Do you know any poor white people?

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He said that? I can see what he was getting at, but that was a really bad way of wording it.

Anyway, yes. I come from an area that's full of poor white people. IceSpear, your comments in this thread are disgusting.

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Actually IceSpear does kind of have a point. I have seen people here argue, for example, that the Democrats should abandon environmentalism in an effort to win West Virginia, which is incredibly ridiculous.

However, "Other people on Atlas are bigoted too!" isn't an excuse to be bigoted. Classism is a form of bigotry.

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It was one of the most tone-deaf things that Bernie said in the debate.

He misspoke, I think he was going overboard in trying to appease the identity politics left. It's a lose lose situation though as if he just talked about the poor he'd be accused of ignoring racial issues.

It might have been a misspeak, but it's a hell of a time to do it.

It was a definitely a misspeak. Sanders has represented Vermont for over 25 years; he knows that poor white people exist.

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I think this absolutism is that biggest mistake. We're in a bad place, when the progressive movement demands purity and rejects nuance like so much of the right does.

The Democratic Party doesn't need to reject the policies on which it is now based, it shouldn't turn on environmentalism, social liberalism in order to placate people. But it doesn't mean that progressive politics cannot present real options to people in Appalachia etc who still deal with incredible poverty and lack of opportunities. Instead of people like Bill Maher saying that coal should die, there's no transitional plan to new industries or new careers. Yes, coal is not sustainable as the basis of a state's economy, and both Dem and GOPs are to blame for letting people think it will be.[/quote]


I agree with that--we should definitely support alternatives to coal in order to help the Appalachian economy. But I've literally seen people on this forum say that the Democrats should remove environmentalism from their platform in order to win a few votes in West Virginia. I don't support environmentalism because it's "ideologically pure." I support it because we're all going to die if we don't embrace it.

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Also, it's hilarious to see self-identifying "left-wing progressives" espousing racism (why don't the blacks just vote for BERN already?!?!) and classism (hee hee hee those dumb racist Appalachian rednecks losing their jobs!!1!!!! not rly poor ofc, just lazy) on a daily basis.

 

Intell is truly the voice of sanity in this thread (and Antonio and Figueira).

To be perfectly honest, I do not know any poor people of any race.  All my friends are in the top 1% in terms of income.  All my relatives and co-workers are all in the top 5% in terms of income.  Only exception would be vendors of all sorts (cleaning lady, gardeners, handyman, heating guy, nannies etc etc) which I would not even say I know them well beyond the transnational nature of our relationships.  

I don't exactly know why, but I feel like throwing up after reading this.

I'm glad you think I'm the voice of sanity.

I would, however, like to point out that the people making classist comments in this thread are Clinton supporters, which is kind of weird.

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Actually IceSpear does kind of have a point. I have seen people here argue, for example, that the Democrats should abandon environmentalism in an effort to win West Virginia, which is incredibly ridiculous.

However, "Other people on Atlas are bigoted too!" isn't an excuse to be bigoted. Classism is a form of bigotry.

My point was that hicks are the only "protected group" among Atlas lefties. Xenophobia, racism, sexism, and homophobia is brushed off as "legitimate respectful political disagreement." Only when you bash poor white people does a swarm of angry posters come out of the woodwork to condemn you as literally Hitler. You know, despite the fact that class can be changed, whereas race, sexuality, etc. cannot be. In fact, my initial posts were bait just to prove this very point! It worked beautifully.

Let's be real for a second: A typical Atlas leftie would trade the votes of 1,000 black people for a single racist white Appalachian conservative coal miner. They would trade Virginia for West Virginia just because it makes them "feel good." I think I'll just take it as some weird compulsion/quirk (lord knows Atlas has no shortage of those), because the alternative is too sad to think about.

I don't think I'm part of this group of "atlas lefties" who have this double standard, but that still doesn't excuse your posts earlier in this thread.

And yeah, I don't get what people's obsession is with winning West Virginia. Maybe it's because it makes the map look nicer? Actually I think that might be it.

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I challenge anyone to drive through Eastern Washington or Northern Idaho and claim that the people there enjoy any kind of "white privilege."

Their are plenty of poor white people in western Washington, too. The Pacific coast has been pretty devastated economically (minus the really tourist-y parts), and having grown up in rural-ish Snohomish County, I can say there are a lot of poor white places with heavy drug problems there, too (Granite Falls, Arlington, Camano Island, most anywhere in the foothills/mountains of Snoho, Skagit, and Whatcom).


Granted, crossing from Spokane County into Kootenai County is quite the experience. Oh boy.

Do people actually think that Coeur d' Alene or north Idaho in general is some sort of poverty pocket? It's a reasonably affluent community by the standards of Idaho. North Idaho has also never struck me as being particularly poor either.

Spokane, on the other hand, strikes me as a community where there are many poor white people.

Coeur d'Alene has some pockets of poverty, though it's pretty nice overall. It's once you get outside of the city proper that it gets more depressed.

Spokane is... Well, it's Spokane. A few years ago Northeast Spokane was one of the poorest ZIP codes in the state.

I grew up in Coeur d'Alene. In fact, I grew up outside of "the city proper". I've never seen it as a particularly impoverished place. I guess I could see why people would think that. After all, it's quite odd to see run-down houses with horses in the backyard or whatever but those people are rarely poor, they're simply from a different cultural background. I guess Post Falls and parts of downtown Coeur d' Alene have some concentrated poverty but it's hardly noticeable and these pockets aren't homogeneous.

Anyways, I thought about this a bit and realized that Sanders' comment is a gaffe: I think what he meant to say is that white people don't know what it's like to live in an impoverished community or neighborhood, which is generally true in the United States. Segregation by income certainly occurs but, for the most, poverty is dispersed in white America and not concentrated.

For instance, I was friends with many people who fell below the poverty line but I was also friends with kids from families who lived in "McMansions". It's quite typical for this to occur in small/medium sized cities: public schools in predominantly white communities tend to feature students from a wide-range of incomes. This is not so in communities that are segregated by race. So Sanders has a good point; one that's recognized by the vast majority of the literature on social mobility.

I think his main point was simply "white people don't know what it's like to be black" which is, quite frankly, true. He worded it badly, though.

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Democrats:
#NoPoorWhitePeopleExist
#WhyDon'tTheyVoteForUs

Let's be honest: very, very few poor whites vote Democratic. Democrats are more likely to not be in the same social circle as poor whites, so they are the elite ones here. Also, I find it ironic the Democrats want votes from people who don't exist.

No one actually thinks that poor white people don't exist.