The racial wealth gap "worsens political and economic outcomes for the entire country."

[JCanete]

5. The " rising tide lifts all boats" approach is total bullshit, but has nothing to do with

class warfare. That's trickle-down Reaganomics nonsense.

I absolutely agree with you that social and economic justice are intrinsically tied together, and I don't think it is valuable to place economics over social justice. That said, thinking that we can fix social justice without tackling the mechanisms that make social injustice so lucrative, is a losing battle. (note though: everything in your post is exactly some of the ways in which each message lends itself to the other..the way we should be talking to people in these voter communities...wow, a Forbes article?)

This is a puzzle of human psychology and we can't ignore how humans think...not if we're going to change how they think.

People are too easily led by fear. Loss avoidance and insecurity in the face of scarcity(real or perceived) do not make people more rational and capable of being humane, or of abandoning the foundations that their realities have been built around. That's just too damn scary. Under these circumstances, in those rare cases where they do suffer cognitive dissonance about how they think they and the world ARE, versus what actually presents itself, their own efforts to resolve that dissonance only further drives them to accept stereotypes or other justifications for continuing inequality. The limbic system is in charge, and the Cerebral Cortex entirely its bitch.

So making the mistake of not giving these people something to actually focus their fear and anger at, while simultaneously telling them that people of color are not getting a fair shake, is all kinds of triggering, because what they hear is that we are coming for "THEIR" stuff, and its already getting harder and harder for them in this Kleptocracy we call America, and while this has absolutely nothing to do with immigrants or minorities, they've been told the opposite their entire lives. And now they're feeling the crunch too, and our economy is a fucking bubble. People make less than they did 20 years ago and they're in about 20 thousand more dollars of debt than they were back then. Our economy is living on credit.

In fact, the only good number I've seen is that poverty rates for black Americans has decreased, while on the flip side poverty rates for white Americans has increased...but even that's an incredibly deceptive number because people of color do not have more actual wealth than they used to, and in this unequal society, as you and the article pointed out, minorities always get shit on the hardest. The ways in which these communities are being taken advantage of by financial institutions is certainly a crime against humanity.

But that all brings us full circle to forces of economic injustice and the fact that predatory Capitalism fuels social injustice out of greed. In turns, scapegoating or making communities invisible and vulnerable is all about the bottom line..it's all about the big con. Are some of the fuckers racist as hell? Yes...but there's one color they believe in above and beyond all else. Everything else is a means to that end.

We can erode racism. We can do it big. But we have to do it by being clear about what we're going to get for everyone(otherwise the rich will continue to use welfare and immigration as wedge issues). We need to do it by being clear and loud about how we're going to give people what they are ENTITLED TO, and that we're going to do it by taking it from the people who have hoarded the world's wealth from all of us. And because that is part of our narrative, talking about racism and inequality is no longer perceived as a threat...it's no longer about raising taxes on the middle class to give to the poor...its about making their lives better by taking our worth back, and its about making the rich institutions that are bleeding all of us, the actual racists...because they're the ones using tactics and propaganda to make us kick down and not look up.

People generally think of themselves as good. They want to be good. Their own self-worth is tied to that, which is why they work so hard to make others sub-human when they intend to exploit them, or feel like they are threatened by them. It's part of the human narrative structure. That's why us channeling that opposition away from scapegoated communities and towards the rich who have gotten away with branding themselves as geniuses and job-creators and philanthropists for far too long, is so damn key.We do that and we can change people's paradigms. We brand a system that is screwing everyone as racist and people can start distancing themselves from anything with that characterization, because we didn't already put them under that umbrella to take umbrage at even while they grip its handle tightly.

Am I being too Pollyanna here? Oh yeah. I don't actually know that this is a winnable fight. Money is power and the top 20% have 80% percent of it at their disposal, and they will certainly invest highly in maintaining the status quo. I'd love to see the fight waged though.