If History Is Any Indication Class Warfare Is Here To Stay

Racial disparity is a real problem in America.  By every social measure black people fall short when compared to racially generic majority predominantly controlled by white people.  It has been this way ever since African people were brought to America against their will to become white people’s property.  When the United States became a country, it was written into the Constitution that black people were only three fifths human and were to be considered white people’s property.  President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, but there was nothing done to correct the huge injustice that was perpetrated on the black community.  Essentially, our ancestors were freed and then left to fend for themselves.  Entitled to government funded schooling, black schools were never able to get the funding equal to their white peers for whatever reason.  People were allowed to blatantly discriminate against black people with housing, employment, education, medical care, police protection, government representation, and everything else that come with social living.  It wasn’t until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that black people were able to be recognized as social equals and efforts, although often timid, were taken to reverse the injury to the black community.

But then somebody got the bright idea that anything done to correct the problem of racial disparity would in itself be racial disparity.  For example: a school that had a history of excluding black people from enrollment would wind up with a student body that is overwhelmingly white.  In order to correct this problem, the school would reserve a number of enrollment opportunities for black students.  But now, the white students will protests saying that they are now being discriminated against and that black people are now getting an unfair advantage, even though the student body is still overwhelmingly white.  Our society has a history of giving people in the white community every advantage over black people, but if we do anything to correct this social skew we now have a condition of reverse discrimination.  So now, our Supreme Court says the best way to combat racial disparity is to stop looking at racial disparity and let the chips fall where they may.  In other words, the system that has given white people every advantage cannot be corrected because to do so would be too much of a burden to white people and the best practice is to keep the status quo.

All this is old history.  Many will deny the facts.  There’s nothing holding the black community back these days.  Despite the fact that we hear politicians saying that black people don’t have a work ethic or black people live with a sense of entitlement to white people’s wages, many of us will pretend that black people have the same opportunities as white people in our society.  If that were true, people wouldn’t be going around saying that black don’t have a work ethic and other baseless racially charged statements.  We’ve gotten to a point that we accept racial disparity without question and will in fact defend it with equally charged statements about how per capita black people apply for welfare and such.  But we forget the fact that per capita black people suffer from discrimination and will have no other choice but to apply for some government assistance.   What started this chicken or the egg argument is really beside the point.  The fact remains we have a history of disparity and we will do nothing to correct that disparity.

Lately, there’s been a lot of attention devoted to the income disparity that has become such an integral part of our national collective.  Somebody somewhere got the bright idea that it would be better to tax investment income at a fraction of wage income.  People who can afford to put money into making more money are rewarded with a lower tax rate giving them more money to invest money will get a break over people who have to punch a clock and devote a large portion of their time in the employment of others.  The vast majority of people who file taxes will have the vast majority of their income taxed at a much higher rate than people who can afford to sit on their ass and collect a dividend check.  This income tax disparity is garnering a fair if not longer overdue amount of attention at center stage of our national politics in this year of presidential campaigns.  Some will argue that there is no problem here because everything is legal while others will say that this income tax disparity is a prime contributor to the national deficit and our inability to pay for the services we get from our federal government without going deeper into national debt.

Our investment income peers and the people who love and worship them claim that any attention given to this disparity is nothing more than class warfare.  We could try and correct this inequality.  But if we do that then we will be practicing the politics if divisiveness pitting one group against the other.  The problem isn’t the fact that we have a tax disparity.  The problem is that some of us think that people who can afford to make millions of dollars off of their investments of millions of dollars should be paying the same income tax rates as the majority of slobs who aren’t so fortunate.  That’s not the politics of disparity.  That’s nothing more than old fashioned fairness.  Somebody made the choice to separate wage and salary income from investment income a long time ago and that was when this division was made.  Now, we need to practice the politics of unison and make sure that we all are back on the same footing.

But if history is to repeats itself, and somehow it always does, the issue of income disparity will follow the same path as the issue of racial disparity.  The idea of the wealthy paying the higher income tax rates as the rest of us wage earners will follow the same course as black people trying to fight for true equality in America.  The people who are in charge, the people who had the social political muscle to create the disparity and impose their collective will on the weak will have more than enough strength to defend what they want.  White people were in charge in America and have defined the terms that black people live under.  The wealthy are in charge and have defined the terms that the rest of us live under.  Nothing will change.  Income disparity is here to stay.  If the experiences of the black community are any indication, people need to hunker down and get used to it.  It’ll be a cold day in hell before this shit changes.