Nixak*77*''s words.

'Slavery has been abolished' - Small [if any] thanks are due to secular-atheists. FYI: 'Folks of Faith' were at the fore-front of the abolitionist movement(s) of the 1700s & 1800s, NOT secualar atheists. {overt} 'Racism is less than it used to be..' - IMO a truly ironic claim in the age of Trump = the recent election of an Overt RACIST as POTUS!! And where US cops can still gun-down unarmed / non-violent Blacks, Hispanics & Native peoples w near impunity!! 'Billions of people have been removed from 'acute' poverty.' - It's just been reported that a literal handful of super-rich individuals & families have more wealth than poorest 1/2 of all of humanity!! Just look at the case of Haiti & Puerto Rico [both pre & Post Maria]. It's been reported that half of humanity lives on barely $1 - $2 per day. And rich folks are land-grabbing African & 3rd World lands like & thus are driving folks from their abilities to feed themselves & their communities. IMO that's why Tyler 'qualified' this dubious claim w the word 'acute'.

The point is NOT to defend the so-called 'Oprah class' of Black elites [BAR's Glen Ford calls them the 'Black mis-leadership class'], but rather address the fact that you threw out the term so-called 'Oprah class' of Black elites, without any clear definition of what that really is supposed to mean. Oprah is one of just 3 [or maybe 4] US Black billionaires [& the only Black woman in that class] out of a total of 565 US billionaires- to which you then ASSerted there are several US Black billionaire entertainers [specifically citing Jay-Z & P-Diddy], which is FALSE on both counts [close but 'NO cigar']. Yet now you contradict yourself by admitting that Oprah's far richer than Jay-Z & Beyonce', P-Diddy & Dr Dre- even all put together. So are they then even really in her class??
- You then ASSerted there are a couple of million US Black millionaires, which is also FALSE! There maybe 190,000 US Black HOUSE-Holds [NOT necessarily even individuals] out of over 14 million+ Black US households, worth $1 million or more [= less than one-10th / 10% of a couple of million].

You then seemed to want to link all of these dubious claims to your insistence that most of the World's wealthiest people are NOT even white-Americans. Yet the fact is the US has more billionaires than any other particular country, in fact at 565 the US has as many billionaires as all the BRICS countries put together [#2: China's 319 / #4: India's 101 / #5: Russia's 96 / #8: Brazil's 43 -&- S.Africa's 8 {tellingly all but 1 or 2 of those 8 are of white-European descent], & also accounts for at-least half or more of the 1100 billionaires of white-European descent from the more than 25 countries w the most billionaires. So tho most of the World's billionaires aren't white-Americans, they in-fact account for Far MORE than their 'fair-share' of them!

And this was apparently all about you trying to refute Prof Rodriguez': 'contention that the racial component of what is happening is all that important, even in the US.' Of course there's a class dynamic to the issues to Prof Rodriguez scrutinized, but it's generally / most often thoroughly & almost inextricably intertwined w racism as well. Pointing to hi-profile Black celebs ala Oprah, Jay-Z & P-Diddy, or even Obama does NOT refute this fact. I mean legendary actor-singer-activist Harry Belafonte' 'beat you to punch' for criticisms of Obama, Jay-Z & Beyonce' re their accountability [or lack thereof] to the "folks from the 'hood' ", who ironically were/are among Obama's & Jay-Z's most loyal supporters.

And last but not least, there's your dubious ASSertion that "[so-called] 'over-population' [= hi birth-rates] engenders color-blind materialism"- When just a little bit of research shows that in general the countries w the Highest birth-rates are among the World's POOREST people [often of Africa & the '3rd World'], while those w the Lowest birth-rates are generally among the BIGGEST resource consumers [often of the US & EU]- Which actually implies an INVERSE relationship to what you seem to be trying to ASSert.