Obama and Gates -- Racial vs Class Prejudice

Barack Obama was the child of a high status black Kenyan and a upper middle class white American, brought up by his white grandparents in the most racially integrated state of the United States, educated in elite institutions, who had achieved a high economic status via his writing. His socio-economic class was quite within the range of American presidents of the 20th century.

Henry Gates, a Harvard professor, author and television personality, was

arrested when having misplaced his keys he reported to be trying to break into a house which was in fact his own. His television program on the genetics of American blacks included evidence that about half his genetic inheritance was European and half African.

It seems to me that Obama when running for president and Gates when arrested were in comparable socio-economic classes. It also seems to me that Obama would not have been elected president had he not been perceived as in appropriate socio-economic class for the post. It also seems likey to me that had Gates been a typical white Harvard professor locked out of his own house, the police would have helped him enter rather than arrest him. The police mistook his being black for his being of low socio-economic status and thus in their minds suspect for breaking and entering.

Racial prejudice and class prejudice are confounded in American culture. I remember as a boy in California there was considerable prejudice against the white immigrants to the state who had flooded in in desperate poverty from the dust bowl states. The popularity of "red neck" humor is another indicator that class prejudice still exists directed at white Americans seen as of lower social class.

With a history of slavery and Jim Crow, a lot of people with African ancestors are stuck in lower socio-economic classes, suffering from both class prejudice and remaining aspects of racial prejudice.

We don't like to think of class prejudice in America, but it is here and I suspect that we will not do a very good job of dealing with the problems of our underclasses until we recognize how class, racial and ethnic prejudices are interrelated.