There is a line of demarcation drawn across the people of America. And it is both convenient and accurate to call this divide the haves, and have nots. It defines everything about our current situation in America.
The only odd thing about this very real and distinctly American divide is that somehow those in power are capable of redefining the divide in other ways. They claim it is all about race.
As if a poor black American has some greater connection to Oprah Winfrey than the white American in the trailer park nearby. As if the struggling black youth in a poor school system with extremely limited personal resources has more in common with Beyonce than the struggling white family across town in public housing.
Color doesn’t define opportunity in today’s America. It used to for sure. But no longer. How else can you explain that we got to be lectured nightly by black, gay, Don Lemon about how racist white America is, how they system is rigged against Black America, in which case if that were true, Don Lemon as a black, gay, American would never be allowed by this “system” to rise to the level of being able to lecture us all nightly.
That he is allowed to preach his poison makes his argument a self-evident lie. Yet nightly his viewers bought into his narrative. “We” are oppressed. Pay no attention to my seven figure annual salary and Manhattan condo.
While the number of people who could afford the Manhattan condo he owns, take the vacations he affords himself, and live the Manhattan lifestyle that he does is so very few in both black and white America, he claims this to be the white domain. White commuters struggling to travel an hour both ways into Manhattan to work who can’t afford a Manhattan condo are invisible to Don Lemon. Somehow in the system he slanders, he, Don Lemon, overcame against all the odds he claims keeps him “down”.
We somehow have to hear the same diatribe from a Jemele Hill, that blacks are a victim of systemic racism, that white people have white supremacy, that black people aren’t allowed to get ahead and cannot get ahead. As she succeeds in perhaps the most competitive of careers sports journalism as a black woman who by dint of her argument shouldn’t be able to attain the lofty position that she indeed has achieved.
A truly “racist” and “white supremacist” America wouldn’t allow either to thrive.
One listening to both of these people rant and rave against all things white must wonder how her audience does not see through this. It is oxymoronic, I am black and in a position to lecture all of America including white America from my high paid position on television about how people who look like me have no chance in this racist society to achieve the success to gain a job in a position to lecture all of America about how racist they are for not being allowed to have the job I currently have.
Huh?
Both of these individuals put themselves into the top one percent of earners in our country. Though they may have come from humble beginnings and therefore do not yet possess the accumulated wealth to be in the top one percent of wealth holders in America. That is a different metric indeed. But years, and years of earning at the one percent level can certainly lead to building and holding generational wealth.
At some point Black America is going to have to recognize their “enemy” isn’t white America, for though Oprah and Obama are both “black like me”, neither works hard to lend a hand up. One is busy living a lifestyle in Santa Barbara that would be the envy of ninety-nine percent of white America, and the other is living a lifestyle in Martha’s Vineyard that would be the envy of ninety-nine percent of white America.
Your common patriot as a struggling black American can be found in the trailer park sitting at the kitchen table worrying about which bills to pay first, and whether or not they face replacement by technology at their minimum wage position.
Wealth is the great divide.
This point is made clear across pretty much every layer of American life, and activity.
No matter how white you are if your income and status falls below “standards” there are country clubs you will never be allowed into. And in most money isn’t a factor either, it’s your pedigree, your standing in corporate America. A newfound lottery winner from the wrong side of town is not getting an invite into Pine Valley.
We are divided by wealth and stratified by wealth in this country absolutely. And even beyond wealth we stratify. New money made in ways found to be unseemly will still be ostracized in social circles in a Palm Beach, or Jackson Hole. Old Money, and ridiculous wealth is at the top of the food chain in America. If you are Jeff Bezos few doors would be closed to you, no matter your roots, a hundred billion places you beyond petty judgements. Family money made generations ago, but still held in hand creates a pedigree that is unquestioned.
Unfortunately today it is the “haves” that have all the power, yet all the hubris. They hold the poor not with pity but outright contempt.
These haves enjoy congregating in the larger cities. These are not country folk, unless the country is a Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or some ranching region where they can spread out on thousands of acres and get far away from the actual people who fed their fortune. From their perch in Manhattan, San Francisco, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, the Miracle Mile in Chicago, they simply do not understand or care to understand the problems of those people in fly-over country.
I’ve only once listened to NPR, way, way back as a college freshman. I realized very quickly that these people weren’t like me, at all. Oh sure they were white, but these were the kind of people whose parents sent them to the finest colleges, gave them a wedding present of fifty grand to assist with that first home purchase, and who just automatically came of age with tens of thousands in the bank. They’d never had a car payment. The very idea for them of a transmission repair bill bankrupting them was completely foreign to them. They purchased new, or certified pre-owned cars that still have warranty coverage. Some enjoyed clinging to an aging Volvo, but not out of necessity. Replacement was just a number in the checkbook.
For NPR employees a car repair bill was a deduction from a bloated bank account, not a credit card charge with eighteen percent interest added in payments that stretch well into the future.
For NPR broadcasters and their listeners money was of no daily concern. So they had time, all the time in the world, to worry about other things. Civil rights, single payer healthcare, race and discrimination. When you have no worries about daily bills, late payments, or the cost of things you want to buy then you have extra time to become radicalized and involved in social causes. Those tired from working two jobs have little time for protests and causes.
Poor white people worry about bouncing the next check, they are not near as concerned about race, race relations, and prejudice as NPR say they are in this day and age.
There isn’t enough money to escape the rabble and hide in homogenized gated communities. The middle class now is made up of people of all stripes. They are all neighbors. Two income black families in today’s America can live anywhere middle class whites can live. For single parent black families it is a very different story. But DC, Atlanta, are full of middle class families of color.
People involuntarily group by status due to money. You can either afford the gated community or you can’t. And It usually comes to transpire that people move into the neighborhood that they can afford, and hey, look at that, everyone around them can afford the neighborhood too. Because everyone who can move up will, and everyone who can’t see their home repossessed. So look around, race be damned, everyone you live with of all colors is in the same middle class neighborhood as you are. Yet somehow you are to separate from your neighbor by color. Your actual neighbor.
And what has happened is that our economy has been shaped and designed by the haves. And more and more they are leaving the have-nots behind. Wittingly and unwittingly.
Overseas production ruined American manufacturing. Which ruined good paying jobs that fed American families, even on one salary. With those jobs now long gone we shifted to a service economy. Where the jobs that replaced the factory jobs simply do not come with comparable pay. Over time wives had to enter the workforce not just due to the feminist movement and “being all you can be”, but out of necessity.
It was sold to them as self-empowerment. But now two had to work to make the living created by just one in the old manufacturing days.
And now? Well now technology is infringing on the service economy, and putting people out-of-work in every way. Perfect markets have decimated the purpose of middle men and distributors. Everything is for sale online. Direct. Cheaper, easier, better. No industry is safe.
As Tech replaces those shifted from the manufacturing economy into the service economy and now out of a job altogether, more and more are facing serious financial issues, and earning a living wage is becoming harder and harder. At the same time tech is causing an upward transfer of wealth to those who hold ownership or control in the “too big to fail” companies that now dominate our economy. The few are getting ridiculously wealthy as the many suffer the consequences.
“Perfect markets” can make paupers of all but the few, those in charge of an Amazon, an Alibaba. And though some sectors are still robust, the energy business, where the oil business can produce quite a few well-paying jobs, and even “rough necks” on the platforms can earn well over two-hundred grand a year and more, that entire industry is under attack. The “elite” are on a quest for clean energy, and making every attempt to put the energy sector out-of-business, one of the few high paying verticals left in the US.
The few continue to see a wealth transfer to their coffers not seen since the days of the railroad barons, the bank barons. The rest of the country struggles.
And make no mistake, though many college educated professionals who consider themselves doing well in our economy, and think themselves part of this “elite” as they move to New York City and Silicon Valley, and San Francisco, they may all be well paid but they quickly find out that even those lofty salaries do not serve you well when the cost of living is so high.
I had to laugh reading a column by one social climber who thought they’d “arrived” in New York City by dint of both earnings and accumulated wealth, only to find that the added costs of “fresh flowers” delivered weekly, full-time maid and cook service, and costs they didn’t expect to have to keep up with the condominium neighbors, to be such a burden on finances that they realized that getting there is one thing, staying another. As mentioned in this column, “we didn’t have a gift wrapping room”. As in a room solely dedicated to wrapping presents. No room just for massage either. It’s expensive at the top.
Americans have to stop allowing politicians to divide us by race, by color, by opportunity.
We must unite around our shared challenges.
“We”, the middle and lower classes far outnumber the donor class of “elites” who most benefit from this economy. We must stop allowing them to buy up our politicians that we send to Washington, DC. We must begin to hold those politicians accountable. “We” want a closed border. Our politicians ignore us in favor of what the donor class wants. It is far past the time to vote out of office anyone who doesn't follow the will of the people. No matter how seasoned they are in Washington.
If we group by class we cannot be beaten.
If we group by race we will always be beaten.
The sooner people wake up to that fact, the sooner we can begin to make change for the better in our country.
Absent an effort to seize back the country from the donor class, we are all collectively doomed. All of us. Of any race or color.
This is the description of Marxist ideology. And yes I am a simple thinker. Blacks sold their own as slaves in Africa. The white elites here are using their made worse plight as a critical issue in keeping the pot stirring. The majority of people are windshield observers of what is going on. They are not hiking the trail. They are sitting at the trailhead taking pictures. The elite know is easy to manipulate when most people have less than half knowledge about what is happening. And no they don’t care and are willing to sacrifice millions of lives for the revolution.
The RACE card again! How old can this get? How many times can we hear of the plight? How whites are "RACIST"? How blacks deserve "reparations"?
As Ive mentioned many times in my posts, I am about as far from racist as one gets. I grew up in the 70's, was athletic, had scores of black friends, listened to 80% soul, r&B, and funk music, and literally ALL my heroes were BLACK... Im WHITE! Its old, its tired, its played itself out, yet the upper-middle class WHITE American (particularly Democrat and particularly female) continues to buy into it.
There's BET... if there were WET we'd have riots... There's Ebony and Jet magazine... if there was Ivory we'd have uprisings... there's the NAACP (which should be the NAABP, because we dont say "colored" anymore)...if there were an NAAWP we'd have a march on the Capitol! Add to that with the fact that the last 4-5 DECADES have seen nothing but REVERSE discrimination, minority grants, and social programs designed to benefit blacks, and we've done EVERYTHING possible to not only level the playing field, but tip it 180 degrees in the other direction!
The Civil War is over... slavery was abolished over 150 years ago... Every many now has true equal opportunity. Its up to the black culture to take the steps necessary to succeed, and I believe it starts with the preservation of the family unit. INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY is the key. No more excuses, no entitlement, no reparations, no handouts... Gitter' dun folks....step up....answer the call.