Race and Class (pt 2)

I'm going to try and once and for all address the issue of class (and the way that race plays a role in class) in America in the hopes of feeling like I can put this to rest for the time being.

America is a capitalist nation.  Our economic system creates, by the virtue of the way it exists, economic inequality.  This inequality is ultimately explained as the just way that scarce resources are distributed - if people were not lazy or incompetent or stupid, they wouldn't be poor.  So, naturally, people are ostracized and demeaned and dehumanized for being low-class.  Class becomes the structure of our social system, a product of our economic system, but not merely, or necessarily, dependent on income.

Race and ethnicity play their role in this system because certain groups are assumed to be higher class because of their race (read: White) while others are automatically class-suspect due to their race (read: Black).  Individuals and groups then, given that our purpose in life (at least in the US) is to climb the economic ladder, vie for inclusion in the assumed successful group and typically do so by avoiding the cultural signposts of the pariah group.  There is an argument made by every group that they should be accepted within the concept of "White" and much of this is by arguing that they cannot be associated within the Other concept: "Black".