http://counterpunch.org/chestnut11192005.html

Here’s an excerpt:

“Ms. Rice’s father, a prominent pastor in Birmingham, looked down on [Fred] Shuttlesworth and his small working class congregation, and publicly called them ‘uneducated, misguided Negroes.’ But, in 2005, a life-size statute of Shuttlesworth stands majestically for all the ages in front of the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum. Rev. Rice’s monument is his daughter’s high position in a Republican administration that has 2% support in black America. That is poetic justice personified.

“On the flight from Washington, Ms. Rice told Mr. Robinson, ‘I’ve always said about Birmingham that because race was everything, race was nothing.’ So, 40 years after her
father denounced us, Ms. Rice reduces segregation, the movement, all the deaths and sacrifices to one word, ‘nothing.’”

Clinton ” basically adopted Ronald Reagan’s policies in order to secure power.”

Bush lied his way into a war that has slaughtered over a million people.

Yeah, that’s the same.

If only I could block that out. It makes me want to weep and chuck things every day.

Here in Australia we have Noel Pearson, an Aboriginal bureaucrat (I’m sorry, *activist*) who just happens to agree with our glorious leader (whom you may have heard of) on every subject, even when it means harm and degradation for our people. Right wingers just fawn on him as he misrepresents Indigenous viewpoints and aspirations to the mainstream.

He is also one of the voices behind “reforming” welfare, which just happens to hinge on kicking people off their land and assimilating them. All the while he sits pretty up in Cape York on his family’s mining money and none of it touches him. He has education and a *capitalist* handout, not a socialist one, so he feels better than every other Aborigine.

As for that first suggestion you made, “They’re paralyzed by shock and horror at the vile extremes to which Republicans will go to secure power.” Well, look at Bill Clinton, who basically adopted Ronald Reagan’s policies in order to secure power.

About Condi and class, I’ve been looking for an excellent article I saw on Counterpunch.org some time ago, which did a nice job of excavating where she comes from. Money isn’t everything in matters of class, folks. There’s also education and other forms of status, and Rice’s family had that sort of thing. Such people have to lift their skirts out of the mud to show their superiority, because snootiness and disdain are all the cultural capital they have. (Rice now has a lot more than that, of course, but it’s being in the “talented tenth” that shapes her sense of self.) Two reading recommendations: Cathy Cohen’s “The Boundaries of Blackness”, which details the African-American community’s response to AIDS — the “talented tenth” were horrifying in their hatred of low-class Negroes, and basically wanted them to die of the disease. It’s a chillling read. And the other … dang, I forgot. It’ll come to me.

I just came back here and re-read your breakdown of the classes. It reminded me of how rarely we hear rich people admit in public that they are rich.

But I am remembering Bill Clinton’s keynote speech at the 2004 democratic convention. He was talking about tax cuts for the rich and he kept pointing out that he was one of those rich people being given obscenely large tax cuts.
I think he is one of the few people who admits he is rich without any guilt because he is trying to “use his entitlement altruistically” as you put it.

For purposes of clarity, let me state my terms: When talking of American classes, I divide us into poor/raised poor, working class, middle class, and owning class. About 80% of people who are working class in America (especially in the South) believe they are middle class; hence, why politicians appeal to “middle class” values, etc. Our actual middle class is very small. The poor category is large and growing.

Owning class refers to not just folks who “own the means of production” but who have inherited meaningful economic advantage in various forms. Forbes (I think) did a study several years ago where they asked the top 500 wealthiest people how they came their money, and almost 90% had been given the key advantages (education, influence, family business opportunities, etc.) that made them rich. Nobody’s earning their own wealth in this country, except for the tiny percentage of entertainment industry individuals (including sports figures) who are held up as examples to keep the rest of us from realizing how stuck we are.

Overwhelmingly, people with serious economic privilege frequent ONLY environments where they mingle with others like them, a bubble world. Children raised owning class have pounded into them the message that the rest of the world hates them and would like to see them taken down (which is mostly true). They are expected to do something meaningful without being given the tools for community connection or leadership. They live in mortal fear of being “found out” and cast aside as adults. They’re extraordinarily poor leaders as a result. We can all see how well this system is working out.

Although — I insist on pointing out — some owning class individuals are raised with a connection to community or acquire it as adults and use their entitlement altruistically. We have at least one such woman reading this list. Honesty about wealth and embracing community values tends to get rich folks ridiculed and ostracized by everybody. They’re not trusted as much as the upper classes who lie about their economic advantages and circumstances.

Poor and raised poor also grow up with the message we are an expendable class. We, too, feel a profound disconnect with the rest of the culture, and live a masquerade.

Working class people understand their survival is linked to community, and maintain community identity ahead of individual success. Middle class folks are the biggest believers in the myth of class mobility, especially the value of education.

But most of us, of course, are the products of mixed class backgrounds; cover-ups and denial abound.

Mary Cheney was raised in a cocoon of wealth she’s never left. Condi was not raised in it, but her parents did hammer relentlessly on her to rise up the class ladder. She “switched classes” without undoing or, likely, even recognizing the conditioning that creates class. A hundred years ago, Americans believed that class was a biologically measurable and inherited identity, like people still believe about race and gender. This essentialism remains in our confusion about the value and mechanism of “class mobility.”

So, Condi’s acquired identity of wealth has bought her entrance to a world where they talk about us as “the other” who despise them. On the day that Katrina destroyed New Orleans, the blackest city in America, Condi went shopping for obscenely expensive Italian shoes in New York. I suspect that was not an accident; the means of maintaining dissonance (and holding fear at bay) are few and predictable.

And, yes, Doctor E, you’re right that Ann Richards’ campaign would never have done the dirty tricks that Rove dreamed up. But — it can’t be stressed enough — they also did not begin to have the kind of money and economic influence W. was given by his Daddy’s friends. The difference is exponential.

The Bushes are extreme Northeastern owning class establishment. W. went to public school in Texas for part of seventh grade; otherwise, he was educated at expensive private schools, mostly in New England. His innate curiosity was crushed early. He was clearly never given an outlet for excellence or proving his value outside rigid owning class routines of playing around and abusing substances. He returned to Texas because he felt less like a failure here — the Texas owning class based on oil money is another example of how people can become rich without working for it, and they’re all equally uncomfortable with reality.

When it was decided by W.’s Daddy’s friends that he could get elected Governor, maybe (if they hid enough of his past), the coffers were bottomless. And I don’t mean just campaign money, but also the means of buying illegalities.