Its not about race, its about poverty

As a European I find it astonishing how fixated Americans are on race. Of course I understand the history and the statistics of being a part of a minority in America and the problems that that creates. But race is not the the real issue here, poverty is. Americans are sentencing their people to a life of crime (and drugs) by having neither the means or the will to fight poverty. You keep believing on the mantra that hard work is the key to the American dream when every day you are being proved wrong. Americans are widely unequal based on birth. But the real, true issue deep deep down is not race, its money, or the lack of it.

With the election of Donald Trump and the plight of the white working class men, I think America is finally waking up to the fact that poverty ultimately knows no race. Money whitens and the lack of it makes you "trash". And I think this why the Democrats are failing in so many parts of the country is that they have racialized poverty, when in fact it concerns everyone.

So while the document raised some key issues, imo it didn't address the most important one of them all. Why is there so much crime in America? Some of it probably isn't real like was addressed in the documentary but then why do so many people have the feeling that there is rampant crime in America? What are the effects of this feeling on how regular people vote and is that feeling justified? What would be a better way to address it? Why does the problem of crime persist in big American cities like LA? At least that is the feeling I have of American cities as an outsider (Hollywood really doesn't help here either).

It truly seems like the criminal justice system and the military are the social welfare systems of America.