The Ism Whose Name Cannot Be Said

Certainly racism has grabbed the headlines and rightfully so. There were the protests and counterprotests in Charlottesville that turned violent where the violence produced one death. There is still the disproportionate exercise of police violence on and incarceration of minorities. In fact, there are some white people who never questioned the consistent abuse of power exercised by police until a white women was shot by a non-white police officer.

But racism is not only exhibited in flagrant examples, Blacks have been telling us for years that racism has been alive and well despite the progress made by the Civil Rights Movement and many of us have been ignoring them. In addition, inner city schools where the student population consists of a higher percentage of minorities have been suffering from never ending budget cuts. And finally, what many whites won't consider is that school performance can be linked to the economic hopelessness and the home instability such hopelessness causes, of the neighborhoods in which schools are located.

Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement knew that if there was no economic progress accompanying progress in the obtaining of legal rights, then minorities would become disillusioned. And yet, news about income and wealth disparities between races shows nothing but increases (click here, and there). But income and wealth disparities are also growing between the economic classes (click here, and there, and there again).

With the growth in income and wealth disparities comes a shifting of political power that also feeds the continued growth in income and wealth disparities. Those with wealth have access to more resources to ensure that the government pays more attention to their concerns than the concerns of others (click here and there).

Now what we should note is that the growing income and wealth disparities result in political influence based on wealth is part of what could be called economic classism. And the growing income and wealth disparity between the races sees the combination of racism with economic classism. 

We were promised by the Republican presidential candidate that he would employ the best people and work to represent the concerns of working Americans. But this same candidate who has become the President has shown nothing but an overeagerness to cut regulations that protect workers and the environment in order to please his economic peers.

We have an economic classism problem in our nation that is, at best, being ignored by politicians of both major political parties. And this classism problem is not totally separate from our problem with racism. 

From a Christian perspective, we should note that the most influential branch of the Church, Conservative Protestantism, is not addressing economic classism. Instead, it has done all it can to get us to focus our attention inwardly on personal sins while either defending or saying nothing to challenge the current economic system that is feeding the growing wealth disparity. Such a position shows that the Church, at least the conservative branches of it, is content with repeating history where the dominant branch of the Church supported those with the greatest wealth just before the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions. And because of that, revolutionaries had an easier time with portraying the Church as an enemy of the people. As a result, not only did many people suffer, but so did the reputation of the Gospel.