Comment from "Does Class Trump Race?"
Posted 13 Feb 2008 at 1:50 pm

One important difference between class and race is that in the U.S, people change their class as they acquire (or lose) economic, intellectual, and social privilege. However, race is immutable.
When racial minorities change classes, they do so despite (and sometimes because of) the lingering effects of institutionalized racism.
Race doesn’t exactly trump class, but it is a factor that can impact your class privilege.
For example: Look at discriminatory admissions practices at colleges and universities that limited the ability of minorities of our grandparent’s generation to choose college. How many of us are first or second generation college graduates as a result? How did segregation in public schools affect the readiness of our parent’s generation to enter elite colleges and universities?
Economic and educational policies that disproportionally impacted minorities in the past have created class differences that can still be drawn along racial lines today.
The privilege meme could have included a question about race to show that the two don’t necessarily operate independently.