Fostering Misconceptions Through Separation

TWENTY FIVE PERCENT of the American people live in neighborhoods classified by the federal government as "poverty neighborhoods". At first glance, this percentage seems a bit high, upon second glance it seems shamefully unacceptable. Since "only" about twenty percent of the American people actually live in poverty, it would seem that some of us are slumming a bit, living beneath their means, the millionaire next door. Economic segregation is more subtle, less noticeable, and more pervasive than the racial discrimination for which the United States has long been acclaimed. with the abolition of apartheid in South Africa, American apartheid, racial and economic, rules the roost among allegedly civilized countries. In no civilization in human history has racism played such a central role as in the United States of Apartheid, but the rich become ever richer, the poor ever poorer, the two classes are segregated by an ever widening socio-economic gulf, and again America leads the pack. The issue is not class envy, and never has been.The issue is cultural segregation, a society divided against itself, barely standing, which, thus divided, can never achieve its highest cultural potential. The rich do not pity the poor, they scorn them for their alleged lack of ambition, intelligence, and judgment. The poor do not envy the rich, they resent them for their dismissive arrogance. Ironically, the rich are often not at all arrogant, and the poor, for the most part, are fully employed and hard working. Separation fosters misconceptions.