From here:
On a shopping trip in Palo Alto, Calif., Rice asked a white salesclerk to “see the better earrings.” Instead of obliging, the clerk pulled out costume jewelry. Rice flipped out: “Let’s get one thing straight. … You’re behind the counter because you have to work for $6 an hour. I’m on this side asking to see the good jewelry because I make considerably more. And I’m asking to see the good jewelry.”
The writer thinks this story is about race. But there’s a reason many blacks think the class gap is so wide that it no longer makes sense to speak of a single black race.
In another story about Rice and civil rights, a white activist questions her commitment, and she shuts him up by saying she’s been black all her life, but there’s no explanation of why her commitment was questioned. Or maybe it’s implied by stories like the one above and the only other story that’s told about Rice and race: her mother insisted that if a store wanted to sell them an expensive dress, Condi would try it on first in their “whites only” changing room. Rice worked for civil rights the way Bush wanted America to react to 9/11/1: by shopping.
Other than some statistical correlations, what do race and class have to do with each other?
Does winning a lottery change a person’s race? Writing a best seller? Getting an MD and practicing? Becoming an alcoholic and losing everything?
Actually, you could argue that in the US, winning the lottery does change your race: OJ Simpson was acquitted just like any other rich person.
But race, like gender, is just a way that the US nuances class. Traditionally, male WASPs have it best, but no matter what you are, throughout the US’s history, if you’re rich, you’re better off than anyone of a lower class.
I responded to this in the wrong thread!
You’re not the first one to do that! I answered you here. I dunno if wordpress is a little confusing for LJers or what.
As I think we’ve discussed before, I’m totally in agreement with you that class is a larger factor than race in the way people are treated / the opportunities they get / how successful they end up being. If all goes well, it’ll someday be as nonsensical to speak of something as being ‘in the interest of all black people’ as it is to say it’s ‘in the interest of all white people’.
That said, since I love to give you a hard time…you can’t really dismiss the dress story SOLELY on the basis of it being about a commercial transaction. After all, so is buying a bus ticket. I’m sure there are other holes to be shot in it, but I wouldn’t start with that one :)
Touchstone, never feel obliged to stop with the hard time!
I will admit that sometimes the right thing to do is shop. I have unending respect for the folks who integrated the luncheon counters. But I’d like Condi better if I didn’t get the sense that to her, civil rights meant the right to be one of the exploiters instead of one of the exploited.