This is for the moment in history when class becomes more important than race, and their two complicated histories are no longer solved by affirmative actions. This is for the white girl that crosses the street when passing a black man in the United States. This is for the white girl that crosses the street when passing a Black man in South Africa. This is for the 60+ CPS students that we murdered in Chicago before the school year could come to an end. This is for those who try to make us more different, when we are actually more alike. This is for those who were born poor and have not forgotten. This is for the poor.

At one time my understanding of middle/upper class “fear” was based on a single stereotypical value which revolved around race. This understanding was a product of my experience. Different instances like me being pulled over by the university police that my tuition pays for or someone crossing the street when I walked pass them, I always attributed to my race. That is to say that people have an unfortunate connection with race that evokes fear. However, now I want to exchange that thought for a more complicated understanding of the middle class. If I was a black man walking down the street with a suit, would that same fear arise, or if I was upper class would I have to interact with that fear in the same way? This leads me to believe that “the poor” (something that still correlates with race) are the true victims of middle class fear. But the poor are really victims of much more.

The rich protest and their concerns turn into policy. The poor protest and their concerns (and lives) are criminalized. The criminalization of the poor has become a common product of societies that have a diminishing middle class. Places where the rich get richer and the poor remain with nothing. When these same disenfranchised communities choose to fight back, they must struggle for the political space, just like they struggle for food and services. An organization in South Africa called Abahlali, also known as the Shack-dwellers Movement, has consistently been placed into political climates where each man is not counted as a whole. Climates where it takes 1000 marginalized men and women marching down the street to get the attention of decision makers who at the swipe of a pen can make the lives of the poor better.

The poor must struggle to build their own political spaces, so they can be heard amongst the “microphoned” voices of the rich.  The poor are not lazy, dirty, freeloaders. The poor do not accept the image of being an object. The poor refuse to be molded into the “new dark continent” by the media and usually those who hold power and money. The poor resist the paradigms that have labeled them as: primitive others who are only in their position due to their own agency.

It is always fascinating to me how quickly people forget centuries of marginalization that created the poor, the history and pattern of capitalism that re-enforces the poor, the broken promises of democracy that confirmed the existence of the poor. The poor are intelligent, independent, and can be self-lead. Under the museum of oppression the poor will continue to be poor. But if that museum is closed down, the poor will be granted with the possibility of systemic change. This change can only come through opportunity. Equal opportunity is the only way.