Do you know any poor white people?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

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.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

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.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Spokane has plenty of poor white people. Logan neighborhood downtown in one of those "don't walk at night" neighborhoods (though Spokane has quite nice parts, too). But as you head from Spokane eastward, it gets more and more redneck-y. Liberty Lake is a step down, and then you hit State Line and its nothing but Cabella's and trailer parks until you get to Coeur d'Alene itself, which is an all right town.

I think the operative word here is "redneck-y". The rednecks aren't poor; in fact, they're often quite well off. They're enjoy putting things in their yard that we normals consider to be low-class or, for lack of a better word, "white trash" cultural items. I know this because I'm friends with someone from a family like this: they own a sizeable amount of property and own a few small businesses but their lawncare is very lacking and they don't maintain their house in a manner that's "respectable". They don't have health insurance. They're not poor though.

Only reasonably affluent people shop at Cabella's btw. My family is well-off but they think Cabella's is "too expensive" and "for rich people". Ultimately, what I'm getting at, is that what people who live in Seattle or New York or Los Angeles consider to be "white poverty" is frequently rooted in misguided stereotypes. So-called "rednecks" are rarely poor. After all, their poorly maintained lawns and are their poorly maintained lawns.

For what it's worth, most poor people in Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene tend to be quite similar to poor people in Spokane, which is to say that they're not "country" and poor youth in both cities tend to listen to "hip-hop" or bad "scene" music. I know this because these were stereotypes attached to "Lake City High School", which contains the few poverty pockets of CDA. Kids who went there were judged to be "ghetto", not "redneck".

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Spokane has plenty of poor white people. Logan neighborhood downtown in one of those "don't walk at night" neighborhoods (though Spokane has quite nice parts, too). But as you head from Spokane eastward, it gets more and more redneck-y. Liberty Lake is a step down, and then you hit State Line and its nothing but Cabella's and trailer parks until you get to Coeur d'Alene itself, which is an all right town.

I think the operative word here is "redneck-y". The rednecks aren't poor; in fact, they're often quite well off. They're enjoy putting things in their yard that we normals consider to be low-class or, for lack of a better word, "white trash" cultural items. I know this because I'm friends with someone from a family like this: they own a sizeable amount of property and own a few small businesses but their lawncare is very lacking and they don't maintain their house in a manner that's "respectable". They don't have health insurance. They're not poor though.

Only reasonably affluent people shop at Cabella's btw. My family is well-off but they think Cabella's is "too expensive" and "for rich people". Ultimately, what I'm getting at, is that what people who live in Seattle or New York or Los Angeles consider to be "white poverty" is frequently rooted in misguided stereotypes. So-called "rednecks" are rarely poor.

White trash aren't poor, they can afford refrigerators and cell phones.

No, I mean, quite literally, most rednecks that people think are "poor" are not impoverished according metrics of poverty used by sociologists, the government etc. They certainly lack access to "social capital", which hinders their ability to achieve social mobility, but they're not materially impoverished.

Very few poor people in the US own houses unless they live in communities that have experienced acute economic dislocation.

Note: I'm not arguing that poverty isn't a problem in white communities.