By Richard Mellor in California
I want to point out something here. The two horrible scum shown in this video are right to be targeted as the filth that they are. But here in the US the focus will be on racism or colour prejudice; class is never mentioned. The guy who is the manager of a financial firm was fired and his wife or whatever she is, is the CEO and founder of some crap makeup business, a social parasite if there ever was one.
Listen to how this woman speaks to the guy. How she claims to agree with him when the reality is she didn’t want Black Lives Matter written on her neighbour’s property. People like these are far more racist than workers. Her condescending tone and approach makes me want to vomit. I despise these people.
They called the cops on him and they recognized the guy and left. “I was wrong to question Mr. Juanillo, and I was wrong to call the neighbourhood police watch,” the guy tells the media after this went video went viral. He copped to his “own ignorance of racial inequity” and “personal blind spots.”
Here’s what is missing here in the US and that is the class question. Now the Filipino man, living where he does, and renting apparently, is most likely, like his neighbours here, a middle or upper middle-class person. He could be a capitalist, who knows? But socialists and class-conscious workers oppose racism or sexism even if it is directed at upper middle-class people or the wives of the capitalists.
Given the class background of this man and woman, it is most likely they are racists as well. But there have been many incidents where slimy people like this have called the police on black people like the one in Oakland here that called on some black people for barbecuing in a park. She was the CEO of some business as well. The media never mentions the class background.
I am not letting workers off the hook here. I recognize we can be racist too; after all, we live in a racist society, so how can we not be affected by those ideas, and it is advantageous for the ruling class to keep them alive. We see on social media all the time backward white workers, racist to one degree or another, but these people in the video are the more dangerous and the nastiest and it is from the ruling class and through people like these that racism is perpetuated as a means of dividing workers.
These two upper class characters have nothing but disdain and contempt for working class people. They would swallow their racial pride if their daughter came home with a person of colour rather than a white worker if he had money and prospects and could advance their economic interests. They have no principles but the accumulation of money at others’ expense.
The man talks of his “ignorance of racial inequity“. What does that say of his pathetic view of the world? And is inequity in general OK? He doesn’t have blind spots he has class, gender and white skin privilege. Just don’t leave class out of the equation as it is at the core of this. It is the reason racism cannot be eradicated in capitalist society.
The main thing is that there is a very powerful trend in the US to obscure the issue of class; we are, after all, “middle class”. In the US there are only the rich, the poor and the middle class. There are no workers here.
Seriously though, isn’t this woman horrible. Who would want to aspire to that?
Richard Mellor is editor of the US socialist website, Facts For Working people. The original article can be found here.
June 17, 2020
