Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict (Field Notes)

by Phil A. Neel

To the extent that there is a correlation between one’s experience of oppression and one’s openness to revolution, it tends to be a non-linear probability distribution, with the highest probability lying not among the “most oppressed” but among the groups who, for whatever reason, had experienced some degree of prolonged improvement in their condition followed by a sudden, sharp reversal.33 In certain ways, this describes the post-Civil-Rights experience of the black population, seemingly advanced by desegregation and the growth in home ownership, all capped by the rise of a not-insubstantial black ruling class and the election of Barack Obama—this “postracial” America was, of course, quickly proven hollow, as the housing crash dispossessed black homeowners, mass incarceration increased in scope, and extrajudicial killings of black youth skyrocketed.