race & class

[Alex Lantsberg]

It really seems that the higher the person rises on the socio-economic
scale, the greater their isolation from community (and reality) grows.
People get high paying jobs that they drive to ALONE in their cars, sit in
their plush offices, and then drive home ALONE so they can enjoy the
isolation born of the technological revolution.. When these people drive to
their sprawling suburban homes, they drive THROUGH real communities that
struggle everyday and are generally of color and low-income.  The driver
never sees or connects with the reality that their actions have a direct
effect upon.  Subsequently the driver thinks that everything is A-OK.

Maybe this is a little simplistic, but seems nevertheless true.

________________________________________
Alex M. Lantsberg, Project Coordinator
Southeast Alliance for Environmental Justice
744 Innes Ave.
San Francisco, CA  94124
alex at saej.org
___________________________________

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
[mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 1998 12:03 PM
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Subject: race & class

Hmm, that Sleepyhead song continues to be the soundtrack. All we need is
the ton of grass.

Anyway, in The American Perception of Class, sociologists Reeve Vanneman
and Lynn Weber Cannon present evidence showing that there's nothing
incompatible between class and ethnic identification - on the contrary, the
two are often correlated. They theorize that the real contradiction is
between "the committed individual  who is closely enmeshed in networks of
both class and community, and the isolated individual who has little
identification with any group."

Doug