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Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America

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Tanner Colby

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“(H)ow many great noblemen rob their petty tradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched little sums, and cheat for a few shillings? When we read that a nobleman has left for the Continent, or that another noble nobleman has an execution in his house - that one or other owe six or seven millions, the defeat seems glorious even, and we respect the victim of the vastness of his ruin. But who pities a poor barber who can't get his money for powdering the footman's heads; or a poor carpenter who has ruined himself by fixing up ornaments and pavilions for my lady's déjeuner; or the poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes, and who has pledged all he is worth, and more, to get the liveries ready, which my lord has done him the honor to bespeak? - When the great house tumbles down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed: as they say in old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.”

MoneyViceIncome InequalityVanity Fair
Author:William Makepeace Thackeray
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“In 7.81 square miles of vaunted black community, the 850 square feet of Dum Dum Donuts was the only place in the "community" where one could experience the Latin root of the word, where a citizen could revel in common togetherness. So one rainy Sunday afternoon, not long after the tanks and media attention had left, my father ordered his usual. He sat at the table nearest the ATM and said aloud, to no one in particular, "Do you know that the average household net worth for whites is $113,149 per year, Hispanics $6,325, and black folks $5,677?" "For real?" "What's your source material, nigger?" "The Pew Research Center." Motherfuckers from Harvard to Harlem respect the Pew Research Center, and hearing this, the concerned patrons turned around in their squeaky plastic seats as best they could, given that donut shop swivel chairs swivel only six degrees in either direction. Pops politely asked the manager to dim the lights. I switched on the overhead projector, slid a transparency over the glass, and together we craned our necks toward the ceiling, where a bar graph titled "Income Disparity as Determined by Race" hovered overhead like some dark, damning, statistical cumulonimbus cloud threatening to rain on our collective parades. "I was wondering what that li'l nigger was doing in a donut shop with a damn overhead projector.”

CommunityIncomeAfrican AmericansBlacksIncome InequalityPresentationsRacial Relations
Book:The Sellout
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“This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master.”

PoliticsCapitalismProgressiveIncome InequalityWall StreetProgressive Era1890sToo Big To Fail
Author:Mary Lease
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