Reddit mentions of Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs

There's probably a whole separate discussion on just how much federal policies that we generally think of as benign -- like New Deal home mortgage support, or the GI Bill after WWII -- were passed through Congress with support from Southern Democrats by making them difficult to impossible to get if you are Black. It's an ugly and ignored part of US history, putting the institutions into institutional racism.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' piece for the Atlantic is a good place to start. Nice summary of redlining in Richmond VA here. David Roediger covers some of it in his history of the construction of "whiteness" among formerly shunned immigrant groups.

I understand by your posting and comment history that you live in a small town and don't interact with a lot of radicals. So you might want to check your ego and listen to this.

I'm a light brown woman, and I can tell by your language of "those women, people of color, or lower class participants", that you are a middle class white male. (By the way "white" doesn't necessarily describe the color of one's skin. Race is a farce created to separate people who were/are/feel entitled to privilege. Suggested reading Working Toward Whiteness.)


Have you actually participated in Occupy Wallstreet? Or Occupy Anywhere? Because I have, and it looks like a constant wall of white male faces. White males dominate the stack at GA, the open mic, they are the majority of the participators in the Occupy movement. If this were not true, then OWS would not prioritize their stack to include women, POC, and other disenfranchised groups first. If this were not true, the People of Color Caucus would not exist in most occupied cities. If this were not true, then the Occupy The Hood outreach would not exist.

You know what is ABSOLUTELY OFFENSIVE? That you, think that you can speak for me. As a light brown woman, you don't speak for me.

edit: I accidentally a word.