on chickens, eggs, colour & class

A thought struck me as I sat in Perspectives today, listening to a lecture on the feminist critique of liberal assumptions of autonomy:

"Am I poor because I'm coloured, or am I coloured because I'm poor?"

Granted, this is a quasi-rhetorical question, since I'm admittedly not poor (being the daughter of capitalists will teach you that) and indeed, in some parts of the world, I'm not even coloured.

But it raises some interesting questions on the correlation between race & class (and other forms of marginalization). My usual assumption is that we're marginalized because of our status (as coloured, as female, as disabled, as poor, as queer, and so on and so on), and that it is our social characteristics that determine our standing in the world.

But what if we flipped it around? What if marginalization came first, and only as a result, produced these various social stratifications?

What came first - the identity or the marginalization?

I think I need to work on this theory a little more, but I welcome comments. Throw me some real life examples, since I think I'm being a little hyper-theoretical and not overly practical...