Jim Webb and Shirley Sherrod are sending you a message - not color - CLASS

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

Don't you get it?


http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/03/28/webb/index.html

[Toucano]

1. Get it, got it, bears repetition. n/t

[dkf]

2. I agree completely. They should team up. That would be pretty spectacular.

[patrice]

8. Oh no! They couldn't possibly do anything for one another!!! That would require each to betray their

own.

:sarcasm:

[TheDebbieDee]

3. Tell that black Harvard Professor that was arrested in his own

home last summer that it's all about class! Bull$hit!

You're being snookered again!

ETA: His name is Prof. Henry Louis Gates.

[Wounded Bear]

7. It really is both....

Traditionally, poverty has affected people of color worse than whites. The racism comes in for a case like Gates's in that the dumb white cops were in denial about the fact that Blacks can be upper class. What we really need is for poor people of all races to get together. That's some political power there.

[dkf]

13. It sounded more like arrogant police attitude to me.

Yes he was called there because the caller may have had problems but that arrest was pure chip on the shoulder assholeness.

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JI7]

4. really, Sherrod says Breitbart and Fox want black people to go back to days of slavery

[mmonk]

5. Yes, there is a big class issue now, but when I look around

me today, I'm also seeing a hell of a lot of racism that I haven't seen in about 40 years.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Here is my theory on that

we are ten years from whites becoming a minority in some areas. That is damn scary. Why you are seeing it.

[mmonk]

14. That is part of it. It also takes a political movement to push fear and conspiracy

in taking advantage of that fact.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. Of course and it will get much worst

before it finally, hopefully, dies a slow death.

[EFerrari]

6. Class doesn't subsume the race issues in America. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. No it does not, but that is the coming wave

and that is the truth. It will be about class, and for the first time this country might actually develop, not counting on it, class consciousness.

It will not happen until all the shinnies are suppressed and the real issue comes to the fore.

As is, as much as race is still a very much so fresh scab... that is picked on every so often... it will be about where you were born... right side of tracks, or wrong... in two generations max.

[patrice]

10. That's a given for both perspectives.

[CBR]

16. +1000 nt

[EFerrari]

30. I'm sorry if I was terse, didn't mean to offend Phoebe.

I was just listening to Tim Wise over the weekend and he speaks very directly to this question in his last book.


(I should know better than to try to post an opinion after a long day. lol)

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. two generations, but it is MOVING in that direction

QUICK. And part of the reason... this is quickly becoming a multicultural, multicultural country... where race is still important, but class will be even more so.

That said, while it goes there...that old scab will continue to be picked, and will continue to bleed.

[political_Dem]

15. That's just saying that racism is unimportant in this day or age.

Stating that the issues regarding color are unimportant in this day and age is silently letting racism go on without anyone doing anything about it.

Class is a problem, yes. But, it must not be used to overshadow issues of race in this country. That's what statements such as the OP's above demonstrate--especially when it uses a person of color as a part of that modus operandi.

So no, it's the clueless people who cling on to being colorblind while hiding their own issues regarding race who don't get it. They are the first ones who use class as a way to get out of talking about race.

[CBR]

17. +1 exactly right nt

[Spider Jerusalem]

18. I think you're kind of missing a larger point here.

Race (and ethnicity and religion) has always been used in the US to divide people of lower social/economic class against one another. Divide and rule. I would argue that you're letting the issue of race overshadow the issues of class. Is racism a problem? Undeniably, and the US has a long and ugly history of serious racial issues that are a long way yet from being resolved. But at the same time endemic and multigenerational poverty, lack of educational opportunity, crime, high levels of alcoholism and drug addiction, and all the other social problems that can be associated with class are not specifically racial in nature; race to some extent only serves to pit members of an exploited underclass against one another.

[patrice]

24. Those problems corelate with Race, so we can't establish cause and effect until they are

separated.

We would have to see some measure of the number of cases of discrimination caused by race and the number of cases of discrimination caused by class; one set would have to be bigger than the other (Class if OP is to be credited - no, wait a minute - if OP is to be credited, Senator Webb would have to say there are NO instances of racial discrimination outside of class discrimination) AND whatever the size of the two sets, there would have to be not even the slightest degree of overlap.

[LWolf]

25. +1

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. Yes, and to be fair, Jim Webb isn't in danger of losing his job for being an Afr-Am woman in DC

Unlike some people (several in fact) have been.

[Orsino]

19. The difference is that Sherrod doesn't pretend that racism isn't a problem. n/t

[patrice]

20. Same OLD turf wars.

[patrice]

21. Read that "Divide and conquor". nt

[patrice]

22. Perhaps you can assist me? Where does it say "not color" in the linked article?

It appears that the stats in Senator Webb's speech clearly, CLEARLY say "RACE".

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

29. This odd OP was meant to be a response to another thread about Jim Webb's Op-ed

which is why it looks so off the cuff and with no context.

I posted the Salon article about Jim Webb's interest in prison reform to show clearly that he was not someone who was unaware of racial inequalities and in fact is one person doing more than almost anyone else to eliminate and correct it's most pervasive example in our society - the unjust imprisonment of huge numbers of black men.

When I was making the reference to class, not race, I was attempting to say (albeit poorly and briefly) that class disparities run across racial lines and as Shirley Sherrod so meaningfully testified, that understanding is what can bring a true unification of purpose regardless of our various races.

I thought in his own damn the torpedos way, Jim Webb was attempting to re-inforce Shirley Sherrod's message.

Webb: Cut affirmative action
The senator says in a column that government diversity programs have extended too far.
By Bill Bartel
The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot

http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/254714
skip

State Sen. Donald McEachin, D-Richmond, praised Webb for his column. "Poverty and inequality know no boundary, whether it is geography, gender, race, age or disability," McEachin said in a prepared statement. "We need to provide opportunities so all those individuals can become productive, constructive members of society."

Webb declined to talk to reporters Friday, but his spokesman, Will Jenkins, said the senator believes the column raised "important questions that have to be asked right now."

Webb has no plans to introduce legislation to roll back affirmative action regulations but is hoping to provoke debate, Jenkins said.

While I could be wrong in my interpretation of Webb's column, I believe that his prison reform work provides a strong defense against charges of racism.

[patrice]

31. Thanks very much for your clarification. I feel a strong push out there to use this to further

divide us.

I feel we need to get people to stop and say, if this is in fact what they mean:
- There is no discrimination (class? or otherwise?) without race.
- or -
- Economic discrimination always trumps racial discrimination.

Are people REALLY saying you have two sets here that do not intersect at all? Or are they saying that there is only one set that determines EVERYTHING else?

That would be absurd, but in today's rhetorical environment it's quite possible.

I just fear that this discussion is going to devolve the way that the Pro-Choice & so-called "Pro-Life" debate did, false dichotomies that paralyzed the discourse into camp followers who pretty much feathered their own careers at the expense of solutions for women and children.

[DevonRex]

27. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but there is a distinct relationship between color and economic status

in this country. Unrec.

Edited because I misspelled a word.

[patrice]

32. No one is saying there isn't. Did you actually read the article? Some people are trying to say that

there is ALSO a distinct relationship between past economic status and future economic opportunities.

By definition, a Right IS a Right BECAUSE it applies universally to all persons, regardless of any other trait. Something that applies more here and less there is not a Right it is a privilege.

If freedom from discrimination is a Right, then it applies to ALL, even the Poor, and if it doesn't apply to ALL, then it is a PRIVILEGE and no matter how much a person, or persons were in fact discriminated against, for whatever reason, in the past/present/future, if they claim somekind of exclusive "Right" to be free from that discrimination, more so than any other person, that's not a Right it IS a Privilege and I, for one, do not support Privilege.

[bobbolink]

33. I'm glad this is finaly in the discussion. There is a lot of resistance to hearing the message that

CLASS is the dividing line.

Hopefully, Ms. Sherrod will be in a position with a megaphone to get tis message across and be heard.

Here is my journal entry about this:
"Shirley Sherrod’s True Revelation"
Posted by bobbolink in General Discussion
Thu Jul 22nd 2010, 08:57 PM
Shirley Sherrod’s True Revelation
by Valerie Elverton Dixon 07-22-2010

The controversy over the injustice done to Shirley Sherrod, the African-American woman whose comments on race were taken out of context, misreported, and who was fired from her job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not capture the essence of her personal journey. While we focus on the media and the craven haste of her dismissal, her testimony fades into the background. Shirley Sherrod’s testimony is that she came to realize that the major problem in the United States is not race, but class.

~~snip~~

One day a white farmer came to her office for help. She says he came with an attitude of superiority that was off-putting. She decided to put him in touch with a white lawyer she thought could help him. When she learned that the white lawyer refused to do all he could to help the man save his farm, she called everyone she knew who could help the man. In the end, she was successful and the man was able to keep his farm.

The episode was a revelation to her. She realized that: “It’s about the poor vs. those who have. It opened my eyes.” In her speech she goes on to recall the history of race in America. There was once a time when both blacks and whites worked as indentured servants. The moment slavery for life was instituted only for blacks, the racial divide was established and has haunted this country from that day to this. Shirley Sherrod’s revelation is that this racial divide serves the elite. The rich get richer, and the rest fight over the scraps and race.

At the end of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, he was in the midst of organizing a Poor People’s March on Washington. He had come to recognize that poor people of every race were suffering the same injustices and living economically marginal lives. It is time to begin again where King ended and refuse to let race divide us as we work for economic justice in the United States and in the world.


Dr. Valerie Elverton Dixon is an independent scholar who publishes lectures and essays at JustPeaceTheory.com. She received her PhD in religion and society from Temple University and taught Christian ethics at United Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School.
http://blog.sojo.net/2010/07/22/shirley-sherrods-true-revelation/