Working Class Reflections

You hear about white privilege and you also hear some white people say they never got any.

Of course being white in America does open up some doors and keeps you from being racially profiled.

If you are white working class you don't feel privileged and in many ways you see others getting privileges that used to be yours.

I was talking about Unions the other day and many of them, especially the tradesmen ones were reserved for certain people with the right relatives or connections.

Well it was still a bit hard to get in and get that Union pay but then they had to open it up to minorities and women. This eliminated people who had expected to get in because there are only so many apprenticeships to be had.  To those who lost their place in line the privilege seemed to be on the other foot.

It has always served the interests of the true elite in this country to prevent the working class of all nationalities unite.  After the Civil War poor southerners were told that freemen were going to take their jobs, their farms and their women if they didn't watch out.  It restored the pre civil war power structure pretty quickly.

That tactic has been so successful it continues today although it has been expanded to include other nationalities.  

The privilege you get as a white person in this country is not so much economic as social.  When you lump together the working class white people with the elite, it may look like they are doing better but that's not universal.

The divisions and resentment are real if unjustified.  Everyone is doing the best they can to survive and as a society we need to give them that chance.  Building the America of the future is our chance to restore economic prosperity to the entire working class.  Reducing income inequality using the tax code is also needed.

When you are struggling to survive the enemy isn't the person in the mansion, its the person competing for the good job.  Changing that is the real challenge.