Janell Ross: Zucotti Park: A Distorted View Minus Millions of Americans

There's been a lot made of the ideological diversity in Zuccotti Park. And ideas can certainly have meaning across racial, ethnic and sometimes even class lines. The best ones often do. But, the near absence of racial and ethnic diversity in the park is also worth noting. Blacks and Latinos together make up about 40 percent of the nation's unemployed but only 29 percent of the total population. And, there is plenty of evidence that while the years leading up the recession weren't really very good to anyone -- income inequality expanded and most workers' wages stagnated -- black and Latino families are facing such a crisis of unemployment, increased poverty and depreciated or altogether lost assets that the country will feel this recession's impact for decades to come, Harvard University labor sociologist William Julius Wilson told me last week. Without an economic fix that includes and specifically targets people of color we may soon find ourselves living in an America that we do not recognize, he said.

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