Look Out, Are You About to Join the White Underclass?

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Look Out, Are You About to Join the White Underclass?

By Joe Bageant, JoeBageant.com. Posted July 18, 2009.

"We're starting to hear a little discussion about the white underclass... Mainly because so many middle class folks are terrified of falling into it."




"White underclass" is a term I've used often in my writing, and most American readers seem to know what I mean. They've got eyes and live in the same nation I do. But in a sudden burst of journalistic responsibility, I decided that if I am going to throw around the word underclass, then I should offer some clearer, perhaps more scientific definition.

So I started writing this with a pile of published research papers before me. Now they are in the trash can by my side. Looking down on them, I can see the gobbledygook titles, the stuff of which government policy and political platforms are made. They run together in slurry of the language of our society's commissars: Concerning-Prevalence-Growth-and-Dynamics-Concentrated Urban Poverty Areas- block-level vs. tract-level segregation-800-tract-tables-urban abstracts-Defining-and-Measuring-the-Underclass-from-The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management-statistical-summary-of…

What I find is that nobody in social science seems to agree on the term, or, being firmly placed in the true white middle class themselves, even agree if such a thing as a white underclass exists. You can't smell the rabble from the putting green. To others, some blacks for example, the term white underclass is an oxymoron, or maybe yet another new white social code word to be deciphered. I can't blame them for their wariness. You have to be an American to even get these code words. For instance, for all practical purposes and to most Americans, regardless of race, the term "middle class" means "white." Plain and simple. We all know that, even members of the "black middle class."

Middle class also has implications of people's occupations, usually white collar occupations, though it also includes some of the ever thinning ranks of blue-collar workers. But this comes down to describing human beings solely in terms of their jobs in the capitalist labor marketplace, and assumptions about income and whether one takes their daily shower before they go to work or after they come home. By that definition, anyone of working age who doesn't have a steady job of the right type, for whatever reason, is in some sort of "economic underclass." In other words, they are the people that middle class folks feel should damned well be working, if they are over age 18 and have a pulse. ("If I gotta do time in this meaningless workhouse of a nation, you do too!") This underclass includes any people of color seen on the street at midday during the week, single mothers, and paraplegics too, now that the middle class is paying taxes for handicap parking spaces and wheelchair access to the public shitters. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/141405/look_out%2C_are_you_about_to_join_the_white_underclass/

[hfojvt]

1. kinda ridiculous and insulting to say the middle class means white

Harrington's book on poverty was written in 1962.

And wouldn't you know I cannot find my copy to provide an exact quote, but I remember him writing that 'most of the poor are white'. It was true then, and it's true now.

[H2O Man]

2. Harrington influenced King

by focusing on that point. The result was best illustrated by King's last planned demonstration: the Poor People's Campaign.

[rurallib]

3. It would make sense especially in 1962

because most of the people were white that most of the poor would be white.
I am no social scientist, but I would bet that the poor whites are less concentrated in cities and therefore easier to pretend they don't exist. Small western and midwestern towns and rural areas.

[AnnInLa]

4. exactly

since most of the people in the US are white, there are more whites in the poor category. But within the "black" category, there is a higher % of "poor" people. It's the % that counts.

[NashVegas]

6. "Most Americans"

I could be wrong, but last I knew, white people were still the majority, and among low-income people white people still make up a minority.

How the hell are you going to change a single thing if you can't accept the basic facts, as they are, in front of you?

[hfojvt]

8. accepting basic facts

You not only could be wrong, but you are wrong. Poverty rates are lower for white people, but total poverty is higher. Here are the stats

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/macro/032008/pov/new02_125_03.htm

36,707,000 people below 125% of the poverty level
Out of that number 24,673,000 of them are white. Which is 67%.

Of course, if you take out the hispanics that number drops to 13,641,000 which is only 37%, but I am not sure why that should be done if the hispanics in question are just as white as the non-hispanics.

If you look at a poorer group, those below 50% of the poverty level. There are 10,376,000 of them and 6,229,000 of them are white. 60%. Only 34.8% of them non-hispanic.

Even in the "worst-case scenario" there are 13,641,000 Americans shouting BULLSH*T! to the statement that "middle class means white".

[NashVegas]

9. Hey, Fine, I'll Rephrase It

and among low-income people white people still make up a minority, proportionately.

[NashVegas]

7. Poverty Trends By Race

Middle class people who think of "poor" or "low income" like a contagious disease don't go into low-rent neighborhoods.

[InkAddict]

5. I dunno....

While I don't like the "tone" of this editorialist (them's fighting words in so many ways) I think I understand his frustration. When I was a child...I understood as a child...and believed. That was the first mistake. Having the misconception that one could quite easily "step away" from RW religious fundamentalism/zealotry through education, location, and different practices...well...that was the second...Take the lesson: Where two or three are gathered, there am I in the midst of them...isn't that the ultimate political set?

"Just who do you think you are?" is a question especially designed to denigrate and enslave. My question is when does feeling a sense of worthiness in one's imperfect humanity, when does curiosity create innovation instead of being a set up for murdering cats, when is the discontent at being hemogenously mediocre bad for one's own "small world", when does that imperfection at being just a human being capable of love and empathy, giving and receiving, become hubris or send one on the slippery slope of despair? Luv U More?

Leaving aside the argument of baptismal "adoption" into God's family, when one's human creationists fail to stop judging and charging their own small creations with Treason by reason of their own failures, or perhaps their own great success at suffering by reason of their Perfection,...one wonders why should anyone else would/could/should step up to that terrible task to empowering "others" and when others (out in the unrelated real world do so by offering stimulating, fulfilling work that feeds or ideas to learn and tasks to accomplish, in the smallest of ways, it's difficult not to consider it a con because You Know Who You Are and you are so much more deficient within your very core.

You know you are "normal" not perfect, yet the singling out as being "imperfect" from conception never really goes away. You are indeed poor, but it becomes unrelated to accomplishments or wallet contents and it knaws at one's every decision.

[obliviously]

10. We need to throw away te lable makers! N/T

[Odin2005]

11. I've always been in the underclass.

Grew up in a working-class family in a poor rural area, am now part of the disabled poor.

Welcome to our hell.