- I don’t think that racism is all a ploy by the rich. I think it is something poor whites deploy all the time in order to maintain their power at the top of the racial hierarchy. Poor white people have privilege too, there have been studies showing poor white children go to prison less than wealthy Black children, for the same crime.
2. I think the difference is I see white people as a group as the ruling class. Poor white people uphold white supremacy because they benefit from it, they receive privileges and material benefits that Black people of any economic class don’t get.
3. I’m fighting the efforts to get Democrats to drop “identity politics” (civil rights) in an attempt to recenter the white working class. Dropping “cultural issues” is a direct threat to marginalized peoples.
4. The Democratic Party HAS been attending to the poor. The Republican Party attends to big business interests. The white working class votes GOP. I don’t think they have a problem with big business or elites. They aren’t upset about the Goldman Sachs execs in the Trump admin, or him appointing the richest cabinet ever. They don’t care. They only care about opposing minority interests, and the GOP does that. If the Democrats opposed minority interests, they could have the white working class vote too.
5. The war has already started I think, and I hope the Civil Rights side wins out. If it doesn’t, minorities simply won’t turn out. You can’t reject our needs, ignore our interests, claim to know better what we want, then expect our vote. We won’t turnout for candidates like that. And given that the Democratic Party is at least one third nonwhite, the party cannot win on any level without us. We are the most reliable Democratic voters — not the white working class, not independents.
