Race and Class

Posted by Jack Stephens | April 25th, 2008 | Crossposted from The Blog and the Bullet

Atlasien at APA for Progress, writes:

Rachel from Rachelstavern.com asks, “Why does “Working Class” mean white in our political discourse?” Once I thought about the question some more, I realized that she was right, and “white working class” is a symbolic redundancy. Class is kept neatly separate from race. In national media, when do we ever hear about the black or Latino working class? And the Asian-American working class is perhaps the most invisible of all.

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4 Responses to “Race and Class”

1. Radfem Writes:
   April 25th, 2008 at 6:19 am

   I wonder that too. But it might be like someone said in another thread, Whites who are poor are more likely to be assumed to be working. The welfare stereotypes particularly those involving Black women are pretty prevalent even among progressives.

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2. Thene Writes:
   April 25th, 2008 at 9:00 am

   In British media, the phrase ‘white working class’ has come up a lot lately, largely because someone - I forget who - started talking about the very obvious fact that the white working class have been left behind by media and politics in the last decade or two. I’m not seeing how the POC working class have been left behind any less, personally (though there is a lot of focus on British Muslims in the media…but little of it is good).

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3. Petar Writes:
   April 25th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

   It all depends on where you live. In manufacturing, in California, working class defaults to Hispanic. In South Carolina, it means “white working class”, as opposed to “damned Mexicans who are taking our jobs”.

   But you are right that the words do not conjure blue collar black people. Of course, it’s probably just me, as I do not know any. Not a single one. We have many black salesmen, at least one black warehouse manager (I’ve not seen them all for years) and some black accountants. The marketing director’s been black for a month. No black people on the machine floor.

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4. Joe Writes:
   April 25th, 2008 at 3:57 pm

   The marketing director’s been black for a month.

   …before that she was just really really tan.

   Sorry, I know what you meant but the way you phased that seemed funny to me.

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