Political Correctness, Segregation and Capitalismm PART 4

Segregation

While PC culture effectively ended authentic communication between whites, the divide between people of color and white people also grew, making it even easier for white liberals to ignore racism.

Gentrification, The War on Drugs, the end of integrated bussing in schools, and failed attempts at holistic affirmative action ensured further racial separation. Black and Brown peoples were being incarcerated at an alarming rate, further pushing them into the undercaste so well explained by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow. Those who escaped incarceration were living in increasingly deteriorating urban areas with lack of infrastructure, job opportunities or quality schools. White people, on the other hand, were living better lives, which increased our sense that all was well. But, people of color were living worse lives, arguably worse than during the civil rights movement.

White liberals remained isolated and blissfully ignorant of the plight of our neighbors because we did not see them; we did not have to. Our wealth allowed us to move out of the poor areas and live in suburbs where the worst part of your day was a flat tire or an irritating coworker. Whites remained blind to the poverty and militarized policing of people of color. Our schools and jobs were good and there was just enough people of color amongst us for us to convince ourselves that all was well. They were “minorities” after all; didn’t that explain why there were so few amongst us? It couldn't be due to racism because we had convinced ourselves that racism no longer existed. Because we had shaped our own identities so tightly around the belief that we were the good white people, we lacked the courage to interrogate the integrity of our own beliefs and behaviors, or the systems that we were a part of.

We never asked ourselves the disturbing questions: why am I not friends with those few minorities in my school and neighborhood? Why does the simplest communication between us feel so awkward? I’m not a racist…but why are they so…different, and why does that difference make me uncomfortable?

The racist middle class and affluent whites were undoubtedly happy to be separated even more from people they believed to be inferior, and the smaller portion of impoverished whites living amongst a majority of people of color convinced themselves further that people of color were the source of their problems: the immigrant stole their jobs; the “welfare queen” was the reason they could not get enough government help to escape poverty...