classism is the new racism

I'm not sure if classism is even a word. When I run spell check, it tells me that the word is unrecognizable, so since I like my readers to be on the same page, I'm going to define it as discrimination against a person or peoples due to their class. As in monetary value. As in how much money do you have? I wish these deep seeded problems that are entrenched in our culture would have disappeared from education and/or exposure, offering people the chance to discuss these problems openly in the hopes that talking about it will raise awareness and hopefully mean the end to social ills. However, it's stupid, and more importantly unrealistic to think that homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, discrimination, etc no longer exist, but they do and they're still really common. I just saw a pin yesterday from a republican convention saying "will it still be the white house if we have a black president?" There's not really anything more racist than that. Times are changing, it's easy to see, and it seems like eventually, classism will replace racism as the most common form of discrimination.

One of my friends thinks that it's impossible to talk about class without talking about gender and race- initially as I thought about it, the thought seemed unfocused until I realized I was being overly optimistic, because the truth is that class really is inherently linked to race and gender (although I'd like to pretend like they're unrelated). The cold hard fact remains- life is much more difficult if you're queer, a woman, poor, a person of color, a person of size, disabled, etc. The sad thing is that the list really can go on and on. It's almost the start of a new decade, I'm ashamed to say that humans have hardly evolved. I guess people are trying to pretend like it's still the 90s, because I catch myself doing it too. It was just such an optimistic time, it seems like the Clinton years were the golden age for America. Everything is now falling apart, it's hard to say whether the united states will remain united.

My supposition is that in the future, with all other antiquated distinctions between people being commonly agreed to be left behind along with slavery and torture (oh wait, Bush brought torture back) money will still remain the biggest concern on all humans' minds, so all social ills will only be created and reinforced if they surround money. Money is almost the only form of power left, hopefully marginalized peoples will find a way to come into some before anyone who is less than a millionaire is totally fucked. It seems like people will always find a reason to hate one another, and we're almost out of reasons as funny as that sounds. So what will be left when the law finally says you can't hate other people? I already find myself being classist, and I'm lower class, which is the most ironic part about it.