There Is No Black Working Class

There isn't much point in debating whether Hillary's latest stupid statement is racist or not. What you call it is probably beside the point. But it does deserve consideration:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

I think the bigger thing is the way "the working class" is so often racialized. In the popular imagination, we never think of black men--or black women for that matter--as being laid-off from the local factory. That's fascinating given that one of the more cited interpretations of the urban plight of black folks revolves around the disappearance  of unionized, unskilled (read: factory) jobs. It also, to my mind, demonstrates how the term "disproportionate" becomes quickly conflated with "most." In other words, we know that undereducated with criminal records have trouble finding work. But most black men don't fit into that category, and most black men (heh, and virtually ALL black women) fit very comfortably in the working class (to the extent that there still is a "working class").  Still, the popular image of your average black person  is that of a slothful loafer, living off the largess of the state. Meanwhile middle-class blacks are nothing more the recipients of Affirmative Action. Only white people who drink Pabst Blue Ribbon work hard. They are the truly disadvantaged.

I don't know if equating "hard working" with "white" was a dog-whistle, or what. I don't much care. Hillary is on her way out. She's a joke. The surest sign of someone being an effete latte-sipping liberal is their acceptance of Hillary as an ambassador the white working class. Why don't we send Karen Hughes back to the Middle East, while we're at it. Nothing would be more catastrophic than for Obama to reach out to Hillary in some vain hope that she'll bring more white males to his camp. I think he's smarter than that. I'm hoping on Clair McCaskill or Jim Webb.