I get it.
It’s one of the reasons Bernie tries to strip the color talk out of the class talk. He is one of the few who will speak frankly about poverty in the US. But he doesn’t want to talk about the system that has funneled so many people of color, especially Black people, into poverty.
If you link poverty to minorities, white* people care less. When Pew pointed out that the justice system was unbalanced, white people were outraged. When Pew then noted that Black people were disproportionately affected their response was a collective shrug. White people care less when negatives disproportionately affect People of Color, especially Black people. Even when they, themselves, are also negatively affected.
When covid19 was hitting the international jet setting crowd represented by white celebrities and powerbrokers people were happy to hunker down and flatten the curve. Healthcare workers, exposed without personal protective equipment, were initially hardest hit. We cried for and revered them.
Then demographics showed the elderly and those in communities struggling with poverty were being decimated by the disease. On Native American lands the infection and death rate was, is, stunning. Essential workers, who were disproportionately people in low wage jobs that often lack benefits, and who (surprise!) were disproportionately Black, were more likely to be exposed, to develop the disease, and to die.
White people reacted by going out unmasked, in mass to protest the restrictions that were in place to save their lives. Because they no longer saw it as self protection. It was “the other” who were dying. As one middle-aged white man interviewed in the Washington Post noted, “Looking at the demographics affected, I’m not worried.” In other words, once again white people don’t give a fuck about dead people of color. Especially dead Black people.
This is why white people are not working to dismantle the system. It’s like the quote from the classic Jane Elliot clip.
“…If you white folks want to be treated the way Blacks are in this society – stand! – Nobody is standing here. That says very plainly that you know what’s happening. You know you don’t want it for you. I want to know why you are so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen for others.”
This is why I say, in the US, you can’t talk about class without talking about race and you can’t talk about race without talking about class. If we address the inequity and inequality of the American class system without addressing the systemic racism that is an integral part of the infrastructure then, at best, the Black underclass created by that system will be better off but still isolated into an underclass. At worst, white people will be lifted out of poverty while People of Color, particularly Black people, are shoved down. Historically, it is the latter that has happened in America.
*Obviously #notallwhitepeople. If Jake got trampled by elephants and I’m telling the story I’m going say Jake got trampled by elephants. Clearly, not all elephants trampled Jake. But the fact is Jake got trampled by elephants.