was that unlike the poor white, the poor black, (often the last hired and the first fired), has a much more ephemeral relationship with the society at large and therefore fewer resources, whether human, monetary or institutional upon which to call on in a crisis. Add to that America's Calvinist contempt for the poor, a legacy of racism to justify slavery and a grossly inadequate if not indifferent rescue response and you have a recipe for horrendous suffering.

[omega minimo]

8. "Ephemeral"-- that's a good word for the phenomenon

that is still puzzling me...

"The component that augmented Katrina's tragedy was that unlike the poor white, the poor black, (often the last hired and the first fired), has a much more ephemeral relationship with the society at large and therefore fewer resources, whether human, monetary or institutional upon which to call on in a crisis."

That ephemeral relationship apparently involves dehumanization. The generalized American outrage that has not occurred as of yet would have been based on the obvious fact that these were HUMAN BEINGS and FELLOW CITIZENS (not yellin at you BD) being treated this way.

Are the Katrina survivors in NO charicatures of human beings? Has the RW campaign since Reagan been successful in demonizing African Americans-- it really IS now a "crime to be poor"?

I still don't quite wanna believe that Americans at large didn't see this for what it was-- which would have allowed them to see this administration for what it is.

This is a test of our response to American citizens being treated this way. Bushco. has already tested our response to the treatment of the "liberated" Iraqis.

[brindis_desala]

14. Most Americans do see it precisely that way hence the

low poll numbers for Bush and the media's awakening outrage. What is not
so easy to gage is how the public will perceive the remedies.
Americans have a childish relationship to government. They crave their 'freedom' by which they mean self-reliant individualism (No Handouts!) and yet are quick to sacrifice the Bill of Rights if the government promises to "save" them, not from what government does well which is to prepare for pandemics, post-disasters, and provide for better communication, health and welfare but to PREEMPT nebulous and indefinable threats. Thus we fail to maintain basic infrastructures (like levees) while lavishing billions on 27 different agencies for "intelligence" gathering and surveillance that are nevertheless foiled by a handful of jihadists armed with box cutters.
Mind-boggling!

[omega minimo]

15. They want to believe in the protections without embodying the principles

:patriot:

[newswolf56]

9. The intellectual tragedy underlying the race-versus-class debate...

is an expression of two equally bitter realities: (1)-the crippling extent to which Americans have been denied (chiefly by corporate-controlled education and media) a genuine understanding of the savage truths of class struggle, especially as it takes place within the U.S. economy; (2)-the equally crippling extent to which white Americans (myself included) fail to fully comprehend the horrifically deep emotional scars inflicted literally every day by racism.

Just as those who deny class-struggle deny economic reality, so do those who deny racism deny the reality of U.S. race hatred. Indeed the implicit (and absolutely unresolved) either/or schism here is one of the reasons Marxism never succeeded in the U.S., even during the 1930s, when the Communist Party was the third largest political organization in the nation. The oligarchy was able to use the class/race controversy to obscure the general truth of class-struggle and thereby discredit Marxism among many of its natural constituents.

I do not know if there is a solution. The Marxists have included some of the most astute political thinkers in human history, and this is one dualism they have been unable to resolve -- at least to the satisfaction of racial minorities (the very persons who MUST be so satisfied for the analysis to achieve relevance).

My own belief is that we must recognize race-hatred and class-warfare as separate facets of a triad of oppression. (The third facet of this triad is sexism. Instinct therefore suggests the answer may lie partly in the feminist doctrine that the race, class and gender struggles are all subsets of the struggle against patriarchy, but the problem here is that patriarchy -- enforced by the religions of Yehveh -- unites all genders, classes and races in a paradigm wherein the ultimate struggle is merely between oppressor and oppressed. The broader implication is that all humanity can ultimately be so divided -- oppressors and oppressed -- that gender, race and class are therefore merely aspects (and tools) of a broader systemic (and systematic) oppression, its motives again obscure. Which brings us back to the relevance of Marx: not as a conclusion, but rather as a starting point on the path toward understanding.)

Nor is this theoretical: my notions of oppression are based on bitter experience.

I spent two-thirds of my boyhood and the first few years of my young adulthood in the South. I saw from afar the vicious treatment dealt blacks, and having witnessed its Southern forms (and rebelled against them via the Civil Rights Movement) I was given the conceptual tools to identify racism in its more subtle but equally wounding expressions elsewhere in America. I thus believe black anger is wholly justified -- however uncomfortable I as a honky may be with some of its expressions.

But I also experienced firsthand the bigotry Southerners routinely inflicted on any Caucasian who had the misfortune to be obviously impoverished, or (like two people I knew who were crippled by polio) even visibly disabled. This too occurs throughout the U.S., and it is class warfare per se. Blatant in the South, a nasty undertone everywhere else, it is the economic playing out of the ubermenschen/untermenschen savagery expressed in Nazism: the same ethos that abandoned the poor of New Orleans, black and white alike, to Katrina and its aftermath -- not just the notion that one's money is the sole valid measurement of one's worth, but its guilty echo in the malignant fear of "the other" all of us encounter whenever we go in shabby clothing among strangers.

Two things I am sure of: that race and class are equaly valid measures of oppression (and are therefore not mutually exclusive); and that when we do finally cobble together an analysis adequate to defining race and class accordingly, we will have taken another giant step -- perhaps the most vital step of all -- toward gathering the tools to achieve genuine democracy, whether at the ballot box or in the workplace.

(Written -- when I should have been at work on other things -- entirely as a gesture of my respect for Omega Minimo.)

Edit: two typos.

[omega minimo]

10. is no match for "the intellectual tragedy underlying" the Bush presidency

:evilgrin:

The two quotes I pulled were clear enough I thought (perhaps more resonant as spoken) to make the point that class and race permeate each other and how.

"The problem with segregation across the nation is what it does is it concentrates inequality along income lines.

"And it is the combination of race and class that becomes the magnifier of this vulnerability.... "

These read like simple statements ("edit for clarity" eh, newswolf?)-- and yet they condense the issue to a diamond point.

"I would say that whether it's by design or default, let's go with the default. But still the design behind the default is the fact that we have very unequal opportunities by racial lines. And it's the combination of race and class that is different from just being poor or just being black."

Well, duh. Yet, as spoken, in those first days when not much of anyone seemed able to LOOK THE BLACK FACES IN THE FACE AND SEE WHAT THEY WERE SEEING (pardon me) her subtle "design or default" spoke volumes.

As does your final paragraph:

"Two things I am sure of: that race and class are equaly valid measures of oppression (and are therefore not mutually exclusive); and that when we do finally cobble together an analysis adequate to defining race and class accordingly, we will have taken another giant step -- perhaps the most vital step of all -- toward gathering the tools to achieve genuine democracy, whether at the ballot box or in the workplace."

Is it too late to "gather the tools"? Was it wishful thinking to hope that America would respond to this wake up call? Is it too early to decide that America hasn't?

The performance from the WH was clearly the classic "1984" in gory Technicolor. Meanwhile, all the DUers and pundits and water cooler folk run in circles as if it MEANS something-- and Big Brother continues the broadcast of "If I say it, it's so" to the "reality-based community."

It has been our responsiblity to respond to the Big Lies as they came down the pike all these years (start the clock in your decade of choice).

Perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps those who remember Japanese internment weren't collectively OUTRAGED at the time. And those who have some deep association of blacks as eternal slaves aren't shocked at what they saw (the spinmeisters were pretty quick on the draw).

But honestly, isn't this continuous complacency-- in the face of genocide on American soil-- more "Good German" behavior?

:smoke:

(thank you newswolf56)

[newswolf56]

12. I don't think it's complacency. I think it's policy and indifference:

The government has adopted what I have repeatedly described as a policy of "genocide by neglect" or "genocide by indifference" or simply "negligent genocide" -- the common denominator that unites the debacle of New Orleans with outsourcing, downsizing, forcible wage-reduction, the looting of pensions, the methodical destruction of the social safety net, skyrocketing prices -- all of it (like the Bush presidency itself) the expression of the oligarchy's capitalist malevolence. Believing that capitalism has triumphed forever, the oligarchy now seeks to consolidate its triumph, and to restore all its characteristic savagery the Russian Revolution terrified into remission. The ultimate goals of this consolidation are maximum concentration of wealth and maximum disempowerment of the working class -- that is, everybody who is not part of the oligarchy.

The people meanwhile remain defensively indifferent. Bought off by the very bounty of American life the oligarchy is now rapidly reclaiming for itself alone, the people continue to identify with the oppressor unless they have been victimized in a way that brings home the message of racial bigotry, class prejudice or both. Hence the 41 percent who believe Bush is doing an "excellent" or "good" job in New Orleans versus the 72 percent who are outraged by skyrocketing fuel prices. As to the 41 percent, theirs is far worse than "Good German" behavior, which after all was mostly the guilty complacency of I-don'-wanna-know ignorance; the 41 percent who applaud Bush express deliberate malice -- as another poster speculated, the extent to which "Calvinist" demonization has succeed in portraying blacks and poor as actual enemies, foes of economic security and "progress." Also the extent to which Bush himself has made poor-bashing and (now by the bread-and-circus spectacle of New Orleans) racial bigotry again fashionable.

The great irony of course is that anyone who is not part of the oligarchy is subject to instant and permanent impoverishment -- and therefore precisely the same sort of belittlement and slander. Non-oligarchic Americans sense this subconsciously but most cannot bear to acknowledge it because the implications are too terrible and the imperatives too frightening. Note how Americans are now forced to live on runaway credit: income has lagged ever further behind the cost of living, and people are ever more compelled to make up the difference with plastic. The economic collapse, when it comes, will make 1929 look like a picnic.

I no longer have any hope at all for America as we have known it; I was fortunate enough to share in its genuine prosperity, and unfortunate enough to be banished from that prosperity forever -- this by circumstances wholly beyond my control. Thus I have known the dreadful hollowness of America for a long while -- a knowledge the anguish and anger of which is directly reflected in my politics. Thus too I believe New Orleans merely showed America's emptiness to the world: America a hollow shell sucked dry by predators, America an empty box looted of all its contents by thieves.

Yes I believe we should gather the tools and address ourselves to the task of reformation -- this is the only way we can ensure the entire nation is not reduced to the horror of New Orleans -- but I believe the America that will result from our reforms (though it will surely achieve economic justice and workplace democracy) will never be anything but impoverished: the oligarchy has already pillaged America barren. Whether in the individual ruination inflicted by outsourcing or in the collective degradation imposed on New Orleans, what we are seeing now is merely the outward evidence of our abandonment. Indeed this will be our ultimate challenge: whether in such reduced circumstances we can develop alternatives to our former materialism and thus truly flourish.

(And now -- though it is always a huge pleasure to converse with you, Omega Minimo {precisely because you always make me think} -- I must really, really, really do some work!)

[omega minimo]

17. Thank you for artfully articulating the unfortunate fact

"Bought off by the very bounty of American life the oligarchy is now rapidly reclaiming for itself alone, the people continue to identify with the oppressor unless they have been victimized in a way that brings home the message of racial bigotry, class prejudice or both."

Bought off and complacent.

"The great irony of course is that anyone who is not part of the oligarchy is subject to instant and permanent impoverishment -- and therefore precisely the same sort of belittlement and slander. Non-oligarchic Americans sense this subconsciously but most cannot bear to acknowledge it because the implications are too terrible and the imperatives too frightening."

Scared shitless and complacent.

"Whether in the individual ruination inflicted by outsourcing or in the collective degradation imposed on New Orleans, what we are seeing now is merely the outward evidence of our abandonment."

Abandonment enabled by our complacency.

"Indeed this will be our ultimate challenge: whether in such reduced circumstances we can develop alternatives to our former materialism and thus truly flourish."

Flourishing via alternatives to "our" former materialism was always the Magic Ruby Slippers power that Americans possessed all along. Here is why the "how did the Hippie generation turn into the Yuppie generation?" question remains relevant, if unanswered.

There is a call for "reclaiming our government from corporations." After witnessing comfortably complacent Americans LIHOP, ignoring the warning signs, dismissing the implications-- already abandoned and still not getting it....

:boring: Why does it have to reach epidemic proportions before people wake up?

[newswolf56]

21. Excellent thinking. The hippie/yuppie question is indeed relevant...

because it not only illustrates why and how America keeps falling for the hollow delusions of trinket materialism, it also shows what might be done to escape the deluded state. Fact: the analysis that might have unified all factions of the Counterculture -- feminists, environmentalists, war protesters, back-to-the-land communards, alternative-media workers, the whole lot -- was deliberately suppressed. Hint: the suppressed analysis was elaboration on the premise of "revolution in consciousness" first articulated by East Village Other editor Walter Bowart c. 1966. Relevant riddle: who is the mother with whom Dylan makes dialogue in "Hard Rain"?

I will address these matters in detail -- also their relationship to the class/race matter -- but first I have to do about four hours of commercial writing to meet a deadline later this afternoon. Once again, thank you Omega Minimo for prompting me to think.

(Not all hippies transmogrified themselves into yuppies.)

[omega minimo]

23. LOL Trinket Materialism!!!!! Rolls off the tongue..

The synthesis that would have developed was truncated with the hijacking of all media. Including what that did to music.

:toast:

A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

[newswolf56]

30. "Truncated synthesis" indeed:

And not just through the hijacking of the Counterculture by mass media (and the resultant dilution of its principles by an influx of idiot faddists from plastic suburbia); or the sudden unprecedented availability of drugs that -- as an antidote to growing despair -- seduced so many well-intentioned people from their original purposes; or the infiltration and destruction from within of the Counterculture's fledgling organizations and institutions (chiefly the responsibility of the FBI's Operation COINTELPRO); or the methodical co-optation and destruction of the Counterculture's own alternative press (mostly via the CIA's Operation CHAOS). There were other forces at work too: the lingering intellectual wounds dealt by the already-underway dumbing-down of American education (the malignant anti-intellectual legacy of the McCarthy Era that today has metastasized into the breathtaking shallowness of the national debate over New Orleans); the vast mostly unacknowledged power of the Church (whether Catholic or Protestant) to manipulate government into suppressing the one potential heresy that truly would fault the bedrock of present-day Western economics and governance; the reflexive and ultimately vicious conformity that is intrinsic to the American bourgeoisie; the soul-killing starvation inflicted by doctrinal divorcement from Nature that prompts so many to sublimate the need for spiritual quest into sprees of impulse buying -- to so desperately try to fill the great aching voids at their centers with drugs or trinkets or to wall off the bottomless hurt of alienation with barriers built of Christofascism and other ideologies of ultimate benumbed defensiveness if not the overt toxicity of implicit matricide.

The "revolution in consciousness" was indeed just what Walter Bowart's naming implied. It was the most radical leap of human consciousness in 5000 years, the resurrection (whether as metaphor or perceived reality it matters not) of the Great Goddess, an ephemeral vision many glimpsed but far too few could name, a 2600-year-old Pagan prophecy fulfilled: "The resumption of such conflicts as Gwydion once made." Or as it says in a Scots ballad brought back to life by the folk renaissance (like so many such songs the remnant of some ancient Pagan invocation and yet simultaneously a modern summoning of the womanspirit): "Beware, beware, keep your garden fair/ let no man steal your thyme." Perhaps because, as Tim Buckley would soon confess to his Muse: "If you tell me of all the pain you've had/ I'll never smile again." However the singers responded, there was no denying the summons of the Muse herself; it shaped the best music of the whole era. Thus Patrick Sky, evoking the sense of presence that haunts the hollows of the nether Appalachians, the wild rivers of the far northern forests, the ancient alder groves of the Cascade back-country, all places where the mist lies low and bright in the moonlight, where the shadows dance: "And the voice of my mother/ rides in on the downwind..." Thus also Julie Felix, invoking the timeless celestial-weaver image of "Clotho's Web" and warning the powers that be: "You can't reverse/ the order of the universe." To which the ever-sardonic Dylan seems to reply -- almost as if in embarrassment (but nevertheless stating the essential truth of an entire generation) -- "I married Isis on the fifth day of May/ but I could not hold on to her very long." Provoking Patti Smith's ultimate rejoinder: "We shall live again." Dream visions, to be sure, but Daniel Schneider and Susan Langer and Marshall McLuhan all noted long ago how art is but the dream made real. More recently the Jungians turned to the specific dream itself: hence Edward Whitmont's clinical epic The Return of the Goddess, published in 1986 -- the closest the oligarchy has ever come to allowing acknowledgment of the mind-churning ferment that underlay the 1960s, the wellspring of what Walter Bowart could name but not define: "revolution in consciousness."

Revolution in consciousness: the artist as shaman, and art as ritual invocation: restoration of the artist's original role and art's original purpose. Revolution in consciousness: the environmentalists articulated its core principle in the Gaea Hypothesis: the earth (and by extension the entire cosmos) as alive, conscious and self-regulating, the most ancient wisdom of all newly asserted. In 1979, Lovelock, Epton, Margulis. Twenty-six hundred years earlier, Lao Tzu, writing down a precept that was even then ancient beyond reckoning: "The Tao is ever inactive/ yet there is nothing the Tao does not do"; or Taliesin: "There is nothing in which I have not been," and "I know the star-knowledge from before the worlds were born"; or Amergin, 1268BC, speaking through the contemporary poetry of Robert Graves in the voice of Gaea herself: "I am the queen of every hive" -- the core principle not just of modern environmental science but of the very most ancient science and metaphysics: the age of the Great Goddess and the astronomy of Stonehenge and Avbury Circle paradoxically united with particle physics and the era of the definitively secular expansion of wisdom, scholarship momentarily set free. Revolution in consciousness: the feminists assert its new wholistic politics: the personal itself is political, a process of discovery that first leads beyond the ideological quarrels of capitalism-versus-socialism and then past ideology itself to realization the very foundation of human society is flawed: smash patriarchy and you abolish the entire tyrannical mode of governance -- and thus possibly end oppression forever. Revolution in consciousness: the Back-to-the-Land Movement foretells an agrarian, post-apocalyptic future of self-sufficient rural communes, the communards united by modern renewal of the timeless quest for spiritual wisdom from the land itself. Revolution in consciousness: the anti-Vietnam War movement expressed a society-wide rejection of war for any reason save genuine self-defense. Revolution in consciousness: the rescue of sensuality from the dungeon into which it had been flung and confined by centuries of Christian hatefulness; the elevation of sensuality back to its ancient rightful place as a prime virtue. Revolution in consciousness: the resurrection of a symbol so anciently universal it could transcend all races and nationalities to unite all the peoples of the planet.

But, just as you said, the synthesis evolving from music (and Countercultural art in general) -- the vital analysis that would have unified the entire movement into a First Wave Against Patriarchy -- those voices were silenced before they could ever be heard. Why? Because that is the one rebellion the oligarchy fears even more than Marxism: rebellion not just against capitalism but against the theological molecular structure that holds together not only capitalism but even present-day Marxism as well and empowers both -- a hitherto-undefined state of being and consciousness that is maybe the systemic origin of tyranny itself. Thus the distinct probability the rise of Christofascism and Jihadist Islam are methodically fostered reactions to the Counterculture's enormous revolutionary potential: it may be that only the imposition of theocracy will allow the oligarchy to again rest easy.

And here we sit, nearly 40 years later, too many of us still quibbling semantics over whether America's worst atrocity-of-negligence since the Indian Wars was racism or classism -- thereby chanting the lyrics of the oppressor rather than our own. As Buckley derisively sang in 1967: "No man can find the war." Though perhaps now there is genuine reason to hope. Perhaps some will now realize that the names of oppression should be determined only by the oppressed -- that imposing such names from without is itself a form of oppression -- the very sort of oppression that destroyed the Counterculture and (in the loss and emptiness and despair its destruction evoked) turned the bright generous promise of hippies into the dark selfish degradation of yuppies. Perhaps some will again recognize that, as always, personal experience is the ultimate political truth: in the case of the oppressed, truth that can only be truly told by the victims themselves. And perhaps this time a few will at last begin to look again at the old unfinished Countercultural serape, rediscovering in its diverse threads the interrupted pattern that might have eventually yielded a garment adequate to protect us from storms of oppression in any and all forms. So that we may now finally be liberated of all compulsion to argue with the oppressed; so that we may say, "yes, oppression is what you say it is, and on that basis we will have to join in struggle against it, just as we struggle against all other forms of oppression, and ultimately against the broader reality of oppression itself." Perhaps, beneath the shelter of that serape, we will now finally complete the interrupted lesson we were beginning to learn in Countercultural times: how to pay attention to the world in which we live, how to truly listen -- not just to one another's words but to one another's heartsong -- and thus how to blend our solo voices into a mighty people's chorus. I have no answers as to how to accomplish this, nor even suggestions, but suddenly, quite unexpectedly (and perhaps inexplicably) I see a glimmer of hope, something I have not felt in many years. To paraphrase Loreena McKennitt: "I can sense the light in the distance..."

Meanwhile, Omega Minimo, thank you for inspiring these five paragraphs. (And -- yes -- I am fully aware of the sometimes uncomfortable implications of my conclusion. Indeed this is not how I had planned to end, but the Muse was in it: the piece had its own power and so led me down a path of its own choosing.)


Edit: eyestrain typos.

[omega minimo]

31. Breathtaking depth

So-- I correctly guessed the answer to the Hard Rain riddle:
"The Queen of All Hives." Blessed Bee.

One answer to this riddle:

"... structure that holds together not only capitalism but even present-day Marxism as well and empowers both -- a hitherto-undefined state of being and consciousness that is maybe the systemic origin of tyranny itself."

Fear itself.

:evilfrown:

"And here we sit, nearly 40 years later, too many of us still quibbling semantics over whether America's worst atrocity-of-negligence since the Indian Wars was racism or classism -- thereby chanting the lyrics of the oppressor rather than our own.

Thank you, NW56. You honor us all with your wisdom.

May I mention here that today, Jesus the Christ would have been considered a "dirty hippie." Jesus would have been IN the Supredome.

[omega minimo]

32. and now we see the Rovelution of Consciencelessness

"But, just as you said, the synthesis evolving from music (and Countercultural art in general) -- the vital analysis that would have unified the entire movement into a First Wave Against Patriarchy -- those voices were silenced before they could ever be heard."

Inflicted Reagan; shot Lennon.

"Why? Because that is the one rebellion the oligarchy fears even more than Marxism: rebellion not just against capitalism but against the theological molecular structure that holds together not only capitalism but even present-day Marxism as well and empowers both -- a hitherto-undefined state of being and consciousness that is maybe the systemic origin of tyranny itself."

The Teflon Emperor's Robe; the threat of assassins.

"There were other forces at work too: ...the vast mostly unacknowledged power of the Church (whether Catholic or Protestant) to manipulate government into suppressing the one potential heresy that truly would fault the bedrock of present-day Western economics and governance; the reflexive and ultimately vicious conformity that is intrinsic to the American bourgeoisie"

Hypocritical religion and religious hypocrites.

"Perhaps some will again recognize that, as always, personal experience is the ultimate political truth:"

"Perhaps, beneath the shelter of that serape, we will now finally complete the interrupted lesson we were beginning to learn in Countercultural times: how to pay attention to the world in which we live, how to truly listen..."

Overlooked and growing up under the "diverse threads" of the candy-colored serape were the children for whom the lesson was never interrupted.

As you have meticulously outlined all the forces at work, perhaps you will answer this riddle:

What ultimate political truth is personal experience, paying attention to the world in which we live, truly listening, in the face of assassins and the glamor of the Emperor's Teflon finery?

B-)

[newswolf56]

34. I know the words, but I do not know how to get there from here...

without seeming to speak riddles of my own, though I will surely try:

I believe "truth" should also be a verb, as in "we are truthed by New Orleans and the oppression its filthy waters mirror." Or "truth us that we may understand." Or as a synonym for Tao: "truthing is ever inactive/ but there is nothing truthing does not do." Or as Alan Watts might have said (especially if he had collaborated with Timothy Leary): "they truthed themselves to ecstasy and achieved at-one-ment." Or Lenin, reflecting on Petrograd and the Winter Palace: "they seized the time and overtruthed the state." Or Trotsky: "Beware lest truthing become an empty ritual and thus a lie."

When I am especially depressed and need something to lift my heart I think of a very old very hopeful song from a very long time ago, a militant song of exaltation that was sung by a fiercely determined people in a time so terrible the dread images of New Orleans pale by comparison. This is one of the song's verses:

O maiden fair raise your eyes
Gaze upon the road we follow
Far and away the road goes winding
Look and see how merrily the road goes...

The truth of that time was the truth of assassins only -- the emperor had traded his finery for an executioner's hood and launched a campaign of assassination so huge it encompassed an entire continent -- but the brave young men and women who so boldly and defiantly sang the song never lost sight of "how merrily the road goes" when it leads toward freedom, and thus they never faltered in their resistance.

Our truth is not yet so vastly deadly but I think it is somehow far more bitter in its apparent hopelessness. Yet the failure of so many people to see and listen and pay attention and heed is not a commentary on truth itself but rather a symptom of the lack of genuine experience -- and of the psychic genuine-ness (another kind of truthing) that is the essential precursor to such experience.

And as the founders themselves so eloquently stated, some truths sooner or later become "self-evident."

[newswolf56]

36. Don't know how this utterly mortifying mistake happened:

idiotic posting of an unfinished draft (#34) that now proves to anyone who bothers to read this thread (1) that I'm an absolute moron concerning computers and (2) that it sometimes takes me three or four (or even a dozen) tries to get a piece of writing to say exactly what I want it to say. And of course I didn't discover the error until too late to delete the rough draft -- but I don't want to delete #35 because it's so much better than #34. At least I'm anonymous in my cretinoid degradation.

[omega minimo]

38. No worries, NW56-- it's just you and me now

(or is it "you and I"? HOW embarrassing!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :rofl:)

Doubleplustruthgood cuz I have to read your stuff at least twice as it is-- the layers reveal....

[newswolf56]

41. Thank you. Even now -- though I rarely go drinking anymore --

I still typically get into wonderful conversations and am thus one of the last ones out of the saloon.

[newswolf56]

35. I know the words, but I do not know how to get there from here.

Nor would it be fair to respond with riddles of my own. Metaphors then, perhaps an analogy as well:

I believe "truth" should also be a verb, as in "we are truthed by New Orleans and the oppression its filthy waters mirror." Or "truth us that we may understand." Or as a synonym for Tao: "Truthing is ever inactive/ but there is nothing Truthing does not do." Or as Alan Watts might have said if he had collaborated with Timothy Leary: "we truthed ourselves to ecstasy and achieved at-one-ment." Or Lenin, reflecting on Petrograd and the Winter Palace: "we seized the time and overtruthed the state." Or Trotsky: "Beware lest overtruthing become an empty ritual and thus the imposition of a lie."

When I am especially depressed and need something to lift my heart I think of an old very hopeful song from a long time ago, a militant song of exaltation that was sung by a fiercely determined people in a time so terrible the dread images of New Orleans pale by comparison. This is one of the song's verses:

O maiden fair raise your eyes
Gaze upon the road we follow
Far and away the road goes winding
Look and see how merrily the road goes

The truth of that time was the truth of assassins only -- the emperor had traded his finery for an executioner's hood and launched a campaign of assassination so huge it encompassed an entire continent -- but the brave young men and women who so boldly and defiantly sang the song never lost sight of "how merrily the road goes" when it leads toward freedom, and thus they never faltered in their resistance. That they were later betrayed and sold into slavery detracts neither from their heroism nor from the likelihood their story is far from ended.

Our truth is not yet so vastly deadly though I think it is somehow far more bitter in its apparent hopelessness. I still lament November 22, 1963. I still lament April 4th and June 5th of 1968 and the double anguish of May 1970. I still curse the falsehoods and falseness that hide the real extent of our victimization. But some truths eventually become "self-evident" -- even as self-evident as the corpses in the streets of New Orleans. The wheel turns; "the children for whom the lesson was never interrupted" grow toward adulthood: O far and away the road goes winding...

[omega minimo]

37. Tap your heels together THREE times

and repeat after me:

There's no place like Truth
There's no place like Truth
There's no place like Truth

:hug:

I was gifted with a healing dream last night-- a wise teacher speaking to me of the Unspeakable; of That Which Matters beyond all that we untruth ourselves with as we seek It.

May you receive a big dream soon.

And may America arise from her slumber :boring:

[newswolf56]

40. Thank you for the blessing. Bright blessings of the coming holiday...

back to you. (I do not practice -- not formally. I merely recognize and honor.) Also a :hug: for you, cousin -- if indeed I may have your permission to address you so.

[omega minimo]

46. Yes, let us honor the Goddess in her season to weigh in on

the Global Warming Climate Change "debate" :evilgrin:

Cheers then :toast:

[newswolf56]

48. You might want to weigh in on this one, Omega Minimo:

Dean voicing an astonishing defense of Bush as "not racist" and me getting trashed by the Deaniacs as a result of my critical response:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2088713

[omega minimo]

50. IMHO it was genocide, so I may not have much to offer there

I've heard some wacked out, convoluted "not racist" stuff already-- and I'm suffering bullshit fatigue (since BEFORE Katrina)...

Thank you for the link. :hi:

[newswolf56]

53. We agree absolutely on genocide. Interesting how...

even as more evidence unfolds confirming its deliberateness, the oligarchy (and the whole DemoPublican establishment with the very notable exception of John Edwards) seems now determined to crush this suddenly reawakened race/class awareness before it can gather any real impetus beyond the 20 percent of white society that acknowledges its reality: this is why I called your attention to Howard Dean's disappointing remarks on Fox. Predictable, of course -- there is nothing the oligarchy fears more, because it leads directly to the historical truth of what is commonly called "class struggle" -- which awareness in turn leads directly to (!!!).

However I was thinking tonight we need to develop a new vocabulary, something that expands the concept of class struggle to (1) make note of the uniqueness of the American situation (the only society on the planet with an entire large class of former slaves who are specifically identified by their race and still oppressed on that basis) and (2) on that basis recognizes the fact that while racial and economic oppression work in tandem, they are nevertheless separate (and mutually reinforcing) rather than (as the old-time Marxists maintained) diverse expressions of the same phenomenon.

In any case, something I've been thinking about a great deal since (and because of) our dialogue on this thread. You had some damn fine teachers, Omega Minimo!

[omega minimo]

55. That squelching is why I thought the moment was crucial

to bear witness immediately to what we were witnessing, to broadcast the truth and let the scales fall from America's eyes.

(I told you NW, we were peering through the enveloping serape threads, the times our teachers.)

[Hidden Stillness]

57. Nicely Put--A New Situation, Partly

Just picking up on this idea of "a new vocabulary," I also believe that, but of course my opinion may be different. I think that as the terrible outrage that is the Bush/Halliburton Administration continues, not only ripping up our system of laws and regulations but replacing it with a kind of economy that has never really existed before (19th century Gilded Age, PLUS global corporate capitalism, God help us), that some words just don't describe it anymore. I also do not like the narrowing-down that people tend to do, ignoring other aspects that deserve mention.

I wish we had a more complex, but still specific and clear, set of terms for things. The racial component of oppression and denial of jobs, bank loans, government response to need, etc., should be referred to, but that is not the only thing. There is the tragic trend of people--with union manufacturing jobs, for example--who used to be all right, had a home, etc., but who because of outsourcing no longer have a livable wage, and because those were the only skills they knew, will never have a good job again--instantly destitute, so some corporation can exploit slaves in another country. Women have never been represented in management, and are almost never paid more than poverty wages ("pin money"), yet are almost never referred to during poverty discussions--("Just get married"). The descriptions of the causes, and the victims, should be specific enough to actually reveal the problem, and the causes, but multiple--as opposed to vague/general--enough to stop insulting other people who are equally poor, and actually mention them.

I may or may not find agreement here, but I am not comforted when the corporate media starts playing up poverty as an exclusively racial issue. (They pretend crime is a racial issue too, remember.) I believe they are trying to invent a "race war" or "isolating and blaming blacks," as they also pretend that Affirmative Action is a "racial" "quota," rather than admitting that many groups use and benefit by Affirmative Action laws. To work it over to a "racial divide," they then control the "public" (corporate media) discussion of it, which will now never refer to deregulated, union-busting, exploitive-wages, capitalism--the basic problem. I also get tired of the word "classism" as used--first, it sounds like rich people's language to me, and second, as a lower-middle-class person, I am offended. I consider rich people to be the "low class."

My overriding concern, though--as someone who is actually now just about at the poverty line, is to unite and keep poverty, as poverty, as the issue. Not terms that isolate, but a larger, American, New Deal/War on Poverty that brings the poor and lower middle class back into American society, not as hated as we are now, and that brings the active political agenda of the Nation back around to us.

[omega minimo]

58. You're right

Is there yet a forum or group dedicated to this?

[Karenina]

42. DUDE!!!

That last paragraph gave me goosebumps!!! :yourock:

[omega minimo]

45. Righteous

Saw Dylan one month after 9-11-01. Stunning, brilliant show-- best concert I've ever seen (Maybe Al Green blasting the roof off the place is right up there).

The night was cathartic for all. The songs of decades ago were a resonant and powerful and timely as ever-- TIMELESS.

"Masters of War" was goosebumps.



For a time my sig line was:

Art will save us.

[newswolf56]

47. Thank you! Something I've thought about for years.

But it was still more Muse than me -- one of those passages of writing that seems to materialize on the paper, so that all you have to do is be a good attentive editor and cleanse the work of its mental cobwebs to make it clear and accessible.

[omega minimo]

52. Speaking of fuax pas

(Is the plural of faux pas, faux pi?)

I thought that "last paragraph gave me goosebumps" comment was about BD.

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Kinda apt.

[ProudDad]

11. Thank you

This is brilliant and to the point.

I've been trying to post this for days now...just couldn't find the right words. You did!

Thanks.

[retread]

13. The class argument is now used in place of denial, which replaced

unconcealed racism. "Class warfare" is a tool used implement racism just as the "colored only" signs were a few short decades ago.

I am constantly disappointed by people I know to be of good heart, who refuse to take an extra step and acknowledge the presence of virulent racism in America today. Instead they deny its existence with a class argument.

[omega minimo]

16. More folks might see it if it was "virulent" (where's my thesaurus?)

We are hearing (in the press-- not in my circles, thank gawd) some hostile/ignorant comments (including from legislators!).

Equally disturbing is the unquestioning ease with which people view the scenes in NO and then get on with their busy lives. People try to rationalize, aided and betted by the RW talking points, rather than see Truth.

Denial is not just a river in Mississippi.

[brindis_desala]

18. I must caution against an overemphasis on the racial

ugliness that was exposed by Katrina. Racial animus is far easier to overcome than class antagonism. Bigotry simply becomes magnified when viewed through the prism of severe privation. There were black folks sitting in the relatively dry French Quarter with their AK-47's just like the racist sheriff turning back people trying to escape through Gretna. What has corrupted and threatens to destroy the comity of America, which at its best is a wonderfully textured, multi-cultured society, are the reactionary policies implemented under Reagan and enshrined by the Rehnquist court. The neoconservatives have played upon the Calvinist notion of predestination; the idea that the world is divided between the 'saved' and irredeemable to have citizens believe that our only obligation is to look out for ourselves. That philosophy has led to a perception of government, indeed of all civic institutions not related to the preservation of property as mere items for purchase- since the only way to truly help people was to 'save' their souls. Thus, when faced with a indeterminate threat many now revert to a primitive instinct to hoard; much as the body stores fat anticipating famine. This of course is an affront to the notion of civilization wherein societies pool and assign individuals and resources in order to persevere through various crises.

The Republicans with their racist southern strategy have managed by ridiculing those without property, i.e. ex-slaves, to both magnify its importance (they've made it real), and obscure the ills created by that very lack by suggesting extra melanin maybe an original sin.

[omega minimo]

24. People running the show are soul eaters, not savers.

With the racial blinders ripped off by compassion and the mask off this bureaucracy :evilfrown: people may start to notice this.

[patdem]

19. Just friggin watch news reels in the 50's..before blacks got so uppity of

prisons...90% white..then after the 60's...blacks invaded the prisons..you think the right to vote creates criminals?? I don't think so...but white america does! :grr:

[ClassWarrior]

20. In this nation, at this time, it's all the same thing.

NGU.

[omega minimo]

22. "...the magnifier of this vulnerability"

"The problem with segregation across the nation is what it does is it concentrates inequality along income lines. And it is the combination of race and class that becomes the magnifier of this vulnerability."

Professor Tienda (elegantly) nailed it IMHO

:patriot:

Part of the perception problem may be that Americans don't consider our nation segregated.

[applegrove]

25. Racism is a human thing. Racism was used because it would help

Bush "commune" with the racist base and creat fear of black crime in everyone. They stood down on the stopping the cycle of lawlessness. They stood down. It had to pay off - just like all crisis have to pay off for corporations or political operatives.

So yes it was racism. But racism is just a tool like anything else to sociopaths. It isn't personal. They just deal in people's fears and try and increase them and racism is a great tool.

Remember Bush's numbers had for the first time hit 37% in one poll beforea the Hurricane hit. Think of the crisis the win win sociopath political operatives were in. They needed to reconnect with their base. They found one of many payoffs from Katrina..or to responding slow to her.

What exactly does the Commander in Chief not understand about "give me everything you got". But apparently now - Blanco is being described as someone who doesn't understand the military & how it works. The Pentagone on Wednesday last week was playing a "pity play" and crying "why are you all so concerned with the victims feelings and not with us at the Pentagon". APPARENTLY THAT IS HOW THE MILITARY WORKS. IF BLANCO DIDN"T KNOW THAT - I"M NOT SURPRISED. IT WAS A SHOCK TO US ALL.

[omega minimo]

26. Guess we didn't get the memo on NEVER questioning the Administration

The president reached his "base" as shown in F-911.

The part I still don't get is the general public watching these events and accepting the explanations and rationalizations for a non-existent emergency response; for a nightmare perpetrated on hurricane victims by those who were responsible for public safety.

brindis advised caution in overemphasizing race in this. I think a lot of the passive public are not overtly or consciously racist-- but that the media-fed association of African American faces with poverty and/or crime diminished the ability of people to see that there was NO GOOD REASON and NO ACCEPTABLE EXCUSES for subjecting New Orleans to a cultural genocide.

That's the reaction I wanted to see-- at work and in the press and even at DU. We all went a bit too quickly on to hashing out the various stories and lies put out by the propagandists.

The simple fact of mistreatment of American citizens and tourists, all ages and ethnicities, predominantly black, was not an act of nature or of god. It was a conscious decision by the Bush administration to abandon its responsbilities and test the response level of the American general public.

[brindis_desala]

27. You have nailed it my friend.

"The simple fact of mistreatment of American citizens and tourists, all ages and ethnicities, predominantly black, was not an act of nature or of god. It was a conscious decision by the Bush administration to abandon its responsibilities and test the response level of the American general public."

That's the point I hope people draw from this crime. Was it indifference based on race? A passive act of ethnic cleansing? In light of the result one could argue it was but that is not the dynamic at play here. Just as after 9-11 and the tsunami Condi Rice spoke of an "opportunity" Katrina was the chance these vulture capitalists dream of: destruction, gentrification and profit. In a high-tech world the poor have become an inconvenience- like the freedmen after industrialization triggered the end of the plantation. The 21st century wage-slaves are to be kept defensive and on the run, compelled to chase the fast-flying whims of internet capital. To these "masters of the universe" dignity and compassion are for the "losers" who Rove is delighted to see as the albatross for "liberals" and "Democrats".

It's all about PROPERTY and how to steal it from the "little guy" whether it's in Iraq or the 9th ward of New Orleans. It reminded me of an article by Tim Wise. Here's a snippet that illustrates some of the inequities and discrepancies concerning poverty and race.

Racism and "Preferential Treatment" by the Numbers

"... for years now I have used the government's FHA (Federal Housing Administration) loan guarantee program as an example of preference for whites which still has effects in the here-and-now. As most of you know, from 1934-1962, the FHA guaranteed and underwrote over $120 billion worth of home equity for over 35 million white families. Due to racially-restrictive underwriting policies, this font of public largesse was virtually off limits to families of color, who generally couldn't receive FHA loans for homes in white suburbs. This process entrenched residential segregation which then contributed to educational and employment inequity for persons of color.

This much is known, and irrefutable, as is the fact that the value of that home equity-which is in the process of being handed down to today's white baby-boomers or their children-is now approximately $10 trillion.
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/1999-03/mar_13wise.htm

[omega minimo]

28. Did we pass the test?

"Katrina was the chance these vulture capitalists dream of: destruction, gentrification and profit. In a high-tech world the poor have become an inconvenience- like the freedmen after industrialization triggered the end of the plantation."

So the game was run testing public tolerance for destruction including "collateral damage" of already-disenfranchised poor/black Americans?

"The 21st century wage-slaves are to be kept defensive and on the run, compelled to chase the fast-flying whims of internet capital."

The test of common sense and uncommon empathy that more privileged folk may have failed, is the realization that THEY are no less vulnerable to becoming free market collateral damage.

Which is why I allowed myself to hope in the first days that Americans would wake up.

"...the media-fed association of African American faces with poverty and/or crime diminished the ability of people to see that there was NO GOOD REASON and NO ACCEPTABLE EXCUSES for subjecting New Orleans to a cultural genocide."

:patriot: :hi:

[applegrove]

29. I'm with you guys. The pay off to standing down were numerous.

But it didn't work. People don't value property in a crisis like the corporate ***puppets thought they would. And they lost out on plans for a new scapegoat.

[Karenina]

43. When Cheney referred to it

as the "Katrina exercise" he said ALL that needed to be said.

Digby has written an excellent piece, "American Welfare" covering each corner of the race/class intersection:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_09_11_digbysblog_archive.html#112655061384794954

[omega minimo]

44. Indeed. I missed that nausea-inducing nugget

from the Vice Slimeball.

Thanks for bearing witness. That is something we ALL can do, since that day of the Katrina impact.

Our local paper yesterday was brimming with various articles that painted a VERY distorted and comfortably-racist picture of the overall experience.

Including a poll of a paltry 1,000 people that led to blanket statements about how "blacks" cared and viewed the debacle as racist and "whites" didn't, blah blah blah.

Overwhelming propaganda-- a scattershot campaign of groupthink.

Anyway, to you :toast: I'll check out the link later.

[ladylibertee]

33. AMERICA is a RACIST COUNTRY!!! There, I settled it.He He

[omega minimo]

39. It's unsettling

:evilgrin:

[Hidden Stillness]

49. Poverty is Hell for ALL of the Poor

Hi, omega minimo. I have been avoiding these race "or" class threads, because they are invariably hostile in an odd sort of way (you either answer "race" or you are a piece of filth, according to the game), the question doesn't make any sense to me (I am white and lower-middle-class/poor), and I consider it a phony exercise for rich white people playing on their (no doubt new) computers, "See, I'm one of the good ones." I will, however, ask you a question, as to why such obviously guilty rich black males as O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant (other known victims) got off scot-free unless class was actually the overriding issue, or at the very least, that race is a relative factor like everything else. The sense I get from so many of these threads is that the people giving opinions are at a disconnect, and therefore have only a generalized stereotype to refer to, and not the ordinary real world (apologies if that is wrong).

Truth is a multiple, and so I don't like it when it is slanted, and then the "less popular" elements eventually removed. This is why, for example, threads on poverty sink like a stone, with few posts, unlike the racial ones--most people really do not give a rat's ass, and do not want to help. (With all due respect, "art" won't do it--I don't have the money.) Very often, the problem is that whites are racist, often it is that males are sexist--these are the two huge groups, and huge reasons, for generalized poverty. Of the top three reasons for declaring bankruptcy and becoming destitute, (along with losing a job, and medical bills), women getting a divorce and having to now live on their own salaries, is one of them. If she were not oppressed and surviving on the male's paycheck and not hers, then why the total calamity? It was not her, being paid well.

Regardless, this was a message I posted on yet another ignored "Poverty" thread, called "Yes, It Actually is All of Us," (my post), I think it was; a few days ago:


Thank you for this perceptive thread. I have been getting increasingly angry at the "Poverty is All Racial and If You Don't Agree With Me I am Going to Attack You and You are Not a Liberal" threads here on DU since the hurricane struck. From the tone of them, it seems to me that they are almost all by rich white people playing a game, whether they know it or not, that I call, briefly, "I'm One of the Good Ones--I 'Get It'--(So Don't Expect a Donation)." Over the past several years, I have learned what poverty and lack is; I grew up middle class, used to be middle class, and now lower middle class and by yearly income, am actually poor. I never thought it would happen, but since Bush, I live here permanently now, in poverty. I am a white woman. I do not start off the discussion with an abstract approach that charts the effects of segregation, and lead to the foregone conclusion I wanted to reach anyway; I begin my awareness of poverty and the pressure of not having enough money, by waking up each day.

I loved your closing comments about how this is likely a deliberate attempt to paint it as a racial issue, exactly to cause divisiveness and pin it all on black people; this is actually my opinion, too. Which is the largest single group on welfare/General Assistance? White women (with children). Which is the largest single group filing Affirmative Action discrimination claims? White women. I believe the pretense that Affirmative Action is a "racial" "quota" is maintained exactly so that people will not realize (and research) how America itself has been helped by the myriad of laws and regulations that make up Affirmative Action. The Americans With Disabilities Act, giving wheelchair-access, is after all an Affirmative Action law (Civil Rights Act of 1991).

Most poor people are white, and I have read studies that claim that the per capita poorest people in this country are not black at all, but are the totally cut-off, dirt-poor whites of Appalachia, who do not register on most statistics, because they do not apply for government programs, either because they are so poor they don't know about these programs, because of shame, or because of lack of access. Apparently DU is unaware of them because they were not hit by a hurricane recently; that's what it takes. When the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina shows New Orleans exclusively, as if this were a local event, and not the mainly poor white crowds of the devastated in Mississippi and more rural Louisiana, then you know it is a manipulated narrowing-down of the same type they did with Sept. 11th, which suddenly "only" happened to New York City. Also, recent Census data proved that college-educated white women are paid less than not only black males, but black women. Black women are paid more than Asian women. Not a blip on DU. Lots of "Who Gives a Fuck About the Dead, Raped White Woman?" though, which no group of males stopped or even complained about. So much for "being against bigotry" and "facing the truth."

Threads about poverty and economic fear on this site, which I have posted on, drop with almost no posts or interest, but the "I am Fighting for the Negro" parlor game gets lots of posts. They actually ask, "If they had been white, would the response have been different?" then answer "OF COURSE," like assholes, and I want to ask these people, "Are you on Rush Limbaugh's illegal drugs? When has the Bush Administration ever, even once, done anything to help any of the American people? When have they done a domestic thing?"

Poverty is getting worse for all of the American people, it is spreading, the jobs are gone, they are not there anymore (I live in the Midwest, badly hurt by this corporate trend), and as Barbara Ehrenreich was just explaining on C-SPAN2, talking to some creepy asshole from the Wall Street Journal, now poverty is reaching to the employed population, who regularly work for poverty wages now. I remember reading a Census statistic from Molly Ivins some years ago, that one-fourth of those who work full-time, 40 hours a week at minimum wage jobs, are homeless. Also, the poverty statistics are fake, the number of poor is actually much higher, as they are always changing the official poverty line, lowering it to ridiculous levels. I know that I am now reaching a stage where my money does not extend and pay everything as before--and I never buy anything! It is all bills--utilities, insurance, up and up--and I know what it is to go day after day with only one meal a day, have not been to a dentist for many years, I know the fear of anything in the house or car going wrong, because it will not get fixed.

I'm sick of reading these phonies for whom poverty, (besides being a boring, "not fun" topic), is a total abstract, a "test" they have devised for your "liberal quotient," when for those of us who suffer it, it is a neverending stress and pressure and increasing misery. You claim people don't face the facts by not calling it racial, I tell you, you face nothing, it is all abstract reading material to you, and I pray that all of us middle class and poor people will unite as one, and face the far harder reality to face, and that is that they have now made it a global corporate system with its own "government" (NAFTA/GATT), located wherever, and it has never been harder to fight. I don't know where it will end, or how.


(This was the end of my earlier post. Just to make clear, none of this was directed against you, omega minimo; you and I have had many very enjoyable exchanges on several great threads, as you have had with other posters on this one. If however, you were offended at anything I wrote here, please feel free to explain.)

[omega minimo]

51. Black and white and plenty of grey areas

Hence:
"Let's settle the Race OR Class question because there IS no question, OK?"
I agree the question is absurd and occasionally self-indulgent

I thought the Princeton professor summed it up well-- well enough to have the last word.

"The problem with segregation
across the nation
it concentrates inequality
along income lines.

And it is the combination of race and class
that becomes the magnifier of this vulnerability."

The magnifier of this vulnerability. There are others, certainly. Other magnifiers, other vulnerabilities.

So, I don't claim to know all the causes and I don't accept most of the rationales. It was very simply a matter of perception, resulting from the generalized stereotypes you mentioned, plus the campaign of re-demonization against African Americans-- from Raygun's "Welfare Queens" to "COPS."

When "COPS" appeared on TV, did anyone watching notice the fact that people's civil rights were being violated right and left-- or was it "okay" because most of the people were black? So white people watch for "entertainment" and think it won't ever happen to them?

Like being abandoned by their government after a natural disaster?

That was my concern-- the perception of the public watching and NOT identifying with fellow citizens, NOT being outraged enough at the incomprehensible denial of rescue and relief efforts. NOT realizing that this administration would do the same to them when the time came.... and then buying the propaganda that they should now store emergency kits for 7 days instead of 2-3 because rescuers may not arrive sooner AS IF THAT IS REASONABLE, THE NEW REALITY, AS IF WHAT HAPPENED IN NOLA IS THE NEW NORMAL. (Expletive deleted).

As noted in your comments about the New World Order. This was the global corporate government with the mask ripped off; many Americans did not want to look it in the face.

Or look in those brown faces and see themselves, see their countrymen and women. See an outrage, see a genocide, see a crime against humanity.

As for art, you are a gifted thinker and writer. Art inspires and cuts through the crap like nothing else.

[Skittles]

54. I NOTICED THE COPS THING

it disgusted me no end - did they pay people to let their rights be violated? How is it legal to do such stuff? I found that show very upsetting - they acted like the very fact a person (usually black) ran from the cops meant he did something wrong - as if no one could ever distrust the cops. WTF???

[omega minimo]

56. Yep

There were plenty of warnings in the 90's. That show was one.

We didn't just wake up one day in this mess and it didn't start with W. It ends with W.

[omega minimo]

59. It's possible the perception problem is because

there is not a comparable urban area where impoverished non-blacks are concentrated-- is there? America is comfortable with black slums and ghettoes, viewed through the TV screen from within a gated community.

The further we get from the immediacy of what happened, the more the blah blah blah gets in the way of the truth.

HS is right about the overall poverty issue and the relevance of the globalization discussion the nation has not had. This is the Two Americas we heard about in the 2004 campaign.

The gagaganda is stunning. Bush calling the devastated region an "Opportunity Zone." I ask again, when is the public going to get pissed off that Halliburton is profiteering off the blood in the Gulf and now, the Other Gulf?

:hi:

[nvliberal]

60. By hyperfocusing on racial aspects of Katrina,

we all ignore the obvious class war going on in this country of which Katrina is the most recent part.

CLASS--not race--is the motivating factor for this administration. Don't EVER forget that.

It is a government by and for corporations and the tiny numbers of filthy rich, not for anybody else.

[omega minimo]

61. It's recommended to read the discussion in a thread before responding

Don't EVER forget that.

:hi:
Welcome to DU

(The evacuees in NO were "hyperfocused" on not starving/dehydrating to death while Bushco. clapped itself on the back for the cameras.......)

[omega minimo]

62. We tell Congress to "hyperfocus" on Bushco NOLA negligence & profiteering

Bushco's solution is to federalize and militarize and privatize to death.