[quote]Mascherano wrote:
[quote]Stronghold wrote:
[quote]Professor X wrote:
[quote]OBoile wrote:
[quote]Mascherano wrote:
[quote]OBoile wrote:
While I don’t doubt that racism exists in education, the example you give appears to be discrimination against poor people, not against non-whites. As JoeGood says, that is “classism” not “racism”.
[/quote]
Again, I don’t disagree with this - but in my view, and in terms of “institutionalized racism”, classism is inherently racist since people of color already start off in a disadvantaged position when compared to their peers.
[/quote]
Except that there are plenty of wealthy black people and plenty of poor white people. Labeling classism as racism ignores these groups and therefore is not accurate.[/quote]
It may not be perfectly accurate, but to deny that “classism” can have generationally RACIST effects is just naive. It may have been “classism” when a company first starts its hiring practices, but 20 years later when this is done across many corporations, it will no doubt effect blacks and hispanics on a much larger scale, therefore making is a racial issue as well.
You are using semantics to ignore the overall effects on a grand scale.
White poor people existing does not erase the larger racial effect when looking at THOUSANDS of people.[/quote]
What? Arguing semantics? Is that what you say when you know you’re wrong about something but refuse to admit it?
You are calling what is actually an inherent bias founded in economic stratification RACISM, which is, by the very definition of RACISM, incorrect. Racism is SOCIAL stratification.
From Merriam-Webster’s:
Racism:
1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2: racial prejudice or discrimination
Just because the stratification falls along racial lines AT TIMES does not racism make. Racism explicity requires a prejudice based primarily on race. Correlation =/= Causality. Race and class are CORRELATED but certainly not CAUSAL. You want a CAUSAL relationship? Being poor in the present tends to cause being poor in the future.
You are trying to do your usual tapdance around the facts by dismissing what is really relevant evidence that is entirely contradictory to your claims. Appalachia and even much of the rural Southeast demonstrate fairly well that the issues in education and resources are due to inherent CLASSISM. Underperforming schools are underfunded because of a low local tax base, not because any minority is in attendance. This is discrimination based on INCOME, not race. If it were racist (by the DEFINITION of racism, those damned semantics!), then whites in low income areas would somehow be exempt from the ill effects of coming up in a poor area with dysfunctional schools. As proven by Appalachia, parts of the rural Southeast, and destitute areas of the midwest, this is hardly the case, therefor, RACISM is not the culprit.
This bullshit you are spouting off is the typical “blame everyone because we’re black” rhetoric that shuysters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have used to dupe a generation of potentially gifted and talented young Americans into thinking that it’s not their fault because THE SYSTEM is out to get them and that they DESERVE special consideration because of things that never happened to them personally.[/quote]
That was a thoughtful answer Stronghold, and if we are going by the strict definitions of race and class, then I’ll concede that you make a valid point. And i do agree re: your argument on appalachia, which i too cited.
Class stratification, as you state, does indeed intersect with race altho it is not dependent on race. But what you fail to mention is the fact that stratification is a measure of socioeconomic status which is a combination of several factors that include income, education and occupation, as well as the income, education and occupation of a person’s parents.
Now, if you hold that all people of color were and are given the same opportunities to achieve these factors (income, education and occupation) as whites, keeping in mind that blacks only JUST were given the right to vote (civic participation being one of the means to persuade policy reform in the US), then you could say that class and race are indeed mutually exclusive. But it is my belief that based on the historical plight of black people in the US, people of color were not given these same opportunities, and as such, are at a disadvantage and that due to this fact, class is inherently racist.
Is it semantics? Kind of. A Marxist approach would state that the only driving force for social change is based on economics, so class is simply that, an indicator for ones economic position. And even still, as I quoted, Marx stated that popular ideology is based on the views of those individuals who have the means to purport their ideology, which in all cases in the US were white people. However, a Weberian view would assert that ideas, or ideology/culture, is the driving force for social change, such that those racist views (or Protestant ethics more specifically) have permeated all facets of social life, including the division of labor and economics more generally.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that stating that class and race are completely separate based on their definition is a very ahistorical view, and you’d be hard-pressed to make any claims based on definition alone.
[/quote]
Class, being defined as economic standing and entirely dynamic on a large scale within generations, has nothing to do with race when you boil it down to CAUSALITY, which is required if we are going to pursue the accusations of racism presented by X, et al.
Racism requires discrimination on the basis of race, but by the myopic definition that X, et al. are trying to argue for, motive is of no consideration, as ANY action that does not serve the best interest of a minority must be racist.
Certainly in a historical context, tying economic standing and race together is obviously necessary, but attempting to compare the outlook for young minorities today to what their grandparents and great grandparents went through during Jim Crow, segregation, etc. would be a vast disservice to those who suffered through the true racism of the past. Being that nearly 3 generations have passed since the enfranchisement of minorities in the US and the continued establishment of affirmative action programs in education and the work place, I would argue that the stratification you see in income, education, and occupation is largely the result of economic stratification, especially with regard to the education system, rather than overt racial prejudice. The implementation of affirmative action over the past 45 years further excellerates the speed at which individuals and families may remove themselves from poverty. The fact that, in many cases, more opportunity is provided to poor minorities than to poor whites lends credence to the possibility that the achievement gap is not a product of racial discrimination, past or present, but rather the product of socially and economically underachieving norms created and propagated by black popular culture itself. To ignore the hardships and racist realities of the era before universal suffrage would be ahistorical, but to also ignore the tremendous efforts that have been made in the name of accommodation since the mid 1960’s as well as the lagging levels of achievement by minorities in spite of those efforts would also be ahistorical.
RE: Differences in education
Our schools are largely dependent on the strength of the local tax base, so poor areas tend to have poorly funded and underfunctioning schools. It is my belief that we may be moving towards a more centralized funding model for our education system (this is something that is currently being discussed in SC at the moment, BTW) that would eliminate much of the variability in the ability of schools to effectively prepare students.
A few personal anecdotes, I live in one of the fastest growing and per capita wealthiest middle-class communities in the nation. The next county over, however, has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation…so dismal in fact that President Obama actually mentioned it fairly regularly during his campaign speeches in 2008. My high school has similar dropout rates for students of both races and the % of graduates that go on to higher education is comparable between races. The next county over, however, has one of the highest dropout rates in the state and on a statistical basis, the white students are just as likely to drop out as the black students. These are lines drawn on the basis of economic stratification, not racial discrimination.