Re: income & race

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rakesh Bhandari wrote:

>I said that I found it
>dubious that "race" explains the accentuation of income inequality itself.

Who said it did? I brought this up in the first place because I noticed a
significant narrowing of racial income gaps over the last 5 years in the
U.S., and wondered if anyone else had noticed this and if there were any
explanations for it. The gender gap is also narrowing; the 1996 gap for
year-round fulltime workers was the lowest in history. Put another way,
white male privilege is eroding slowly.

There are many reasons why U.S. incomes are the most polarized in the First
World - the weakness of unions, the weakness of the welfare state, a
primitive political culture, etc. But race is no small part of why our
unions and welfare state are weak and the political culture so idiotic. We
can go on about race being a constructed category, which it is, but it is
now pervasive and almost feels like a fact of nature - and its construction
was present at the creation of the other factors I listed.

Doug