Cheers to Kevin Spidel, a fellow Arizona blogger, for his post, "Spidelblog - A classist & racist tragedy."

He's absolutely right. There are massive systems of oppression that have historical contexts and conspire to keep people of color in positions of poverty and subservience. The ranks of the poor who are white also continue to grow and people of color are succeeding at higher rates than ever before in American history, but socioeconomic status is still disproportionately linked with race and ethnicity.

Poor folks have fewer resources and extremely restricted access to resources. And they're easy scapegoats. The mayor of New Orleans has now directed the local police to abandon rescue efforts and instead stop the "looters."

The right wing bloggers are all abuzz about how these bad brown people are stealing hard-earned property from the better off people who were gosh-darn smart enough to get out of town in time. After all, those poor people only lost their rentals, while the people who left town worked hard and were successful.

Of course, there were homeowners who couldn't leave town and there were renters who did, so that puts a lie to that generalization.

Also, if you're "successful" by the winger definition, you likely have insurance - property, life and health. That's a luxury not shared by most poor people. Which group do you think will experience greater long-term consequences to the greatest natural disaster in a century?

That's right, the poor. A group disproportionately composed of people of color. This status quo relies on systems that reinforce centuries-old power dynamics, controlled by an overclass that refuses to acknowledge human suffering if it interferes with their profiteering or power-hoarding.