Class, Privilege, and Social Markers

[JustJo]

Originally Posted by Martina

Class is very real. It's not just in our heads. It's who you know, who your parents know. It's the assumptions and categories you were taught as a child. There are things they know exist in the world for them, realities they accept as stable, that i have a hard time even believing in.

There are some things they don't have that my African American friend from Flint, Michigan has. My friend's family never ever disowns or cuts out a family member. They may be in jail. They may be queer (which is not approved of), but they are always welcome home. Their behavior is less important than the fact that they are family. They do not have to prove anything to anyone to be accepted. i have not found that to be true sometimes for people raised in the upper middle classes.

We enact class all the time. It's impossible to think outside of class without doing lots and lots of work. And we injure ourselves and others with assumptions and fears about class. Not necessarily brutally. i know lots of proud working class people. i think that if people are not desperately poor and they fit in with the people around them, they are as likely to be happy as anyone else.

Class does not determine happiness or satisfaction with life. But it is ever-present. It is relentless. Much harder to see outside of than racism, sexism, and homophobia -- although those are tough.

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.

My parents came from world that distrusted outsiders. Outsiders were likely to despise you. We were vigilant about that in ways that have much more to do with living in poverty among a less respected class of people than any reality i lived on a daily basis. In fact, i was very privileged in my home town. i lived in a small house in the nicest suburb. i had educated parents doing a job that gave them some recognition -- for a while my dad was the high school basketball coach -- the town's only high school. i was an only child and felt pretty safe. i wandered around the neighborhood and the woods freely (it was the sixties). i had a good good life.

But i have had to tame that reaction to other people "mugging" me that causes my inner city students to get in fights with one another all the time. i have a lot of those same assumptions in my bones -- about the world looking down on me and mine.

i know that my friend whose parents worked their way up to great security and wealth from relatively lower middle class roots -- that their family is riddled with anxiety about losing it all. The people she went to college with -- at an elite college -- were not raised that way.

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

As much as I might wish that what you say isn't true...I am inclined to agree with you.

I grew up somewhere below working class. We were that "deserving poor" family that was the recipient of the basket of food from the PTA ladies at Thanksgiving. Yes, my mother worked but haphazardly...because she was more focused on other enterprises that were important to her, but that left us unsupervised and dependent on the salvation army for clothes and the kindness of the parents of friends for normal "kid things" like trips to the movies or other outings.

I lived most of my childhood in a one-bedroom apartment...we lived 6 months without any living room furniture (until we found a rather startling orange couch at the curb one evening)...we were evicted a few times. We didn't own a TV. I never owned new clothes until I could buy them myself. My mother was also "too proud" (her words) to accept the "charity" of food stamps or welfare...so we just did without. Friends whose mothers collected welfare lived much better than we did. I don't say this as a "pity me"...just to illustrate the root of my perspective.

What I did learn, very young, was to work. To work hard, and to work long hours. I got my first babysitting jobs at age 10, my first "real" job at 15. I had a full time job by the time I was 16...and have worked ever since. I have always supported myself (and then my son), without assistance...even from husbands.

I also figured out that education was the only pathway that I could see out of poverty. I worked full time and went to college... getting a BA. That helped. I kept working. Other stuff intervened...and it was 20 years before I could go back to school for my masters. I got my MBA and things changed again, for the better.

I am now a little cog in a medium-sized corporate wheel and I love it. I like my work. I like the appreciation of my boss. I like my teammates. I love that I work from home.

But...here's the deal. I may have advanced degrees and all of the technical credentials for the job, but I will still never be senior mangement. I don't come from the same place those folks come from. I don't see the world the same way. I don't know the things and the people they do. They appreciate my creativity and my work...but they know I am not one of them, just as I know it.

Technically, I am middle class. My income puts me in that quartile. I have a college education. I live in a relatively affluent suburb in a top-rated school district. I drive a newer car. We go on a vacation every year.

I don't feel middle class though. I feel like a poor person with some money.

I tried to find the post and couldn't....but someone posted here about their food issues. Empty cupboards or a bare refrigerator will send me into an emotional tail spin. I will and can budget anywhere...except at the grocery store. I buy the expensive stuff there....fresh berries, dry-aged beef, the really good olive oil. These are the things that hold my old poverty mentality at bay. Doesn't make sense...but it's what's real for me.

The primary difference that I see is that the people I know who grew up middle or upper class appear to feel secure in their place in the world. They, at least appear, to have the sense that things will always be okay. If things go wrong for them, they have backup in family. It's not entitlement exactly....but just a feeling of mastery or rightness. Not sure if I'm putting that well...

What I feel is nothing like that. It comes from having lived on the edge for my entire youth...and of having only myself to depend on ever since. I feel like my survival (and my son's) is dependent on my education, my work, my vigilance. If I falter, we are screwed. I trust my own ability to survive almost anything (short of nuclear war) because I know how to work, how to get along, and how to make a living no matter what comes. That's a weird kind of security of its own....but it's different from the security that comes from growing up with enough.