i fail to see why it's so suprising that politicians, white or black, save their own asses first.
i also fail to see why its so hard that race and class are inextricably intertwined in the US, and that racism isn't so easy to identify as someone calling someone a name or professing to hate people of a group; there's a thing called institutional racism, and structural racism, which often go hand-in-hand with poverty and the absence of economic opportunity. these things also afflict the white lower classes, absolutely, but our unspeakably racist history has much to do with ghettoized poverty, more than i think your average white person wants to admit.
and i understand that. i don't think for a minute any person in FYM, no matter your race or ethnicity, considers themselves racist. racism (as opposed to homophobia and sexism) is officially loathsome. however, i don't think people are necessarily aware of their (unchosen) part in an inherently racist class system. by saying "it's not about race it's about class" essentially absolves a white person from racial responsibility. on an individual level, i understand that.
i'll take myself: i'm white as can be (Swedish/Irish mix), my family is realtively new to this country (everyone immigrated in the 20th century), i've never uttered a racial epithet in my life and find the N-word to be the word that makes me most uncomfortable, i've dated people of all different races, my thesis advisor was an african, and i abide by the loose, politically correct rules of language. however, there is no escaping the fact that my family, and thus myself, would *most likely* not be in the same economic and educational position if we were African-American. especially in my grandparents generation. no one was going to tell my grandfather that they wouldn't hire him because of the color of his skin; no one called him "boy;" he never looked around and saw that people of his skin color held low-level jobs; he never saw people with his skin color attacked with fire hoses and police dogs in Alabama. basically, he never had any limits placed on his worldview or sense of possibility and opportunity that, especially in the past, are placed upon anyone who isn't a white male. this isn't to say that people can't pick themselves up out of poverty; this isn't to say that there aren't black people born into immense privilege; this isn't to say that there aren't white people who feel locked out and shut out from the American Dream. it is to say that, in aggregate, history is stacked in favor of white people. there's always been a middle man for white people. white people have always looked out for their own (there's always been Affirmative Action for white people).
so that's where i'm coming from. i think, again, we're conflating individual experiences with historical narratives. the two might conflict, but one's individual experience does not then either negate a historical narrative nor create a new one.
thus, race and class -- *especially* in the South, the nation's poorest region -- often have much to do with the other.
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