Americans and race
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
from Paul Krugman’s column, The New York Times 9/19/05:
Who can honestly deny that race is a major reason America treat its poor more harshly than any other advanced country? To put it crudely: a middle-class European, thinking about the poor, says to himself, “There but for the grace of God go I.” A middle-class American is all too likely to think, perhaps without admitting it to himself, “Why should I be taxed to support these people?”
Above all, race-based hostility to the idea of helping the poor created an environment in which a political movement hostile to government aid in general could flourish.
