Classism and "urbanism" here at DU (and in life).

[NicoleM]

I hope this doesn't break any rules. My intention is not to start a flame war, nor is it to put down DU or its members in any way.

Unlike Bill O'Reilly, I actually did grow up poor (or "American poor"--we weren't living in a house made of cardboard or anything). As in, one step away from catastrophe all the time. As in, wouldn't have had decent clothes if it weren't for my grandma's help. Single mom, dad didn't believe in paying child support, etc. Fast forward to 1994. I found myself at an expensive private school "back East" as we say out here (they don't make poor kids pay tuition, in case you're wondering how we paid for it).

I noticed two things: one, there were a lot of middle class and rich kids who did not have the first clue how people with less money than they had live in this country. An example--one girl thought her family was poor because after her dad lost his job, they had to move to a house without a pool. I had a friend who just assumed we could all afford to go out to dinner with her all the time, or go shopping or whatever. It had never really occurred to her that not everybody had what she had.

Two, people from urban America just have no clue what life is like out here in the sticks. I don't fault anybody for that; how would you know if you haven't lived it? Let me help: we don't have Starbucks. Where I grew up, you had to drive three hours one way if you wanted to go see a movie. I have to drive for an hour to buy a book. Sometimes, if you want to leave your house in the winter, you need something bigger than a Honda Civic to get around (I know this from personal experience).

I've noticed both of those things here, too. Nobody here is as clueless as my pool-less classmate. But people do make assumptions based on their own experience, and I think it's helpful every now and again to hear somebody say, "things are not the same everywhere as they are where you are."

I hope that doesn't come across as a scolding or anything. That wasn't my intent. It's more like a heads-up.

Thanks for reading all that.

[wyldwolf]

1. Nicole...

...I know where you're coming from.

I grew up in a lower middleclass family. We had enough to get by but there was very little wiggle room.

I often notice, not only on DU but in all social interactions, people are limited by their own experiences. But that is to be expected and isn't a bad thing.

It's just when prejudices arise from it that the problems start.

After my parents retired, they bough a doublewide and moved it on to some land outside the city limits.

When I first started dating my wife, HER mother (well-off family)told her we weren't a good match because we had different values. When pressed, her mother confessed she had a problem with with my parents living in that mobile home.

[NicoleM]

2. I agree and disagree.

I agree that it is to be expected, but I think sometimes it is a bad thing. At least it is if you're not aware that you're doing it.

I lived in a single-wide for a while when I was a kid. My grandfather helpfully told my mom to be careful of fire, because the trailor had a 30-second burn time. The stuff of childhood nightmares.

[bearfartinthewoods]

38. a lot of it comes from the media

there is a plethora of urban sitcoms and dramas on the tube but what do you have depicting people in rural areas? beverly hillbillys and the waltons.

if the poor are depicted, it's always inner city poor. sometimes you get a movie about the downtrodden farmer.

maybe we aren't high drama enough for entertainment?

as far as being poor, there were times when we lived on gov sub cheese for a week at a time but most of the time we didn't notice until we got to highschool and the social pressure of clothes and cars kicked in.

[Tinoire]

3. So true! Thanks for sharing that

It often saddens me that we think we have the first clue about what less fortunate Americans are going through as we bank on getting their votes for candidates who are not addressing their issues. I'm glad you shared that in your kind way.

You sound so... grounded and realistic. Wishing you the absolute best and I'm thrilled you're here to keep us straight!

Peace

Welcome to DU!

[NicoleM]

5. I'm blushing.

Thanks.

[Tinoire]

45. Please don't blush... I really meant that

Hope to talk with you more. You're a welcome addition to our group!

[Another Bill C.]

4. I don't believe you know life at all until

your mom has had to cook next year's seed-wheat to make it through the winter. Looking at the world from the bottom up is a view you can't imagine unless you've seen it.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

6. great post

Classism is rampant on DU, since most everyone here is upper middle class and well educated. It's sometimes shocking at the overt bigotry - against rural southerers, the jokes about trailer parks - even DU's Bob Boudelang is a stereotype - how do you think DU would react if Bob Boudelang was black? We'd be outraged. But making fun of working class white people seems to be a sport around here.

This is of course the reason why Democrats are a minority, don't have the presidency or Congress, and the courts. Way to piss off 60% of the population people!

[Kolesar]

18. "most everyone here is upper middle class and well educated"

You cannot back that up. And further, "making fun of working class white people seems to be a sport around here" is way overstated. Jokes like that are told, but I don't think most people at DU think that those jokes are all that funny, so the threads die off quickly enough. You seem to excel in generalizations.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

23. you're wrong on both counts

Every poll that has been done on DU shows that most people make over 75k, and have a higher education than your average America.

"Making fun of working class white people seems to be a sport around here" is way overstated"

You're wrong again. I've been here for something like two years and stereotypes and jokes about white trash, "rednecks", southerners, and poor people get posted DAILY.

I agree though, they aren't funny.

[Kolesar]

25. you are welcome to back your statements up with data...

...anytime.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

29. you're welcome to search the archive for income polls

or not. Perhaps it's fun to pretend that the internet doesn't have an income and racial gap.

[SoCalDem]

41. "most people "..

Unless everyone posts to the poll, that's not accurate..

Truth be told, MOST people (even the ones making 75K)are two paychecks away from homelessness...

The more you have, the more you spend, and when people say they "own", MOST people really mean that they pay rent to the bank every month.. Miss a few payments, and the bank gets very testy

I grew up somewhat underpriviledged too.. We never lived in a trailer, but my mother raised us 4 pretty much on her own, and we shopped at garage sales and "took handouts" from reluctant better-off relatives..

It taught me the value of smart shopping and bargain hunting.. Even though I don't "need" to shop that way, I still do, and have passed the techniques on to my kids.. (My youngest was somewhat of a personal shopper for his friends.. They always wanted to take him along so they could get good bargains)

Classism is all in the interpretation, and DU is not immune from the boorish posts that pop up now and then.. The difference here is that dems really DO want to see EVERYONE in society do better.. Repubes are satisfied with only themselves doing better, and if they have to cheat someone to get there, alls the better

[Padraig18]

7. Excellent post!

There is rampant elitism on DU.

[IrateCitizen]

8. I really can't think of anything else to say, so I'll just tell you...

that this is a GREAT POST! Your voice is most certainly welcome here, and if anybody flames you for this post -- they'll have to deal with ME!

[Ress1]

10. LOL

*

[MuseRider]

9. After my mother died

I found a picture of my father as a child, in the 20's on a dirt farm in nowhere Kansas. He and his brothers and sisters were in their undies. No clothes, no shoes etc. I grew up with just the basics except for my music lessons. It was not hard for us as kids, hand me downs were OK if not exactly in style, my parents struggled. I will never forget my mother in law saying to me, "Well, that's not bad. We were the only family in the neighborhood who couldn't afford a live in maid." I looked at my dad as a child in the picture and I would have smacked her except some people just don't want to know, they just do not want to know.

[no name no slogan]

11. AMEN SISTER!

Hi Nicole, I grew up in much the same circumstances as you did. I grew up in a rural town about 20 miles outside of Minneapolis (it was rural back then, now it's a suburban hellhole), surrounded by farms, fields and a few nice country lakes-- completely primative, the only "trails" were the ones we made ourselves.

I also grew up the child of a single parent. My dad left when I was four, and although he did pay support, it wasn't enough for a single mom working a clerical job, raising a son and trying to pay for a house. Thankfully, my grandparents were able to spare some cash and helped us out immensely. Were it not for them, we surely would have been homeless and I NEVER would have made it to college (BTW, I was the first male in my family on EITHER SIDE to finish college).

My wife grew up much the same, outside of New Prague, MN (you may know it). She was the seventh of eight kids in a hard-working farm family who had rough goings through the 80s. She got her first job waiting tables at a truckstop at 14 to earn money for college. Her parents didn't have the $$ to pay for it, so she went on her grants, loans and savings. She oftentimes worked two or three jobs during the summer, over 90 hours per week, to keep going to school.

Today we live in an inner-city neighborhood in Mpls that was "working class" when we moved there, but is becoming increasingly "gentrified" and a "hip" place.

I understand completely what you say about the urbanism/ruralism divide here, as well as the classism. Let's face it: most people who have access to the internet make good money and can afford luxuries like computers. I have one because I learned how to build them myself, and subsequently taught myself programming as well.

I have never owned a "new" car in my life. I'm fortunate to be driving one that's less than a decade old and has less than 90,000 on it.

I know that feeling that you have, and I sense it once in awhile in certain debates. I'm sure that some people here think they're "poor" because they have a combined income of $70k/yr, when this is much better than most of the country.

Just wanted to let you know that you're not alone, and there's a few of us out here who can relate to your experience.

[roughsatori]

12. I think it is instructive to point out classism as it occurs on DU

as a direct reply to the poster you think has just been classist. That keeps it specific and gives the other person an opportunity to learn--or to refute our misconception of their intention.

I grew up in a trailer-park with 8 of us. A clear memory is of my parents not having the money to drain the septic tank, and my father siphoning it 8 feet from the trailer onto the ground at night. I remember the stench and my fears of disease. I think that must be why I am a compulsive cleaner to the point of hiring a maid and cleaning after she would leave. (A DUer once posted that people who live in trailer parks "like living like that because they choose to live that way.")

I try to respond directly to every "white-trash" and "trailer-trash" comment. Some will defend themselves, but others have been very understanding and are sorry if they have offended.


Because of my education, and diction I have been accused of being: "born with a silver spoon" in my mouth by others who have come from poverty. I think that kind of response shows how poverty entraps people's minds to the point that they can't even believe it is possible for others to escape it. Or it indicates that though they are poor they like some wealthy people think that being poor indicates laziness and stupidity--as opposed to being a symptom of the sick, un-Christian society that the USA has become.

[Ress1]

13. It's the social pressure.

I had no idea we were poor until I started school and the other kids started the taunting which grew worse with each passing year. Without someone to turn to, the pressure put on needy children by other students can be almost overwhelming and can possibly scar some kids for life. Welfare puts food on the table, but there is so much more to a needy child's well being than hunger. We can't do enough to help the kids, but they don't vote and they can't lobby. They lose.

[Rowdyboy]

14. When my mother was born, my grandparents had neither indoor plumbing

nor electricy. By my grandparents' death they had achieved middle class. My parents received government "commodities" (think early food stamps) for awhile. Later mom worked as a lunchroom lady while dad was a long haul trucker. They also made it up to the middle class and made sure I had a opportunity to get an education.

Been there, done that. I cringe at the upper class, elitist bigotry I sometimes see expressed here. A Democratic board should be more welcoming to Democrats.

[RichardRay]

15. Nicely put

I live in a 248 sq ft cabin at the end of a 15% grade road with mulitiple hair pin turns in a place where it snow 500" of snow a year. What plowing we have we pay for. I have bear & elk in my yard often. I have no phone or cable and one radio station that comes in OK. Darn betcha I drive a 4WD SUV!!!

Work is quite a bit more upholstered...

We just had an incident in which a local high schooler was sent home for 10 days and nearly expelled because he had an unloaded, cased hunting rifle in his vehicle. He'd gotten his deer before school that morning and hadn't had time to go home to drop the rifle off after dealing with the deer. According to some sort of national standards recently adopted here there is a Zero Tolerance rule that required his punishment.

Folks, this is rural Wyoming - we don't even have home mail delivery. There ARE differences.

[NicoleM]

16. Welcome to DU.

When I was in school, the first day of hunting season was an excused absence. I'm sure it still is. If they had expelled all the kids with gun racks in their pickups, there would have been a lot fewer kids in school.

I grew up in rural North Dakota, and sometimes I think I might as well have grown up on the moon. It's that different growing up there than in the city or the 'burbs.

[newyawker99]

52. Hi RichardRay!!

Welcome to DU!!

[NeonLX]

17. (Former) farm boy here

I grew up on a farm and often wore shitty boots (literally) to the small, rural school I attended along with 30 other people in my class. Very few of us were even middle class, let alone wealthy. I remember thinking it was a Really Big Deal when I was able to renew my annual subscription to Mad Magazine when I was younger

Now, almost 30 years later, I live in a "blue collar" neighborhood in a 970 sq. ft. ranch house with 2.5 bedrooms, along with my wife and daughter. I "pulled myself up by my bootstraps" and got both undergraduate and graduate degrees back in my 20s. It took over 10 years for me to pay off my student loans. I've managed to hold onto the same job for the past 15 years and thank my lucky stars for that. My wife works part time as a lab tech in a local hospital. We seem to live pretty comfortably but we're certainly not jet-setters. We pinch pennies at the store and still use coupons for almost every purchase. Today, I'm wearing a tie I picked up at a Goodwill store and a pair of pants that I bought on the "irregular" table.

It's humbling to realize how our low key lifestyle must seem positively extravagant to a lot of people here in this country, let alone millions and millions of people elsewhere around the world.

[Cat Atomic]

19. Same story here, but I grew up in Los Angeles.

Being poor in a city is no great shakes either.

I do see a degree of the classism you're talking about here on DU from time to time. I also see the effects of it in some of the presidential candidates. You cannot expect truly poor people to be enthused about a moderate Democrat.

[CWebster]

20. Culture shock

Whenever I leave this immediate area I am always amazed to see the vast disparities in living standards in other regions of the country. Trailers with "Take Back Vermont" signs juxtaposed against wealth so extreme that heliocopters provide the only access to mountaintop retreats.

The first time I saw poverty in the border towns of Mexico it left me speechless--it was incomprehensible to me that entire families lived in cardboard boxes. Little did I know at the time it would be a common sight in US cities in just a few short years when Reagan brought his brand of social engineering to town.

[TheDonkey]

21. Class is an issue that needs to be discussed in America

I moved from the suburbs of Maryland to a poor community in Pennsylvania when I was young. There are a lot of misconceptions from rich people about poor people but I'd rather term it "sheltered" people. You can be rich and have just as much of a grasp as living poor in America than even lower class people do.

[cmd]

22. A real coalminer's daughter here

I'm the oldest of six. I've been there and done it. I've been through unemployement, strikes, and the welfare department. I know what it's like to miss out on the fun things many kids take for granted. A treat was getting to be the first to take a bath in the tub of precious water that mom heated on the stove. I wouldn't trade my experience for all the tea in China. It's my life and it gives me my unique outlook on the world. We each contribute in our own way.

(Someday I'll tell you all about the four seater outhouse that I used in grade school.)

[NicoleM]

28. No need. . .

I've used an outhouse more than once.

I wouldn't trade my experience, either. I know how to take care of myself. I know how to get by. Not everybody does.

[DuctapeFatwa]

24. Neither rich nor poor have a clue about the other's reality

One of my favorite real-life illustrations:

At a university lecture on urban societal problems, specifically homelessness, a young lady, obviously moved and concerned by the conditions and hardships endured by homeless people that the speaker had outlined, asked

"Why do they just live like that? Why don't they just take something out of savings?"

Less extreme and so common that it is the exception rather than the rule are the "anybody who wants to succeed in America can do it, poverty is just the result of poor choices/laziness/weak character,etc.

The "hard work and get ahead" one is particularly amusing to single moms who work 80 hours a week for minimum wage or a few dollars more, spend 4 to 6 hours a day getting to and from work, and consider 5 consecutive hours of sleep a luxury.

The fact is, that no matter how hard you work, or what a good job you do, that 6 dollars will still buy a little less food this year than it did last year, and landlords do not base their rents on how hard you work or how long you have to ride the bus to get there.

It is also easy to find poor people who believe that anyone with an office job gets all the health care they want - free and with no waits, that anyone who makes 4 or 5 times the minimum wage can just walk into any bank and walk out with 6 figure cash loans with no payments due until 30 years from now, and that 6% interest means if you borrow $100, your total payments over the life of the loan will be $106.

US society is so extremely polarized, and the gap is so wide, that few affluent people have ever even been inside a slum apartment or a housing project, and poor people's knowledge of how the upper middle class lives comes primarily from television shows.

[jiacinto]

26. Yeah I went to a "private" college too

And I did have to pay tuition. Or let me say this way. I have loans to pay for the rest of my life.

I went to school with people like you describe. I felt so much like an outcast at times.

[NicoleM]

30. I have loans, too.

They didn't pay for my room and board. And nobody paid for my aborted attempt at law school. So I will be paying mine for a *long* time, too.

[jiacinto]

33. I thought of going to law school

but bombed the LSATs. I did get an MA and will be paying the price for a very long time.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

27. A comment from the other side of the spectrum

While my parents were not wealthy, my grand parents were extremely wealthy. I was educated in private schools my entire life and have both a graduate and post graduate degree.

I make great money and probably was in the top of Du earners in the poll (can't recall if I participated or not.)

My father, however, was a union activist and I was raised picketing for the bragaining rights of farmworkers and sweatshop workers. My mother ( who is a fabulous seamstress) actuallly worked for a period of time in a sweatshop in order to document abuses of AMERICAN AND IMMIGRANT women.

In my two decades involved in labor law, I have only been accused of being an elitist by right wingers, and by people on DU. The ones who have done this on DU seem to think being down and out and not being given a seat at the table of public policy is some kind of badge of honor to wear as a medal. I reject that logic and regard it as nothing more than being a poor snob. There is a fine line between underscoring poverty so that something can be done about it and GLORIFYING poverty as though it makes you better.

Pulling people UP from poverty is a function of LEADERSHIP and the WILL TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

If someone demonstrates both, it is a bit mutinous to tear them down for their efforts.

I know for a fact that my advocacy, no matter how well rewarded I HAVE BEEN for it, has improved the quality of life for people when they needed it most...after an injury or when they were unfairly targetted for retribution after attemting to orgnize.

The point of this post is to underscore that your post/thread works both ways.

Blatant generalizations of entire groups of people do not work whether it is the charges of TRAILER TRASHISM or the unwarranted charge of elitism.

If one from another walk of life ventures into a community NOT THEIR OWN and assists them in what is possible versus what is inevitable, thanks is in order....not criticism.

[NicoleM]

32. Okay. . .

First of all, I never accused you or anybody else at DU of elitism. I never used the word in my original post. I specifically stated that it was not my intent to put anybody down or scold anybody.

Second, I know it works both ways. I have absolutely no idea what it's like to grow up in urban America. None.

Third, if you're accusing me of "tearing them down for their efforts," please explain how I've done that.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

34. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear or if you misunderstood

When invoking the concepts of elitism and the phrase "tearing down efforts" I was commenting not just on your post but on the totality of posts on the thread. I think you handled the issue well and opened up an excellent discussion and was directing this to all who comment not just you. If you browse through the posts leading up to my comment, it will be apparent.

[NicoleM]

36. Alrighty then.

Nevermind.

/Emily Litella

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

37. Thanks I hope

wanted to make sure you KNEW no criticism was directed towards you or the content of your post.

[NicoleM]

40. I got it.

We're cool.

[leftofthedial]

31. what are you, some kind of low-class hick troublemaker?

just kidding.

Middle class and up Americans have almost no concept of want, except as it applies to acquisitiveness.

[ramapo]

35. Most people are self-centered

It's not practical to live someone else's experience but it's not to hard to spend some time thinking about it. Not many people do it though.

I live in an upper-middle class suburb. Drive 15 minutes and you can be in the middle of inner-city poverty. There's not much sympathy for the people that live there. Pretty much out of sight, out of mind. When my kids were little, I made a point of taking a side trip now and then just so they had some clue as to the other side of reality.

Those that have money and can spend freely, don;t think much about the family living paycheck-to-paycheck, struggling to pay the mortgage and bills. And if they do it's often along the line of "What's their problem?".

Most of us are judgemental, often very much so. There's no better exercise than to put yourself in another's shoes.

[mitchtv]

39. nicole, I am living proof that..

you don't need money, to have'class'( I didn't thinkwe were poor but 5 kids and a dog in a 4 room apt was pretty LOWER middle)To me good manners and modest taste makes class. I am in suburbia now after many years of urban and rural.Better a blank white wall, than an expensive ugly painting

[iverglas]

42. I'm hearing my name

Gosh, it wouldn't have been a little exchange in that home-schooling thread that got you thinking, would it?

The one where I suggested that the single, business-owning mom was an exception to the rule that homeschoolers are mainly mothers (not fathers) who are economically dependent on their partners and spend their lives inside the nuclear family -- and not a refutation of that fact?

And then pointed out that I, as a woman in the very top few percentage points of income earners, was also an exception to the rule that women earn less and have fewer employment opportunities than men?

Well surprise, I grew up very unrich too. After a few years, we settled in a tiny but new house in a 1950s suburb, and my father, with a secure working-class white-collar job, did reasonably well. My little sister doesn't remember the earlier macaroni-eating days ... and none of me and my siblings was there when my mother was begging soup bones "for the dog" from the butcher in those dirty thirties. I can't compete with you for down-and-out stories, but nope, I didn't grow up rich. And my parents didn't retire rich, that's for sure.

Actually, I owe much of my considerable success to a wonderful public education system. Without low-cost tuition and scholarships and student loans and grants, I would never have been able to get two university degrees. My parents' modest means didn't stretch anywhere near that far. Nonetheless, I lived those years in run-down houses I shared with a lot of other people, eating macaroni and hitchhiking and buying my clothes at charity shops and living on whatever furniture was there when we moved in. I had expectations, but I was as poor as one can be.

Some of the benefits of that education system also involved some drawbacks. I feel your pool pain, I assure you. I spent three years in elementary school in an "advanced" class, and it very soon became very obvious what a strange correlation there was in my city between "smart" and "rich". Sixty kids in each grade (in a city of maybe 100,000 at the time), thirty in my class ... and five of us from the wrong side of those tracks. Literally "wrong side of the tracks", the infamous east end; that was one of the class-conscious-est communities you could ever imagine. I never did fit in.

Twenty-five years later, at a reunion that I attended out of gossipy curiosity rather than any desire to see any of them ever again, we all played public-school trivia. "Who nearly drowned Joe in Bob's pool while Nancy and Kathy looked on?" went one question. I was very tempted to say "How the fuck would I know?? Who ever invited ME to play in their pool?" The other east-of-the-trackers didn't even bother to put in an appearance ... well, except the one who was himself the exception to the poor-kid rule, the child of resentful post-war Eastern European immigrants who pampered and drove their kids, and he's now an outer-space hot shot; you've seen him on TV. But the grown-up rich kids were all still snickering behind his back at the party.

Here's my favourite tale from the evening, just for your amusement. We'll call the town Toryburg. The north was (and is) the place to be; big houses, big trees, old money. The south was my mum's roots, but has now been gentrified into "Old South" -- but the trees and houses aren't as big, and the money isn't as old. "Linda" was one of the Old North stalwarts -- mother an arts maven, father a lawyer. She appeared at the party, tanned and newly divorced, and looking to move back to the old home town. My middle-class, west-end friend suggested she look for a house in Old South, where she and her new-money husband lived. Linda looked at her in blank incomprehension. "But," she said, "I'm from North."



"But people do make assumptions based on their own experience, and I think it's helpful every now and again to hear somebody say, 'things are not the same everywhere as they are where you are'."

Damn, eh? I thought that was exactly what I (and several others) were saying in that home-schooling thread.

.

[muriel_volestrangler]

43. a cultural question:

is 'eating macaroni' like 'eating ( and drinking) bread and water' in the US? ie a known phrase for a very basic diet? Or is macaroni really looked on as something you'd only eat if you could afford nothing else?

[NicoleM]

47. I've never heard that expression.

I don't think there is a huge bias against macaroni here. Personally, I LOVE Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, but I get the spirals.

[iverglas]

48. heh

Kraft Dinner is the Canadian national food. I think you guys just call it "mac 'n cheese". We turn it into an art form. It's what you eat if you're poor, it's what you donate to the food bank if you aren't, it's what your grandmother makes you when you've had your wisdom teeth pulled, it's what you eat when you're blue, it's what you eat when you can't be bothered deciding what to eat.

Those Ramen noodles caught on somewhat among the younger set, but KD made a comeback. Of course, we buy the no-name brand for thrift, and also the fancy store-brand ("President's Choice", the line named for the ex-CEO of Loblaws, the major food retailer, whose house brands are household names). One version or another of KD is the staple food of the poor student.

Working-class kids and their parents in white-bread, white Ontario cities in the 50s and 60s didn't have the money for fast food, and of course the fast food industry didn't exist, anyhow.

These days, we middle-aged ex-poor students are more likely to cook penne and pesto or go out for Vietnamese (Canadians, on average, are much bigger foodies than USAmericans), but we've still got a stock of KD in the pantry.



.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

44. I feel your pain, Nicole

When I was in graduate school at Yale, I ran into a lot of people who literally did not understand the concept of not being able to afford things.

I needed to go to Japan to research my dissertation, so I applied for fellowships. When I mentioned that I was really crossing my fingers about those fellowships, one of the other students said, "Why bother? Just go! You could probably live there for ten thousand dollars a year." (He was right, because this was the 1970s.)

I told him I didn't have $10,000 lying around. In fact, I was living on about $5,000 a year between graduate fellowships and teaching assistantships and part-time library and concert ushering jobs.

He stared at me as if this notion did not compute. Finally he said, "Well, get the money from your parents."

My dad was a Lutheran pastor, making about...$10,000 a year.

It appeared as if this news caused his brain to melt. He just walked away shaking his head.

A working class graduate student of my acquaintance complained about some of her classmates, who refused to tip in restaurants, giving the excuse, "They ought to pay their help more." Since she had worked her way through college over a period of six years waiting on tables, these kinds of attitudes made her crazy.

Then there was the time the telephone company rented Woolsey Hall auditorium for its annual Christmas program and asked Yale to provide student ushers. Some of the undergraduate ushers laughed at the way the phone company workers were dressed, laughed at the performers, and just laughed at the whole proceedings in general. I was pretty disgusted, but too insecure to say anything.

I could go on and on about the classist attitudes I encountered at Yale, but I must say that not all the people who said these things were liberals. Some were hard-right conservatives.

[NicoleM]

46. I once dropped a class in college

because a professor made a really rude, really really classist statement about the "hard hats" who were working on the building at the time.

The man was wearing lipstick at the time, to challenge our assumptions about gender. I just didn't have the energy at the time to challenge his assumptions about class.

[ikojo]

49. Thank you for your post!

Class is the elephant in the room subject that is rarely discussed in the US. It affects all of us (rich and poor) but we don't know how to talk about it amongst each other let alone outside our class (or race).

I am the sixth of seven kids. My dad left my mom when I was an infant and while he lived quite well (he remarried well) my mom struggled. There were times we didn't have electricity and I would listen to the World Series on a portable radio or sit outside to read by the streetlight. There were times when my mom would put beef boullion cubes in water and call that dinner. My dad had a problem paying child support. I guess since he lived in Florida it was easy for him to forget that he had kids in Illinois. He died in 1983.

It was not easy watching my mom worry constantly about money. It makes for a stressful childhood. I had a paper route when I was a kid and before I would spend the money on frivolities like Star Trek stuff I would ask my mom if she needed the money. Sometimes she DID need the money and while I wanted to keep it for myself I gave it to her.

My mom didn't choose to be poor, she took the best job she could find following her divorce. She worked HARD and often worked two jobs to make ends meet. She did have a job at a hospital in a department that was going to let her go to nursing school but she was so harassed by my dad that she was asked to leave. Back in the 1960s if there were laws against men harassing women at work they were not well enforced.

It was my childhood experiences which have guided me throughout my adult life. I will always support the powerLESS over the powerFUL. It is why I support more progressive candidates over those who support the status quo, Republican or Democrat.

[no name no slogan]

50. "But that's class warfare!"

and that's what's really sad here, too.

The right has done a decent job of convincing most America that they're really "upper-middle class" or "upper class". Not only that, but they have also convinced working folk that our interests reside with the "upper class" and not the "welfare recipients" and "poor people".

It's class war of the worst kind, and it has paid off for the Republicans handsomely over the last 20 years.

What's really tragic is that when our candidates start talking about the class war taking place against working people by the plutocracy, the right-wingers start whining about "class warfare", and how unfair it is to them and their rich benefactors.

When 70 million Americans lack sufficent healthcare, THAT IS CLASS WARFARE. When a single mother has to work two jobs and 80+ a week, just to keep a roof over her kids' heads, THAT'S CLASS WARFARE. When our public schools resemble those of the third world because we need to provide "vouchers" and tax breaks for private school kids, THAT'S CLASS WARFARE.

Hell, if the Democrats had any sense, they'd beat the living crap out of this issue, and flout it to the Republicans. Because most Americans are not "upper class", and the so-called "middle class" is shrinking daily. Just let those bastards try to "spin" that one their way!

[Nikia]

51. I struggle with class issues

I come from a class diverse background. I have seen and lived with the rich and poor. I know what it is like. I have preferences and mannerisms across the strata. Unfortunately since I am not too conscious of acting class appropriately, this can give me problems in social situations. I might appear snobbish or low class depending upon the group that I am with. It is interesting that my high spending mother-in-law (Her husband is a judge.) gages me to be low class because I think that she is rather crude herself. I might not be wearing the right clothes and could care less about shoes but I have an appreciation of fine food, the arts, and am proud to be educated. Anyway, I've learned that materialism is hallow from the upper middle class. I've learned that thinking of yourself as inferior and despising education will not get you anywhere fromthe lower and working classes. I know that these are very stereotypical generalizations. There are wonderful people in all income levels, jobs, and living situations. Living as an adult though in a different community, I wonder where I belong in the continuum of social class. I don't know. In some ways I am comfortable with all of them, but in some ways I can never belong to any of them.