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Why the White Elite Wants to Talk about Race instead of Class
Rich white people know they would win a race war and lose a class war. They spout vapid phrases about their white privilege as easily as kings proclaimed that they were sinners who were humble before God. They will say anything that protects their bank accounts.
In a race war, rich whites win easily. The US racial divide in 2019 was 76.3% white and 13.4% black, so even if Asian and Indigenous Americans joined black Americans, the war would be three white people against every person of color. If Hispanic whites fought on the side of people of color, the odds would improve to 60.1% non-Hispanic white against 39.9% everyone else, but since the very rich have most of the wealth and are disproportionately white, they would easily win that version of a race war too.
But in a class war, all of the rich lose, no matter what color they are. The constantly expanding wealth gap is between the 20% and the 80%:
From 1971 to 2019, the share of adults in the upper-income tier increased from 14% to 20%. Meanwhile, the share in the lower-income tier increased from 25% to 29%.
One of the richest men of the Gilded Age, Jay Gould, is supposed to have said, “I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.” That’s true in a race war, but not in a class war—in every…
