NO EASY STORIES
 

"The story that racism belongs to poor people in the South is a little too easy, though. Just as not everybody up here, geographically and economically, is on the right side of the line, so not everyone down there is on the wrong side. But the story allows middle-class people to hate poor people while claiming to be on the side of truth, justice, and everything else good. 

"So, on the one hand, we have white people who hate black people. On the other hand, we have white people who hate other white people on the grounds that they hate black people. But that latter hatred accuses many wrongfully, and it serves as a convenient cover-up for the racism that is all around us. The reason it matters is that middle-class people despising poor people becomes your basic class war, and the ongoing insults seem to have been at least part of what has weakened the environmental movement in particular and progressive politics in general." 

— Rebecca Solnit, "One Nation Under Elvis"