This is an article that attempts to draw conclusions about race and class relationships in America from Ferguson and Park Slope, both of which (for those of you not from America) are extreme outliers --- the former being an artifact of overt, systematic, institutionalized and organized racism (St. Louis redlining and white-flight turned them into a sort of equivalent of Paris' banlieues), and the latter being a haven for the economically elite of America's most prosperous city.
Had the author spent time in the Ozarks, in mid-sized rural midwestern cities, in predominantly white manufacturing suburbs in the rust belt, or for that matter in most US cities other than New York, their conclusions would have been different.
Race is certainly an issue in the US! I just doubt we have much to learn about it from the fact that white corporate lawyers living in Park Slope are willing to have Jamaicans be nannies. It is not in fact that case that middle and upper-middle class families throughout the US tend to have black nannies, the way corporations in Dubai tend to have south asians as construction workers.
They're not outliers. Go to almost any large American city and there is a poor area where most of the black people live, and a better off area where most of the white people live. That's America.
(a) I live just off the corner of Chicago and Austin, on a block with section 8 housing, minority-white, middle-upper-middle class. Any race, income, or crime map of Chicago should clarify what's interesting about those cross-streets. Tell me more about race and class relationships in big American cities?
(b) Your second sentence rebuts an argument I didn't make, and in fact overtly rejected. Nobody who pays any attention to the US would argue that race and class aren't tied together in the US. I certainly didn't.
(c) Ferguson and Park Slope are outliers in exactly the way I spelled out in my post. If you'd like to debate the point, I'm happy to debate it with you, but you're going to have to be more specific. As it stands, your current argument is essentially "Ferguson and Park Slope aren't outliers because the sky is blue and people have ten fingers and ten toes in both locations".
(d) I'd guess we have about 10 minutes to discuss this post before it's (thankfully) flagged off the site.
Had the author spent time in the Ozarks, in mid-sized rural midwestern cities, in predominantly white manufacturing suburbs in the rust belt, or for that matter in most US cities other than New York, their conclusions would have been different.
Race is certainly an issue in the US! I just doubt we have much to learn about it from the fact that white corporate lawyers living in Park Slope are willing to have Jamaicans be nannies. It is not in fact that case that middle and upper-middle class families throughout the US tend to have black nannies, the way corporations in Dubai tend to have south asians as construction workers.