Separate Realities: The Dream and the Iceberg - Scarecrow Press

88 Chapter 2
the economic, political, and cultural arenas, with labor unions serving as the
core alternative organizational force.
Our inclusion of trade unions as a key feature of the alternative power networks
does not mean that we view unions as speaking with a single voice for
workers or that we view all unions as consistent advocates for workers’ common
class interests. We recognize the labor movement includes diverse and
sometimes contradictory trends and actions. Even so, among organizational
alternatives to corporate power, trade unions possess the greatest concentration
of human and economic resources and represent the most significant
alternative organizational force countering corporate dominance. But this
recognition does not diminish the importance of other organizations in the
alternative power networks, some of which are linked to leaders and funding
sources associated with privileged-class backgrounds. Some of these individuals
and groups might, in some sense, be considered “class traitors” by
more conventional privileged-class members. Such organizations include
women’s rights groups (e.g., National Organization for Women), civil rights
groups (e.g., National Association for the Advancement of Colored People),
public interest groups (e.g., Ralph Nader’s numerous organizations), alternative,
pro-new-working-class national circulation magazines (e.g., Nation,
Progressive, Mother Jones, In These Times), progressive research and policy
groups (e.g., Economic Policy Institute), and some religious organizations.
These groups, often in conjunction with trade unions, are frequently involved
in challenging the strategies, objectives, and policies of the dominant
power networks.
Inequality and Inequity
The efforts of alternative-power-network groups to promote economic, political,
and social policy changes that will reduce class-, gender-, and race-/
ethnicity-based inequalities call attention to the distinction between inequality
and inequity. Inequality refers to the objective reality (factually verifiable)
that various distinct and identifiable groups (e.g., class, gender, racial/ethnic
groups) receive unequal shares of various forms of scarce and valued resources
distributed within the society. For example, much of the evidence presented
thus far concerning differences in the distribution of consumption and investment
capital illustrates that the highly unequal economic and political outcomes
people experience in the United States are often based on their membership
in class, gender, and race-/ethnicity-based groups.
Inequity refers to a subjective judgment that the unequal access to scarce
and valued resources experienced by groups distinguished by class, gender,
and/or racial/ethnic membership is unfair and unjust. This concept interprets
the organizationally based policies and practices used as the bases for unequally
distributing scarce and valued resources as fundamentally flawed in
the sense that they arbitrarily privilege some groups over others and thereby