but then you also run the risk of over-generalizing. If you're white and poor and live in what most people live in--a mostly white community--you are the target of some of the kinds of behaviors you're describing. There's no race issue because there are very few black people. There has to be someone to discriminate against and poverty's it! In one famous "urban village" I lived in, the poor minorities were recent e. European immigrants. They got the brunt of the crap. I remember one of my son's 7 yo friend's giggling about how the Ukraines (all generically labeled Ukraines no matter where they were from) spoke that funny spanish!
(NOTE: I'm not making equivalences here. What I'm trying to get it is what people miss when they over generalize: the opportunity to make some headway by understanding race/racism as a "process not a product" ($1 Bruce Schneirer heh heh) Conceptualizing the issue as racialization--the marking of bodies and refusal to erase the identity of _white_ by only focusing on blacks and others who _have_ race.
What about if you're poor and living in a black neighborhood? I once worked for a small chain restaurant as an ass man. I was in charge of hiring for a new rest. we were opening. I was going through the pile of apps, deciding which to call. The owner said, "Don't approve any apps from this part of town. He showed me on a map and wrote down a list of street names to watch for." (I quit.)
A public defender once said to me, "if you're poor, you're guilty of something, so I don't bother to go the extra mile and they usually don't either. They know they've got something to hide and they just want to get through the system." He was Hispanic, from Texas, and grew up poor himself.
If you live in a poor neighborhood, the cops bust into your home. My one white neighbor was busted for small-time dealing. He was beaten during the arrest. There were ten cops in his apt the day I went there to get his kids. They also stop you if you're driving the wrong kind of car, regardless as to whether you're white or black. (No, i don't deny it happens more freq. to blacks) It's because you're in a poor neighborhood. Your white skin doesn't buy you a whole lot under _certain_ circumstances. I got the impression that was what Jenny was initially getting at: stepped up war on drugs does spill over into white people's lives and the poorer are going to get hit first.
What it buys you, though, is this: if you're unjustly treated, you are more likely to fight it. You feel indignant! you don't have to deal with a whole host of bars in that bird cage of oppression. You're more likely to know how to work the social services system to impress the SS workers. You have a sense of expecting certain things in life. You may be more articulate and if you stand up and fight, you don't have some social worker thinking, "Damn them people sure get kinda crazy and fly off the handle easy." like many of them say about black men and women. You don't also get ignored when they're seating tables at Denny's. etc. That article I linked to, Tired of Playing Monopoly, covers this nicely.
That's a whole helluva a lot more complicated then suggesting there is some sort of uniformity. It also bring in, uh, status and, unfortunately, talking about stuff like that drives carrol up a tree too. :)
Here's the thing: If you managed to get rid of racialization as we currently understand it, wouldn't something necessarily take its place. What do we call that? Well, it's kind of a silly question but it's meant to get at how race/gender/class/able-bodiedness are all bound together. Oooop, pushing Carrol's buttons again. :)
None of this is meant to deny white skin privilege. I absolutely know exactly how it works.
Kelley
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'