|
lower class white people don't HAVE any prestige. What they DO have is white privilege--and unfair or not, they will fight tooth and nail to protect it, because our society has fucked them so royally in every other way, they're terrified to lose the last remaining advantage they have left. That makes it easy for them to rationalize racism and believe the lies they're spoon-fed on a regular basis.
I sincerely believe that when the economic despair of the lower class (regardless of race) is finally addressed in a substantial and meaningful way, a lot of people will open their minds and listen to new ideas. Unfortunately, so long as the lower class suffocates under the boot of the wealthy and the powerful, they aren't going to be willing to give up whatever perceived "privileges" they have--earned or not, fair or not, wrong or not.
I have seen the same phenomenon in some black people, in regard to gays. I have been verbally assaulted many times for being a lesbian and wanting the right to marry, but the most vehement often seem to be the people that I would otherwise be *allies* with on nearly all other issues--black people. The most recent incident was during an English class, where we were supposed to be peer-workshopping each others' papers. Mine was on same-sex marriage, and the two black students in my group both got absolutely livid over some of my ideas--especially when I drew parallels between the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Rights Movement. The young woman said, "There is NO similarity between wanting my God-given right to equality, and some gay person wanting the right to break God's rules. NONE. You need to not even go there." The other guy got so angry about my paper that he literally walked away from the group and said that he wasn't going to "listen to that bullshit." I left class in humiliated tears over it. These two people had been two really good friends until then--all of us are Obama supporters, and all of us are very liberal about most things. It never occurred to me that they might be anti-gay. It just seems so insane, coming from people who KNOW how much damage bigotry can do, and how much it hurts.
I talked to a university counselor about it--an older black woman who used to be a high-school counselor--and she straight-out told me that it's just a part of religious black culture in some places, and that I shouldn't let it upset me too much. These two students were both from Deep South states, and their lives were probably hell growing up. Victimized, oppressed people tend to be more likely to victimize others in turn, because it makes them feel better in some primal, subconscious way. This is true of every race and every culture. It's worse in some places than others due to regional differences in values, but it's rare to find a bigot who hasn't also been a victim at some point or another in his/her life. Black people are victims of a racist society, poor whites AND blacks are victims of classist oppression, and the only way to stop the cycle is to address the root of the problem--economic despair. Racism is learned, not inborn, and it's learned because the wealthy assholes at the top WANT all of us peons to hate each other and blame each other over stupid things. It keeps us from focusing so much on the abusive atrocities that the upper class perpetuates on the lower classes as a matter of course.
Get rid of the root cause behind this primitive emotional desire to feel superior to *someone*, and I truly think that a lot of the protectivist bigotry in the lower class will ease. It won't disappear, because there will always be a few random assholes. But it will lessen enough that being a bigot will become something to be ashamed of, not proud of.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
