|
Survey Responses:
Coming from a working class background, I think I was always aware of class and how it affected my family. The first time I remember verbalizing class was when I was three or four years old. My parents were divorcing and my mother and I were moving from our duplex house to an apartment above a neighborhood bar. I asked my mother why we had to leave our house and she explained to me that our family no longer had two incomes, and that living in an apartment was cheaper. I began to understand how money effects class status and quality of life and that my family was part of a lower class.
In elementary school someone called me rich, because we lived in a big, old house. When I told my mom, she said, “we’re not rich, we just have a big house, and your father and I both work. To be rich you need assets, like X who lives down the street and owns several convalescent homes.” I also connected how my peer from that family owned three pairs of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, which were quite the thing to own.
I guess becoming aware of one's class is predicated by many different, complex factors. It is hard for me to remember when I realized class in a category of its own because class has always been interconnected with race for me. I new since I was a little girl that my family had to make hard choices because of financial constraints but I thought we were lower-class because we are Black, period. I didn't truly understand that class affected white Americans as opposed to only people of color in the U.S. As a young person, class went hand in hand with race so that I though rich Blacks and poor Whites were an anomaly, something brought to people's attention thanks to the Cosby Show and Rosanne, (this also points to my difficulty in undertanding race beyond just black and white, and to my perspective gained from living in a hyper-segregated New York City neighborhood.) I guess I can say I noticed the break in my understanding of class and race when I came to college for my first year and realized that I wasn't at the bottom of the economic ladder just because I was Black. Race and class were separated in my consciousness because of the poor White friends I made, the rich Black friends I made as well as the varying degrees of wealth of my friends of different ethnicities and different nationalities. Although in my studies I understand the economic disadvantage faced by people based on Skin color, I am learning about the growing wealth gap in the U.S. among ALL citizens and how it is being perpetuated.
I became aware through my religious school and my jewish temple... they kept ""preaching"" that we were all equal in God's eyes, yet I realized how lucky I was to be born into a family who had just about everything we wanted. I distinctly remember being about 8-9 years old and obsessing about the concept that it was a toss of the ""genes"" that I was born into my family versus a poor family in the US or another country.
I grew up in the 40s and 50s in a small town in Arkansas, which was strictly divided by race but in my white culture showed little classism. I think it is because there was very little difference in the lifestyles of people who had relative wealth and those who were solid middle-middle class. As for the poorer families, most of us in the middle had been in their shoes just a generation or two earlier, so the adults my parents' age demonstrated a welcoming and inclusive attitude with some patronization. My family moved to Memphis when I was in the first year of high school -- 10th grade -- and I attended a very classist high school. Most of the parents of the students were working their way up the social ladder, and their children were very ""snobby"" toward me. Kids I knew from class refused to speak to me in the halls or sit with me in the lunchroom or even acknowledge that they had ever seen me before. Even the friendly kids were in tightly-formed cliques with no openings for anyone new or different. I was completely confused and taken aback by being treated this way, and although I moved through the situation successfully and became a leader in the school I was never accepted by the ""in crowd"" and to this day find myself feeling inadequate around wealthy people, which I counter with a sort of reverse snobbery in my heart.
It wasn't until I first entered school as a child. I became aware that the children with the best clothes and the best and most school supplies seemed to want to bunch together. They seemed to feel confident and special, while the other children began to feel less-than. I was one of the less-than children and it affected me well into adulthood.
I never actually realized my class until having to dicuss it in a high school class. As a lower schooler at a public school, I did not exactly notice race, class, or sex. If I did notice them, it didn't matter to me what people were. There were the kids who could eat the $1 ice cream and there were those that didn't. It was not a big deal. Upon entering a private middle school, it was similar. This is probably when I started becoming aware of class. I accounted for the fact that most of the people around me were white and richer, but this did not bother me. As I grew older, I realized that lower classes did not go to my school. This was the same for me as saying, ""Black people do not go to private school."" Are class and race the same thing? I would ask myself. In high school, I took a class about culture and bridging cultures. One day I entered the classroom and there was a sheet of paper on the desk. I read it. Blacks make less money than Americans. Ok, that makes sense. The other side read, Who are Americans? I had never realized I had been setting apart blacks from Americans. This is slightly different than class, but it feels realtive. Why do I always associate black people as poor people when there are plenty of successful, wealthy black people out there? I do not know.
I was probably im middle school before I realized that I was currently middle class, but grew up poor. You never know you're poor when your little, you just think its normal.
I was 15.
Read earlier survey responses:
March 2006: All U.S. citizens benefit from different forms of government assistance. Some are more stigmatized than others. What forms of assistance benefit you and others in your class?
February 2006: How do class differences impact your relationships?
January 2006: What privileges should we all have?
Are there any privileges none of us should have?
December 2005 Survey Question:
How do class issues come up for you during the end-of-year "consumer" holidays?
November 2005 Survey Question: Please tell us about your experiences of class, class differences, and classism in your education/school.
October 2005: Tell us about a time you've either been an ally to someone or had someone be an ally to you around issues of class.
September 2005: What are the ways you see the race and class divisions exposed by Katrina?
August 2005: What class did you grow up in? What was good or bad about your class experience growing up?
July 2005: What are your strongest memories connecting race and class?
June 2005: The New York Times and Wall Street Journal each ran their own series on class. What is your response to the recent press on class?
May 2005: The good, the bad, and the ugly of cross-class relating
|
