About class, not really about race

Source: MSNBC

The ‘Jena Six’

Things are looking up for six black teens charged with trying to kill a white classmate last year after a Louisiana court vacated the conviction of one of the men. But national civil-rights advocates say something remains very amiss in the small town.

People may be puzzled by the endurance of weird racism in the United States, as consider the story linked to above where the start was with white teenagers angry at black teenagers sitting in what was considered a whites only area--a spot under a tree.

So how is it about class and not race?

Well, if the town could send a message to its black teenagers that they are second-class citizens who have to defer to whites, is that not telling them that the whites are nobility?

Story after story of American racism when looked at from a class perspective really are attempts at one group asserting its nobility over another and demanding respect.

In England in the past, nobles could have people physically punished for not giving them "their due". Calling a lady, a lady was not about choice.

American racism is best interpreted as I have said before as an attempt by one group to make itself a noble class in this country along the lines of what its members saw in their country before they came here.

It is so hard to stamp out as it is about a social safety net, where the belief is that all you have to do is be in the top class and live off the bottom one, which is that naive perspective of how British royalty worked--or did not.

So if only those pesky black people would accept their role at the bottom, then the upper class could get to the business of enjoying life! Like in jolly ol England.

Now not every person labeled white in the United States thinks this way, and I'd think that the majority do not.

I believe that the majority of people in this country like a middle class way of life, and would actually get sickened by a real upper class riding herd over a dominated "commoner" class, but while they ignore the reality that not everyone in this country thinks the same way, they allow these people to create very un-American situations, like a special tree for only whites, and punishments meant to send a message to black kids who stepped over the class lines drawn.

That's not the United States that most people think of, when they think of here.