There is also class
I’ve been thinking about identity politics, aka privilege, aka intersectionality. Not really aka but they’re all talking about much the same thing – kinds of people who are treated badly in some way because they belong to that “kind”…aka because they have that identity.
I have mixed thoughts about it, as I do on so many things. (This isn’t allowed, I can’t help noticing. You’re not allowed to see what The Enemy is getting at, you have to spit at it and stamp on it, instead. The ensuing conversation tends to be rather thin and drab for my taste.) I get why identity politics can get tedious, and indeed grating. But – the fact remains that people are treated badly because they have particular disfavored identities.
It’s odd though that identity politics tends to neglect class. Why is that? Because it’s too close to Marxism, and thus too old school?
Or is it because class is something that can eventually change and thus disappear? Individuals can change their class (given the right circumstances) in a way they can’t change their identities, and markers of class origin can fade away if the individual chooses.
Some don’t choose. Barney Frank has hung on to his New Jersey accent all his life, when he could easily have switched it if he’d wanted to. That’s interesting to me, because his accent doesn’t have the faintly posh overtones of some New England accents.
The fact that class can fade away means that some people have less privilege than they seem to. The sleek prosperous pale male with the golden hair and the silver voice may have started out in poverty of every kind.
I just finished listening to this interview with Dean Spade, which seems relevant.
At the end, he mentions the film Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back, which I was unaware of before that. Here’s the trailer (the whole film is available for free on Vimeo – I think I’ll watch it right now).
“The fact that class can fade away means that some people have less privilege than they seem to. The sleek prosperous pale male with the golden hair and the silver voice may have started out in poverty of every kind.”
Yes. It also means that some people can have more privilege than they seem to.
George W. Bush comes to mind.
Even his father (who hadn’t acquired a Texan accent) was able to paint Dukakis as an east coast elitist, despite Bush’s own elite east coast pedigree.
It seems to me there’s more than a little ruling class divide and conquer mixed in with identity politics. It’s being pushed at the elite universities after all.
So who should a working class woman have more solidarity with? A working class man, or billionaire Sheryl Sandburg?
This reminds me of a lecture I saw years ago by Walter Benn Michaels (I think). I don’t know much about him, but maybe I should. (He was a Professor at a University I attended).
Apparently, he wrote a book on the subject. I just found (am about to watch) a talk he gives on the subject. It’s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k-I4kaLlwc
The film was good.
Class takes a long time to fade away. You might be able to change your speech, dress and friends but you can never quite leave you lower class start. Maybe it’s different in the US, which prides itself on social mobility, but there are a lot of places where admission to a higher class isn’t something that is easily done, even if you have the wealth to do it.
In the US, admitting that class is something that you can/should/do hold against someone it tantamount to pissing on the American DreamTM.
SC, yes it was. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Poverty and the associated lack of opportunities is a major disadvantage, of course, but I still think that white men who start out in dire poverty have it somewhat easier than black lesbians who start out in dire poverty. To take one small example, every time a white man buys a car, he’s given a better price than a white woman or person of color with the same negotiating skills. Or to put it another way, class is one (important) axis of privilege, but it’s not the only one.
All four of my Grandparents came from working class backgrounds. They lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. It very much shaped them and the lives they lived. Both of my parents gained University educations against the will of their parents. In my mothers case her parents told her she did not need an education because she would get married soon and then stop work to raise a family. A few years working in a shop would suffice. Her parents expressed the view that if she got an education she would just look down on them.
My parents divorced when I was very young. I was raised with middle class expectations of an education and a respect for that education, but otherwise in what anyone in a 1970’s western society would describe as poverty. So, working class school, bookish, nerdy, not very confident and always wearing clothes that had gone through a couple of owners before me. To those kids I was strange and the strangest thing they could think to call me was Gay. Which I a weird kind of way never bothered me, because I knew I wasn’t. Not good times though.
I fought hard to get the best education I could though and now have a comfortable life as a professional. Neither rich nor poor. What I do have is some of the perspective of both. I also know that who I am and my perspective of life is different because I have straddled that line between comfortable and desperate, accepted and reviled. Especially during my school years. What I have seen is just how much scope there is for people of one class to assume that people of another are inalienably different, when in fact there is little difference than chance and opportunity (yeah I know you need ability as well). The thing that makes me burn the most are the people I’ve met who come from circumstances similar to mine, who use their own success to belittle those they have ‘left behind’. It’s even more galling than those born to affluence who have never had to think about succeeding in life because it is just assumed they will.
Before I started hanging out at FTB I had vaguely heard of privilege, but was not aware of intersectionality as a terminology. Is a shame that all the splitters in the world can’t dwell on the commonalities that intersectionality can bring, rather than creating barriers using the poles of privilege.
A few thoughts.
There is far less social mobility in the US than people assume, and there are regional variations in mobility. One or more studies in the news recently showed (if I recall) it was quite unlikely for someone born to the bottom fifth in income to make it to the top fifth, with it being much more unlikely in the South, among other regions. (I tend to focus on places where I’ve lived, which currently is Alabama.)
The assumption of mobility is part of what feeds the idea that poor people are that way because of things under their own control, they aren’t working hard enough, they are lazy. There is quite a lot of class based prejudice, such as seen in the concepts of “white trash” and “welfare momma”. There is also upward directed prejudice, such as that described by Rob; some of what I’ve experienced is the attitude that someone who deigns to earn a college degree is a snob who thinks he’s better than other people. (Anti-intellectualism is rampant here, and I find it jarring.)
I’ve mentioned I’m reading What Does It Mean To Be White?, by Robin DiAngelo. I just finished the chapter where she talks about class, and how it feeds into the racism issue. As you might expect, she speaks both of the attitude of “I an white and I am/was poor, and my struggles eclipse racism” and the attitude of “we’re poor, but we’re still better than black people, have to look down on somebody”.
Money can erase or counter class. Barney Frank wasn’t passing for a Brahmin, but he could travel in their circles. Dubya’s fake plebianism doesn’t really undo the vast privilege which spawned him.
Orwell, traveling among tramps and homeless people in England of the Depression, was amazed to find that his Eton accent wasn’t even noticed. Being shabby and poor on the street made ‘class’ distinctions invisible.
Class is nowhere near as instantly apparent. A rich person can “dress down”. A poor person can get new clothes (last year’s fashion style to be sure) for a fraction of their cost at Goodwill — Target donates them.
The accent is harder to fake. But maybe even harder to parse class merely from that.
I’ve met very many wonderful people who have thick “hill country” accents…invariably they are just scraping by. (Also a fairly significant proportion of Tea Party goofballs.) But that doesn’t mean that the folks who don’t have that accent are wealthy. So, it’s a one-way street.
I lived in NYC for about 20 years, and was told by my Midwest relatives that I have developed a “New York” accent…I’m completely unaware of it. And if you ask me what “class” a New York accent represents … I have no idea. I was white collar, but rubbed elbows with everything from Wall Street lawyers to garbage collectors. Maybe it was just because I know the proper pronunciation for schmear.
And, of course, Donald Trump is as patrician as they come — and his accent doesn’t declare anything at all about him. Same with Bush the Dumber…patrician son of a patrician who went to Ivy League schools.
My wife, who is currently a grad student in a STEM field, but who grew up poor with an alcoholic dad, bumps up against this all the time. Since she’s white and a grad student, her class background is completely invisible, and so she regularly hears very elitist, classist stuff from her fellow students and has to decide whether to say something or let it go. The assumption that she is intelligensia or upper middle like everybody else is universal- and she makes it about other people too, often only finding out long after meeting them that someone else came from a poorer or more working class background.
Culturally, there’s a lot she/we want to keep about her upbringing for our own kids, stuff that we feel would be an improvement on the way my intelligensia/upper middle parents raised me. Being less afraid of children making mistakes, and putting children less at the center of the universe, for instance.
@6Sambarge,
“Maybe it’s different in the U.S.”
Contrary to what Americans seem to believe, the US actually has a low degree of social mobility compared with most other developed countries, so crossing class barriers is probably more difficult in the U.S. Generally inequality is increasing in most Western countries after a generation of market reforms and union busting.
Despite what the neoliberal propagandists would have us believe class hasn’t disappeared, wait for the next Depression and see what happens.
Sheila @8, I agree completely. I’m white, male, tall and, in my youth, reasonably good looking. Those things alone gave me advantages that others lacked. We live in a very capricious and unfair society. It’s one of the reasons I do not begrudge policies that are designed to give those less fortunate a leg up and cushion the fall for those who trip.
A number of comments above refer to class being invisible, at least if you fall into certain groups. That may be true some of the time, but it is the more subtle aspects of class that are especially corrosive. Having certain life experiences during your youth fundamentally changes your view of life, your expectations and behaviour. This can be obvious in some cases (entitlement), but it can also be so subtle that many would miss it. Just having natural confidence in certain social settings. A network of friends family and associations that unconsciously act on your behalf, that lead to the right introductions, opportunities, chance events and mentoring that others do not get.
The rise in inequality over the last 30 years has been distressing to watch. It’s very much a self fulfilling prophecy. It pushes people into a world of constrained opportunity where many fail, or at least fail to reach their potential. Many of their children fail or fail to reach their potential. The whole ‘class’ are then branded as failures, moochers, criminals, stupid etc etc which then justifies even less support or in some cases outright punishment. It is a downward spiral that is difficult to reverse because many of confirmation bias plus many of those who are on the cusp of tipping into the wrong side of the divide punch down in order to differentiate themselves.
The effects are incredibly intersectional. Yes, people of colour and those with sexual or gender identities that society views negatively are more heavily impacted, but then, so are those who have below average intelligence, those who have been poorly socialised by their parents or (non)caregivers, or those who for whatever reason lack the social networks that create opportunity through introduction. You can still migrate up (or down) the social class system, but upward migration is certainly harder the further down you go.
“Having certain life experiences during your youth fundamentally changes your view of life, your expectations and behaviour.”
Our kids have noticed this.
They’re now in their 30s. One was completely _shocked_ that her new partner had never once been to our city museum nor the art gallery next to it nor to the central city market. She fully expected that others are pretty unlikely to have been to classical music concerts or to the opera, but she’d thought these things were “normal”. She and her sister had gone regularly, but not quite weekly, to the art gallery when they were littlies. One of their great delights was being able to make a couple of the exhibits spin or otherwise _go_ by brushing or hitting them as well as playing with the sculpture thingummies in the little cafe garden. Most importantly, this upbringing means they are entirely comfortable in environments that other people can find intimidating, art exhibitions and the like.
The other daughter was discussing food preparation, of all things, the other night. She’d had to teach a woman nearer my age than hers how to prepare fruit and veg for nibbles and dips. Others might not see this as a class thing, but it really can be – at least in Australia. In the end, after talking about other foodie experiences with other people, partly about presentation on china and glass rather than paper or foil plates, she sighed and said, “We’re sooooo middle class, aren’t we.” (That’s middle class in the bourgeois, oh so proper Oz/Brit sense rather than the US version, but you get the idea.) Of course, she’s a downright snob when it comes to wines, coffee, chocolate and tea, so it’s good she has some self awareness.
For us, taking the kids to those places, getting them to piano-singing-cello-netball-cricket as well as the standard swimming and introductory gym classes, teaching them to cook – starting when they were pre-schoolers, all seemed perfectly routine and normal things to do. And they are. For people in a “leafy suburbs” area. Though we sent them to public rather than private schools and we might well have done that even if we could have afforded it, taken as a whole, their childhoods really did set their feet firmly on the middle class path rather than any other.
It’s odd though that identity politics tends to neglect class. Why is that?
Adolph Reed, in his excellent collection _Class Notes_, says it is because the purveyors of identity politics are middle class, and identity politics is a way of ignoring our privilege. And the powers that be are more comfortable with identity politics because it can be addressed with symbolic changes, rather than requiring economic redistrubution.
I am not as contemptuous of identity politics as Reed is, but I think he is largely right.
There is certainly some truth in that view.