I literally cut out and pasted the bits that compare middle-class blacks to poor whites.
There's literally only a single part of the data set that directly compares middle class blacks with poor whites, which is this:
Most strikingly, the typical middle-income black family lives in a neighborhood with lower incomes than the typical low-income white family.
The rest of the first part compares the home cost of middle-income blacks and whites, and the entire second part compares the social mobility of middle-income blacks and whites and then the social mobility of low-income blacks and whites, never comparing middle-income blacks and low-income whites.
As to the quote parted, I think that's reflective of how poverty is used as a weapon against blackness. If you are ostracized on account of your race, you're more likely to want to live with your own race. If your race is mostly kept poor, that means even if you're relatively wealthy, you're going to live in low-income areas.
I don't think this should be massively complicated. Put it a different way: would you rather be Oprah, or would you rather be Sue, a 62-year old white woman who lives in Mississippi and is out of work and has a recently fired husband who worked in manual labour? I think you'd be nuts not to say Oprah and you'll have to forgive me for dismissing you out of hand if you say Sue; I don't think you're being serious. So now slide down the scale. Start with Oprah, then go to Serena Williams, continue down til you're now a $250,000 a year black professional in Houston, and so on. My guess is that at the point you're a household earning $52,000 a year, you'd still pick that over being the white household with no income, or income in the $10,000 or below range.
And I just know you're going to say "you have no experience of blackness" - no, sure. But you have no experience of poverty, so... let's split the difference.
This is a facile argument, I know. Real life isn't like this. The main way blackness is oppressed is *through* poverty; black America is never given the choice to become middle class, and has to fight for it in every breath and every step, and even when they make it, they're not accepted for who they are. The recession hit black households harder than it did white ones; the collapse in manual labour caused a sharper decline in black employment than it did white employment. So, yes, there is an *enormous* intersectionality here - problems of class and race are deeply and perhaps inseparably intertwined. But that's why you have to work on them both, at the same time, if you want to solve them. You don't get to insist on solidarity for your issue, and then ignore it for others.
And what I see pigeon, is you saying: I don't really care about poverty. Not really. I want their solidarity for my issue, and then I'm done. You say you're a socialist, but if so: where are the receipts? Why aren't you talking about poverty as well? I've not seen you talk about the kind of grinding lack of dignity and unemployment faced by the poor of all races. I've not seen you talk about industrial decline and the collapse of unions. I've not seen you pointing out the devastating effect that unfettered free trade has had on manual America. In fact, I've seen you cheering on both free trade and the candidates of free trade uncritically. Now: I believe you. I know you think you're a socialist - and I mean that in the old, proper sense of socialism, as a class movement and not an ideology. But we've talked a lot, and I have the patience a comfortable life affords.
Do the working class believe you?
