Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America

by Stacey Abrams

The labor movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries merged into both civil rights movements and feminist movements, but often the class struggle pitted itself against the rise of these groups as separate enemies to be fought. The economic class struggle increased rights for white men but still denied women and people of color the right to own property. Later, as the prohibitions against ownership fell, the restrictions were replaced by limits on access to capital or even the right to purchase property in certain areas of town. Likewise, as public education expanded to include primary, secondary, and postsecondary options, marginalized groups were either segregated or denied access to educational achievement. Even in the wake of World War II, the G.I. Bill excluded Blacks and other minority military men from benefiting from its educational investment. Across the board, economic class, as an identity, never fully included all the economically disadvantaged in its ranks. Instead, once class was established, new filters of race, immigration, gender, and sexual orientation weeded out those considered unworthy of its benefits.