gurrier said:
The mainstream media in the US is racist (or more accurately uses racism) right across the board.
From my distant perspective, that's a better way of describing it. As I see it depends on the media:
Conservative newspapers and radio attack the poor- white, Puerto Rican, black, white whatever- when it tries to organise in unions or demand changes in Medicare or Welfare-- for "playing the complaining card", occasionally "playing the sympathy card", and only on the most extreme of occasions "playing on class hatred". Class is only very rarely mentioned in US mainstream media.
Liberal media gives voice to liberals (!) and NAACP Southern Baptist "carrying on the flame of MLK" black leaders (Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton) are also unwilling to talk about class because it ultimately runs against their agenda which seeks to wed a higher proportion of blacks into the liberal capitalist system (a process they have done well out of with lots of black middle-classes supporting their foundations and charities)- and so they are the ones interviewed and given airtime because it suits capital to have an oppositional voice based on "general racism" not class.
Because there is such a large proportion of blacks in poverty
the conclusion from such reporting and opinionating is either:
Poor people are basically lazy and worthless- and the only logical conclusion from this is that black people are more lazy and worthless since a larger proportion of them are poor and criminal etc
OR
General racism committed by whites against blacks is the problem- suggesting a vast white conspiracy between rich and poor alike to keep black people down (rather than the workings of unreformed capital(most poor stay poor))- utterly absurd and deeply offensive- [One could say effectively racist against the majority of white people who are not racist as the conservative position argues].
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The only people the majority of poor blacks and poor whites talking about class are "communists/progressives", Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders- who are in the main middle-class.
The proportion of middle-class people being what it is means most of these voices are white middle class ones.
Not surprisingly it doesn't really wash with either- because these types tend to talk the talk and not walk the walk.
Even worse "communists/progressives" also talk a lot in essentially liberal Jesse Jackson terms about a "racist to the core society" when race is not the central dynamic- as a result many poor whites are
very sceptical of this talk- since poor whites are the majority.
Physical segregation of society is also problem I'd agree there:
An eighth of Southern black students attend a school that is 99 percent black. About a third attend schools that are at least 90 percent black.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31604-2004May16.html
