Some have been arguing here for a struggle for equality, basically for class-based efforts. But why can't we struggle for maximum equality and address the racial dimensions of this struggle at the same time. The longstanding and persistent gaps between whites and blacks in any aspect of economic and demographic life you care to discuss suggest that race has a certain independence from whatever we might do to achieve greater equality. Whites and blacks are still worlds apart throughout the United States. For example, other things equal, in Pittsburgh where my kids grew up, they were a lot less likely to be stopped and frisked, arrested, etc. than their black friends. The cops wouldn't know that we probably had more money than their black friends' parents.
What explains the boatload of data I provided in a previous post? Just poverty and low incomes, just growing inequality? I don't see how this view can be argued. A white skin doesn't give the benefits it once did, but a black skin still means, on average, a lot of bad things. That nearly half of all prison inmates are black is a fact that is hard to explain simply on the basis of class. Building a movement that acts as if this isn't so is unlikely to meet with much success.
Anyway, just some thoughts I have had while thinking about all of this, something I have been doing for a long time.