In a message dated 12/17/2007 8:37:35 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, [log in to unmask] writes: While I understand the special case of the freedmen in the 1880s convict lease program, my point was intended to be that race and class oppression are intimately intertwined in our country I hear you, Sharon. However, I always feel a bit queasy when someone raises the banner of class oppression, bringing abuses of the past into today's political/social mix. Marx-like pronouncements are likely close behind (Karl, not Groucho). Playing the class card (if not MIS-playing the race card) has become a cliche used by he mindless to bash complex issues. In a capitalist country that is also a meritocracy, you will "always have the poor with you" but you always have the opportunities, however pinched in specific time/place, for economic (and thus social) upward mobility. Many feel that we have an "inherently unfair" system. But where and when has there been one better? While not a completely classless society, most would prefer it to that of Britain, with birthrights of all those social levels choking back the brightest and the best. Here the cream CAN rise to the top, which isn't to say that injustices do not exist. It has been, after all, the American EXPERIMENT, with ideals based on "natural law" idealism. Such ideals, while seldom if ever are fully realized by all, answer for the greater good, and for the best standard of living yet known to man. To characterize America as a "class-oppressed" society seems to me to miss the boat entirely, not to mention all the progress since Sam's time, in equality of opportunity; the growth of the middle class, etc.