White, Poor and Ignored?

In early 2009, former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich made some rather controversial comments during a House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee meeting.

Referring to the scope of the stimulus package, Reich said that he is "concerned, as I'm sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers.

And therefore, in my remarks, I have suggested to you, and I'm certainly happy to talk about it more, ways in which the money can be — criteria can be set so that the money does go to others. The long- term unemployed, minorities, women, people who are not necessarily construction workers or high skilled professionals."

In the aftermath, Lou Dobbs, Fox News and many white conservatives were quick to put Reich in bed with the Obama administration and label them both as racist against these marginalized "white construction workers." Others said Reich's words were taken out of context. After the political/cable news dust settled, the question which remains (and which came to the forefront again during the Shirley Sherrod debacle) is: are the white working poor the newly disenfranchised?

In his recent New York Times op-ed, Ross Douthat presents troubling data that indicates a white demographic that has become increasingly disadvantaged. College admissions for example, have become so "conscious of their mandate to be multiethnic," that they set aside financial aid for minority students, a category they know they'll be ranked on, over poor whites. Membership in high school ROTC, 4-H or Future Farmers of America actually works against young white people.

Douthat also writes that because of a "lack of contact" between rural, working class America and the "highly educated and liberal," the plight of the rural poor has become increasingly overlooked. As an African-American writing this article, I will undoubtedly be given a variety of unflattering names. But I believe that poor white people — whether urban or rural — deserve just as much assistance as poor minorities. As Martin Luther King, Jr. discussed in the final months of his life, poor is poor, regardless of color.

If we assume that poor whites are more likely to populate these rural communities, statistics point to a disproportionately low amount of money being distributed to assist these areas. For example, The Ford Foundation, which purports to be active in rural development, made just $68 million in active grants and loans to rural areas in its fiscal 2006, out of $360 million overall in the U.S. Also, according to a study by the Foundation Center, North Dakota was awarded $3.3 million from foundations, South Dakota $3.2 million and Montana $10 million — compared with $3 billion for New York and $2 billion for California in 2005. While North Dakota may experience the lowest unemployment rates in the country, residents there still must deal with growing poverty and homelessness.

The poet Emma Lazarus once said, "Until we are all free, we are none of us free." No person should be excluded from opportunity on the basis of their ethnicity. When one of us suffers under the weight of debilitating poverty, we all must share the responsibility of seeing that suffering end. Even though white Americans still arguably enjoy benefits that minorities don't, that is no reason to discount the suffering of their urban and rural poor. Reich's comments simply patronize hard-working, deserving minorities and galvanize Tea Party supporters who cry "racism" at every turn.

Photo credit: Cindy Funk