The Working Class is Back. And Guess What. It's White.

Carl Bloice
Thursday, May 15, 2008
BlackCommentator.com

After decades of the major media's refusal to link the
word "working" with "class," the print pages and
airwaves are now alive with talk about the conditions,
aspirations and views of working people. Journalists,
who only a few weeks ago would have scoffed at the mere
mention of there being a "working class." are now
throwing the term around with abandon. The problem is
that it being employed to only cover part of that class;
African American, Latino, Asian and Native American
working people are somehow being left out of the
demographic equation.

Up until quite recently there was only the "middle
class." The term always defied precise definition. In
contemporary U.S. mass media parlance it has come to be
defined by income. That is, people - no matter what they
do nine-to-five - who make too little money to be rich
and too much to be poor.

On the other hand, traditionally and more logically the
working class is defined as being made up of people
employed by someone else - usually the rich, but
sometimes the government - making refrigerators, waiting
tables or data processing. In it are people of all races
and creeds. However, as this year's presidential
campaign got rolling, "middle class" began to give way
to "blue collar" as the nom-de-choice for describing
working people. But that didn't last long. Soon the
group whose votes the candidates were targeting became
not just the working class, but the "white working
class."
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