Class, Privilege, and Social Markers

[Medusa]

Im glad that a few folks have brought up the whole thing where folks appropriate a class history that doesn't really belong to them.

Im trying to tease out a parallel around the very rich and the very poor. There is almost some kind of....I dunno...."money ceiling"? where the very wealthy and very poor are concerned. Some kind of untouchable glamorization.
I think of the very wealthy as they are shown on tv and how there is this mythical unicorn feeling attached to them through tabloids and media. Movie stars and singers with gold-plated dog bowls and $30 million homes are elevated to this "untouchable" (or maybe unimaginable) status.
There is "celebrity" attached through wealth. The idea that human beings are worth more if they are "worth" more.

But then, there is this weird dichotomy where the very poor also have a mythical unicorn thing attached. Think of Nuns and Monks who have no earthly possessions; I think society oftens sees this life as "magical" or "untouchable". The celebrity attached here is one that says "This person must be magical in other ways because they have no money". Glamorized for what might seem like a perfected lack of desire?

[Dylan]

Originally Posted by Medusa

Im glad that a few folks have brought up the whole thing where folks appropriate a class history that doesn't really belong to them.

Im trying to tease out a parallel around the very rich and the very poor. There is almost some kind of....I dunno...."money ceiling"? where the very wealthy and very poor are concerned. Some kind of untouchable glamorization.
I think of the very wealthy as they are shown on tv and how there is this mythical unicorn feeling attached to them through tabloids and media. Movie stars and singers with gold-plated dog bowls and $30 million homes are elevated to this "untouchable" (or maybe unimaginable) status.
There is "celebrity" attached through wealth. The idea that human beings are worth more if they are "worth" more.

But then, there is this weird dichotomy where the very poor also have a mythical unicorn thing attached. Think of Nuns and Monks who have no earthly possessions; I think society oftens sees this life as "magical" or "untouchable". The celebrity attached here is one that says "This person must be magical in other ways because they have no money". Glamorized for what might seem like a perfected lack of desire?

I think the rich get glamorized...

while The Poor get romanticized.

I think there's a certain 'romantic notion' attached to The Poor...The 'simple' lifestyle...'living simply'. I see certain aspects of Appalachia romanticized a lot. The 'quaint' lifestyle. It seems like all of the 'crap' of being poor gets shoved out of the picture, so all that remains is this 'simple' lifestyle.

I was talking to someone a while ago, and she was so poor, she had to make her own hand soap out of soap chips. As I was talking to someone else about it, it became this 'quaint' thing that she made her own soap.

I also see the romanticism in comments like, "They were so 'ethical'" or some other somesuch comments discussing the high morals of poor people (usually long after they've died or long after they were young enough to work two jobs or whatever). I'm not being very clear here, but...when younger people are poor, they're normally villainized as being lazy/drug addicts/whatnot...when poor people get older, they're usually romanticized or pitied. It's interesting to me, because I never hear these same type of comments from actual poor people. I never hear poor people who are struggling actually say, "But we're rich with a good work ethic" or "We don't have much, but we have 'love'". I mean, the only actual poor person I've ever heard say something like that is Loretta Lynn, and it was wellllllllll after she was actually living poor. Again, it's that 'romanticized' version of Poordom. Like there's something enviable in going days without food, or making your own soap, or watching your kids go hungry, or some other somesuch like that.

And then, I see this 'outsider looking in' version of Poordom. Like social workers are sometimes sooooo fascinated with The Poor/Poverty. And books like "Nickeled And Dimed" make (already rich) people even more wealthy, while the actual lived lives of The Poor are completely ignored. Theories are studied, yet when those who have actually LIVED it, say, "Um, no that won't work, because..." they're dismissed while those with more class privilege discuss how to 'fix' it (which usually entails a good round of victim blaming and boot-strapping).

I think some of this romanticizing has to do with religion (especially/primarily catholicism-xtianity-protestant work ethic), and all of the brainwashing contained in the bible about being poor and how it's so godly. There's a lot of glorification in 'suffering'.


Dylan

[Apocalipstic]

When I tell people I had tea in London they ask if I wore a hat or white gloves.

People in England just have tea, every day, they don't dress for it.

We do romanticize the rich and the poor in this country.

Honestly, the only time I have ever wore white gloves, (other than the mud covered ones my mother made me wear to Easter when I was 3), has been as a banquet waiter. White gloves are worn by servants, not people drinking tea.

[Martina]

i have had class privilege, and i have "suffered" in a way from classism. My parents were school teachers. They paid for me to go to college. They were both from eastern Kentucky, but i grew up in southwest Ohio. Where i lived, it was an everyday thing for people to make fun of Kentuckians. Sometimes i saw my mom cry because of cruel comments.

One neighbor, whose daughter was my close friend, seemed to especially enjoy hurting my mother. In his case, i think it came out of class resentment. He had not gone to college although he made a lot of money as a bricklayer. But he enjoyed taking down my mother who had, and he had this easy weapon. Half the teachers in the district came up from Kentucky colleges. And lots of other people too.

i run into or hear about a lot of creative and alternative folks who are second generation out of Appalachia. i think it gave us a perspective on class and culture. You were both inside -- no accent -- and outside. And you saw two different ways of life.

Appalachians always go home. Or back then they did. For me there were constant weekend and summer trips back to Kentucky. We had a cabin there where we spent the bulk of our summers. This going back "home" a lot was true for most of my generation. We saw the difference between rural poverty and whatever kind of "better" life we lived.

We also experienced other contrasts. Sometimes back home was more violent, sometimes less. Back home usually meant family feeling, good food, beautiful land, and, frequently, great music. Sometimes the cousins back home thought you were uppity for having the stuff you did and for talking differently.

Then i lived most of my adult life in Ann Arbor, Michigan. i got a graduate degree from the University of Michigan, but my previous degrees were from "lesser" universities. To my peers at UofM, i was too loud and clearly not Ivy League. It boggled some people's minds that i could still be smart. It always took people a while to get me. My closest friends were people like me -- people who had ended up at UofM in spite of the odds: a guy from rural Indiana, one from inner city Detroit, another from a border town in Arizona. i only made one upper middle class friend ever. And that was because she married one of my closest friends. It was a struggle, too. It was a struggle for them to overcome class differences. But she is a good friend now.

What is so ironic and interesting is that she feels like a poser in the upper middle class. While her parents were Georgetown educated lawyers, their parents were not -- not at all. So her parents were the unlikely to be at their school, in their world, folks. She went to an Ivy. And she never fit in. Even though she is very successful, when she went back to a reunion, the differences between her and her former classmates were even more marked.

i don't know. i see class boundaries as fairly powerful in our culture even though we can gain or lose wealth and access to class privileges.

Most of my friends all of my life have been people like me, people who have some sense of there being no place on earth for them. That is an exaggerated and self-pitying formulation. i think many queer people feel this way, but it's not exclusive to us. Plus we do have some enclaves. Most of them white and expensive to live in.

One of my closest friends is an African American gay man. He is from Flint, Michigan. Most of his family are auto workers, but his dad went to prison when he was young, and his mom raised their family on welfare. He had a tight and supportive extended family. He always had nice clothes and food and fun and, once his father was gone, safety.

He was the co-valedictorian of his high school class, but he came to the University of Michigan hoping to be a doctor and couldn't pass the freshman math classes. Flint schools were that bad. He also found very few African American gay men there and made friends and became lovers with white men. One of them is a trust fund kid and will never probably work. He got into med school and was too lazy to go. Another of his exes is a psychiatrist.

So my friend got his social work degree and became a therapist and activist. As accepted as he is in his family, being educated, successful and gay means he does not really have a real home back in Flint. Being working class and African American means he does not have a home in progressive, educated, gay-friendly Ann Arbor.

In time, he became more involved with helping African American gay youth and formed a group for African American gay men (some don't ID as gay) in Detroit. He started dating African American men. He eventually married one, a community college professor. He moved out of Ann Arbor and lives in Detroit.

He has found a place. But it was a long trip. For me the point is that for many, many Americans, there is some displacement in terms of class. And once that happens, it is very hard to find your way home again.

Not too long ago, i saw one of my cousins after years and years. He moved to a little town in a rural area of Ohio and found his home. He married a pig farmer's daughter and got a good job, which turned into a very good job. He volunteers. He raises pigs on the side. They have a huge piece of land they keep up.

They raised two kids, one of whom graduated from college and married a lawyer. He does have to travel for his job, and their little town recently was devastated when the major employer closed down. They are no anachronism. They are no rural ideal. But their lives and their personalities are congruent with most of those in their community.

For some reason, in my life, no matter how conventional appearing they are, the people i am close to do not have this congruence. They live with the double perspective of being inside and outside, or they have had to fight for and make their home. It did not come easily. Almost all my friends have had that displacement because of class and have lived with the consequences every day.

It's not something to feel sorry for yourself about or to be angry about. But it is something to acknowledge. My academic work was in the humanities. i had very little interest in gender theory. i worked on issues of class. i find it hard to think outside of that construct. Class differences and dislocations ramify through our lives endlessly. They are very complex. They don't have to haunt or disable you to affect you and be a huge influence on your life.

[Apocalipstic]

Jumping off of what Martina said, it KILLS me when people make fun of other states, when they don't have a leg to stand on. Ohio? making fun of Kentucky? OK, Vermont maybe (I have never been there but it sounds nice)can make fun of the South, But I have been several places in Ohio just as rural, redneck and Southern as anywhere in Tennessee.

All of California is not LA and San Francisco, all of New York is not NYC.

A woman in Upstate NY, who lives in a farm house sinking into a field near a very small rural town told me that as soon as she hears a Southern Accent, she assumes the person is uneducated and stupid. Really?????

Classism based on what state or town one lives in does not fly for me.