What I am reading now: “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” by Charles Murray

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Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010
 

Coming Apart (you can get it at above Amazon link for $13.00) starts off just right.  Murray argues that American history can be divided into before JFK was assassinated and after JFK.  Interesting.  He provides many arguments why that is the case and I have to agree with him.  It was the visible dividing line for the cultural heating up of America and its economy and the beginning of the ultra rich in America that made black billionaires possible like Oprah.

I like the book because he does something that most books don’t do: he talks about the middle class (the white definition that would be rich for a black person) and what it means.  I love talk about money and economy and wealth.

I started out life middle class and was never one of the hungry who had to go to an Ivy school, even though I could have if I wanted to.  I married stupid and young.  My ex husband thought like his friends that being on welfare as a young, single black male in Chicago was no big deal.  In fact it seemed de rigeur for many. 

My family had never been on welfare or used food stamps and I did not know what it was all about.  He enrolled the family on welfare after we got married and I had my first two children thanks to the health care provided by the government.   We were on AFDC as it was called them for a few years.  After we divorced I immediately got a job.  Years later, I was a college dropout, I returned to college, graduated and got a real job and a real career.

Yes, I make more money than ever and have everything I want and need including a big house that I share with a gray cat, and a new silver gray Ford Focus that’s pretty good on gas.  It is possible for a single mother, former welfare and food stamp user to get a degree and live on their own.

Related articles

• Bestselling Author Charles Murray Has A Controversial Suggestion For Reducing Class Divisions (businessinsider.com)
• Charles Murray Examines the White Working Class in ‘Coming Apart’ (nytimes.com)
• Are We Coming Apart? (maverickphilosopher.typepad.com)