Class, Privilege, and Social Markers

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Martina

Class is determinative in ways that people constantly underestimate. Two and three generations in the upper middle class does not really turn you into a member of the upper middle class. It takes a long time to learn and unlearn the way of looking at the world that your social class created in you.


This so powerfully part of my experience and so much a part of the lens I look through. I sometimes have a good chuckle with the theory of upward mobility.

Often, I think of sayings like ... you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl....

Or, you can give the working-poor class immigrant garbage man's daughter an education and upward social mobility, but can't take the immigrant garbage man's working-poor class out of the daughter. I don't know if this always serves me well. I do know, I am stuck with it. Yet, there is more for my family generations to work through.


Class is, IMO, the primary prism through which we see the world.

Yup, the primary prism.