Reply #46: Why so combative?

[QC]

I also have great respect for Berkeley and what she is doing. But, as you point out, my own work has probably made me somewhat cautious about what happens when academics deal with class.

There are some good reasons for that. The academy is actually a highly class-rooted institution, despite the conviction of most of its members that it is a pure meritocracy. (I can recommend two great books dealing with this: This Fine Place So Far from Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class and Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class.) So, when academics take on the subject of the poor and working classes, they are most often doing it from the perspective of someone outside looking in. And since middle-class people tend to universalize their class perspective, that can lead to problems. (The "Lady Bountiful" article I linked above has some interesting things to say about that.)

So yeah, I'm cautious when prosperous, comfortable people undertake to explain my own people to me. I don't dismiss them out of hand, but I do approach their work critically.

As for what I do, I'm writing a dissertation on how conventional portrayals of poor whites in Southern literature have served to reinforce traditional Southern notions of hierarchy. So I do have some knowledge of what happens when one class portrays another one from a distance, since it's what most canonical Southern writers have been doing for almost 300 years. But, I still would not ask anyone to accept my ideas uncritically just because I'll have Ph.D. after my name in a few months.