For the fragile

Headline keywords translated for those feeling sensitive about it:

"People"=not singular individuals/groups of; a selection of individuals that can be representative of a majority.

"across the socioeconomic spectrum" = not all people in each portion of the socioeconomic specturm, but people across the socioeconomic spectrum

In the US, racism often has a nuanced meaning beyond overt discrimination on white vs. black. Typically it's also about systemic benefits and policy in addition to the prejudice it was crafted to impose.

If you're not feeling those alleged benefits--and it's not because you question whether you'll get attacked or shot for wearing a mask to the store at this time, or if your name and way of speaking isn't reason for getting turned down for a job interview--it's probably because you're experiencing the legacy of racist policies that now apply to whole classes of people.

Folks who've been born into wealthy families like Betsy DeVos, the Koch Brothers, or the current US President and his children have no concept of what it's like to be among sweatshop employees who still get paid about 8 cents per garment in LA as of 2015 for companies like American Apparel; or to be tomato field workers get paid about $0.50 per field basket (which is about half of what they got paid in the 1950s if you adjust for inflation).

But at the same time, neither do middle class families and some low income families who believe/d if they simply work hard and smart it would solve poverty--or that because no one helped them, other people shouldn't get help either.

In a lot of cases I think there probably was a point in time that those assumptions came to be after they "survived and made it"-- and wasn't just because they wouldn't take time to imagine or learn from other people in extreme struggle.

It's more likely because they're so occupied with trying to make ends meet that it's hard to connect and their communities don't necessarily value or support each other the way poor and other cultures tend to rely on each other--so they couldn't imagine or see other ways that people struggle because of what the surviving in the economy seems to require from their lives.

Most of the people working the field and sweatshop jobs are stuck in very clear wage slavery due to policies that were set during the post-Civil War "Reconstruction Era".

But the fact that most people will deeply struggle to make ends meet and need to turn to unemployment benefits if the pandemic affects their lives in the wrong way says a lot about how most of us are actually stuck playing someone else's game.

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes-get-more-interviews

https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

See comments for Garment + Fieldworker wage sources:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10113092118162073&id=2256689