On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:07 AM, Jerry Barnes <critic...@gmail.com> wrote: > > "So it's not being a minority that causes poverty, it's the culture of being > poor." > > Exactly. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Which is what I've been talking about distinguishing class versus race and current economic situation. Unfortunately, race has historically been strongly linked with class in the United States. If you look at England, pre-Industrial Revolution, they didn't have a middle class to speak of. It was also pretty uniformly caucasian. But there was still a very strong distinction of class which really set up expectations about what you could aspire to be/do. The industrial revolution helped create a middle class but it is still the case that classic class distinctions there help determine a notion of what you can be/do with your life. Society is less stratified than it used to be due to economic changes and the resultant social changes, but it is slow to change. Here in the US, we didn't have as much of an entrenched class system. Class distinctions, however, became more tightly correlated with race in the US. The creation of the middle class in the US fell largely along racial lines. White people got a middle class in the US far before any other group. When you don't have a middle class, it creates a culture of poverty. You may have a handful of examples of the fabulously wealthy but when the bulk of the people are poor and there isn't much in the middle, where are you going to see a way up? There just isn't an obvious path. We've been losing the middle class for the last 30 years. This has and will reinforce a culture of being poor. And when it comes to increasing job losses, increasing gaps in wages, destabilization of home values, etc., the middle class groups comprised of minorities are more at risk than the white middle class because the black middle class (or hispanic middle class, etc) is smaller and newer. The culture of poverty can be found anywhere. It certainly happens amongst whites, I grew up in the middle of it. But I think that you are deluding yourself if you don't think that there is a historic component to it and that historic component, in the US, is largely racial. We're losing the middle class steadily but we're losing the middle class in minorities faster and sooner and that isn't a random thing. Juda ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:323366 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
