re: #3 wrenchwench

His denial of race as a factor, a tool, and a reality in everything he talks about is racism of the most ignorant, or if not ignorant then deliberately deceitful, kind.

It’s a good criticism. But it is a historic fact poor whites are treated slightly better than blacks in the Southern socio-economic system.

As the article states:

The Southern system is essentially about class and only incidentally about race. That is why, following the abolition of slavery, the Southern landlord elite exploited black and white tenant farmers and child workers indifferently. Immigrant workers without rights to vote or organize unions have always appealed to the Southern employer elite. After the Civil War some Southern landlords experimented with bringing in indentured servants or “coolies” from Asia, until that form of unfree labor was banned by Congress in the 1880s. Today many business-class conservatives from Texas and other Southern states such as former Texas Senator Phil Gramm champion “guest-worker programs” which would bring in Mexican nationals and others to work as indentured servants in the South, while forbidding them to become U.S. citizens with legal and voting rights.