| What's the outcome for a white kid born in a trailer park vs. a black kid born in a wealthy suburb? I don't think this is a productive framing when there is a huge excluded middle in there, but to your point, when have you seen an upper class white person treated like Henry Louis Gates?[1] See also: Paul Mooney's "Nigger Wake-up Call"[2] Americans are focused on race being a primary driver of inequality and distracted away from the much bigger issue of class. Class is a function of race in the US. "The latter argument—“the issue is class not race”—claims that because we have poor and well-to-do people within all racial groups, what matters is really class difference. As the argument goes, differences in average wealth across racial groups are in fact caused by persistent class differences; race no longer has a measurable effect. Again, this dismissal of the issue of race does not hold up to empirical scrutiny. Class matters to be sure, but so too does race. Moreover, studies find that minority groups are not able to pass middle or upper-class status on to their children with the same frequency as Anglos. And the “class not race” argument simply avoids the most pressing question: Why should there be such drastic class differences between racial groups to begin with?"[3] 1. http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/specials/... 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw8cDmLpuzg 3. http://www.guleninstitute.org/publications/analyses/240-how-... |
If it were to happen to an upper class white person, it would probably not become a national news story in which the POTUS involved himself, as was the case with Henry Louis Gates. So the fact that I haven't heard of it happening to an upper class white person does not suggest, at least to me, that it hasn't happened to an upper class white person.
And as I recall from the news reports, Gates became confrontational and argumentative with the officers who were investigating the report of the possible break-in at his home, as was their duty. That might have been a contributing factor in his getting arrested.