race & class

Alex Lantsberg wideye at ziplink.net
Wed Jun 24 12:38:17 PDT 1998


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



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