[internaut]

It's a class issue.

Americans confuse a former iconography (civil rights era) with existing circumstances. Today they have a class divide, not a racial one. That many POCs are in one class and not another is misdirecting idealism. The plight of urban blacks is so well documented that it is a television trope, but the poverty that exists in the countryside and even entire cities stagnating and evidence of decay is more or less ignored e.g. Note how the Tiny House movement is an attempt for 'middle class' poor mostly to differentiate themselves from 'those people' living in trailer parks (who in turn would be appalled if they were conflated with those living in section 9). Presiding over it all is of course the spread of the gated communities. This is all an emergent class structure similar to the one that developed in Europe centuries ago.

In my country, any time we hear of Southerners, the implication is immediately that they are red necks, racists, ignorant jesus freaks.

We don't get that from our television or radio. We get it from your movies, television and radio.

Many europeans don't realize they are inadvertently being drawn into (one side of) a culture war on a different Continent e.g. see BLM protests in London.

[Throwaway23412]

"iconography"? Dr. MLK, Jr. literally died 48 years ago. There are people who marched with him still alive today. I don't really get this fantasy that what MLK was protesting just magically went away in less than five decades. We've had wars last longer than that.

People who say "It's a class issue" seem to miss that it's much easier to recognize race than class.

People discriminated through redlining (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining) would disagree that "It's a class issue":

>For example, in Atlanta in the 1980s, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles by investigative-reporter Bill Dedman showed that banks would often lend to lower-income whites but not to middle- or upper-income blacks.

People who read the stats showing the differences in sentencing between black males and white males, even when controlled for income, would hardly say "It's a class issue."

[internaut]

I didn't claim racism does not exist. I'm aware of the things you mentioned.

I am saying it mostly does not matter. I'm also aware this is not a popular view, but put that down to conditioning by the media. Their specialty is to draw attention to some things and not others depending on their bias after all. If the media people don't know, then you won't know, they only see the visible things and the death of investigative journalism and lack of serious big-picture reporting not in service to a paymaster has given them tunnel vision.

Suppose you 'solved' racism.

You would still have all the problems you have today. None of the education, poverty issues are going away just because of a lack of discrimination. Economics is tied up with class in a way it is not with race. The good news is that solving economic problems can solve for social issues like class conflict. Many migrants to America were from the bottom classes of Europe and they did very well for themselves when out from under the thumb of the old system.

Europeans have been dealing with class issues for centuries and we know what they look like. You don't have our history, yet, but you're going to. Social mobility in Europe is higher in Europe than in the US now, although perceptions have that in reverse.

If you believe otherwise then you believe that the US is following a different trajectory than nations before it, and I see no evidence for that belief.

[exclusiv]

5 decades is a long time. Look how far Japan and Germany went 50 yrs from WWII.

[porpoisemonkey]

I don't think the conclusion that it's solely, or even mostly, class based is correct.

Up until the 1965 there was open discrimination towards minorities enshrined in law. That's a mere 51 years ago from today - well within the lifespan of Americans living now. The United States also has a well-documented history of active disenfranchisement of different races.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_legislation_in_th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

Just about every crime statistic you'll come across also shows higher incarceration rates for minorities however the number of impoverished Americans of caucasian ancestry dwarfs any other minority group.

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf

My own personal experience growing up in the American Midwest is that racism is alive and well in those areas. I vividly remember open and profane discussions about blacks amongst the local population being spouted by both adolescents and adults. This included the gratuitous use of what is colloquially referred to as the N-word (in the offensive fashion).

[internaut]

I believe you. It is just that there exist black communities outside of the US, both in majority white countries and in Africa, which have managed to improve their circumstances radically (sometimes from a very low point, but that definitely counts). The experience of stagnation is acute in American society despite overall higher levels of wealth. If one supposes the lower branches of the social mobility tree have been lopped off then it makes sense.

None of this is to say racism does not exist. I've heard plenty of talk about niggers and kikes before also. Plenty of racism in black and white communities is extant. I believe affirmative action is an example of, and an encouragement to, racism.

It is that class dwarfs all other issues in relation to inequality.

If you have the wrong accent, ghetto or southern, you aren't going anywhere in society. Getting elocution lessons and changing your name are tactics that would further your status in American society.

To put it in this way: perhaps at most hundreds of thousands to low millions are badly discriminated against on racial bias but anywhere from ten to hundred million people are affected by classism. Scale matters!

Look at how Hulk Hogan needed the backing of a billionaire, to get his lawsuit funded against Gawker. This is evidence of wealth discrimination (a big proxy for class), and we're talking about the justice system discriminating against a millionaire here! From here it can only get worse the poorer or lower your status is.

[acjohnson55]

People said the same thing 100 years ago. "Black folks are free, what's their excuse now?" Looking back, it's pretty obvious. 50 years ago, Jim Crow was officially over, yet many extremely racist policies persisted. To this day, we have racist policies, even if not as brutally as in the past.

[John23832]

Sadly, in America race often defines your class.