I don't ever expect "the oppressed" to behave any differently than anyone else. They just have quieter lives filled with far more desperation, so I cut them a shit load of slack.

As to the have a little, want a little more middle class power and ambition and money mongering in racial identity politics, again, they don't seem any more less venal than any group of white people I've ever been around.

I think folks is pretty much folks, regardless of what they look like or where they live.

The dynamic you describe about native people you knew also sounds like life in the suburbs, so it's hard to tell if we are in agreement. I don't know that I'd throw them off the train because they acted like jerks. Everybody acts like a jerk at some point or another, is cruel, greedy, ugly. I've seen it all, and it is me and it you and egg man.