Silver spoon vs. plastic spork
Going to school with a large contingent of middle- to upper-middle-class, twentysomething white women is no picnic. Generally my days involve prolonged efforts to restrain myself from saying something accentuated with profanities. I don’t want to be the sort of person who picks meaningless fights or harps on points that will do nothing but lower my blood pressure as opposed to spurring a genuine debate, so I have largely adopted a strategy of silence during class discussions.
I’m not sure what it is about middle-class white people that aggravates me so extremely. I’m white. Many of my friends are white women, and several of them are also from middle-class families. In fact, with my college degree, vegan diet and fondness for quality lager, I have essentially left the working class. Even as a social worker (a famously undercompensated profession), I will have more earning power than pretty much everyone in my extended family when I graduate.
Class separation is very real in our society, although our national mythology likes to pretend otherwise. It permeates everything we say and do, and is always the undercurrent in any heated media debate about race and gender. Because the economy is so shitty right now, some media outlets are cautiously mentioning “class” and throwing out such terms as “the missing class” when talking about people stuck between not qualifying for Medicaid but not earning enough to support themselves.
In my school, as I would expect of most graduate programs, the people that can afford to spend two years out of the workforce compiling some serious debt are generally white and middle-class or higher. At Michigan there are very few Black students, a smattering of Asian-Americans (who don’t qualify for financial aid because, according to the university, they are not considered a “minority” at U of M), and an even smaller percentage of Hispanic or Latina/o students. There are also a few white students from working-class backgrounds who stick out like a sore thumb. Therefore, the curriculum is heavily focused on attempting to draw awareness to issues of privilege, diversity, and oppression. This in turn causes many of the white students to feel “attacked” and has triggered some classic defensive posturing amongst the gaggle of W.A.S.P.s who apparently don’t understand–or don’t want to understand?–the innate privileges of belonging to the dominant culture (in this case, white, middle-class, Christian, college-educated, able-bodied, heterosexual). And I’ve found that when this posturing occurs, the class discussion is diverted from the topic at hand and our time is spent comforting and reassuring the very people who have the MOST unearned privilege in our society.
I’m all mixed up in this, too. We tend to focus our energies exclusively on the areas in which we don’t have privilege and often ignore the areas in which we do have privilege. Having privilege in a certain area means you never have to think about it. Unless it’s called to my attention, I never have to think about being white, because my skin color has granted me unmerited privilege. I also never have to think about being able of body and mind, because I am currently physically and mentally able to take care of myself.
In my family therapy class last week, our instructor wrote “upper class, middle class, lower class” on the blackboard and asked us to come up with the stereotypical family dynamic and traits of each. Notwithstanding my issue with the term “lower class”–a term I thought went out of fashion around the time Oliver Twist was published–I was startled to hear the offensive characterizations of said class flying out of the mouths of my esteemed colleagues. The worst thing anyone could think of to say about upper- and middle-class folks was “somewhat materialistic” and “keeping up with the Jonses mentality”. For the working class, people were not shy about their opinions. “Toothless” was one. “Not educated” was another. “Narrow-minded”. (Hmmm, interesting.) “Alcoholics”, “teen pregnancy”, “domestic violence” and oh yes, “incest”.
At the end of this “class discussion”, by which time nearly everyone was having a good laugh, the instructor said, “Isn’t it crazy the stereotypes we can come up with about people?”
But I am not convinced that this was really a harmless exercise about examining our stereotypical attitudes. Maybe I’m just reading too much into it. Stereotypes that my classmates associated with their class membership appeared to be pretty benign (”values higher education”, “lives in the suburbs”, “nuclear family”, “tends to vote liberal”). The “lower class” stereotypes envisioned in these peoples’ minds appeared to have been lifted out of Deliverance…”toothless”? “incest”? “lazy”?
After class, I went to meet with some other students who are working on a group presentation with me. As we were making small talk (which is another post in itself–a lot of these girls seem either terrified or disgusted by me), the inevitable subject of our internships came up. I was talking about mine, and one of the girls in the group said, “OH MY GOD. I totally am working with some people like that right now, and it is SO crazy. So crazy. I just don’t think I could do it.”
I asked if she’d had any previous experience working in the field. “Well, yeah. In my BSW program, my internship was as an adoption social worker. And I really liked that. I mean, I was working more with people who were” (drops voice) “you know, a little more well-off. Yeah, they had to be, because they were adopting kids from China and stuff, that’s a lot of money. And they just seemed nicer, they didn’t think it seemed to matter so much that I was this really young person telling them what to do.”
Should this person even be in school for social work?
Unable to restrain myself a moment further, I said, “Yeah, it’s a tough crowd sometimes. But I could never do that” (adoption social work–that is, helping people buy kids out from under their impoverished parents. No fucking thank you.) “I can’t handle middle-class white people.”
Everyone laughed a little nervously, and I remembered fleetingly my New Year’s resolution to work on being more positive, as well as my lifelong struggle to pick my battles more wisely. So I tried to be extra nice throughout the rest of our meeting, but I’m not expecting a Myspace friend request anytime soon.
I wonder at times if I’m being too sensitive about issues like this. Then I kick myself for second-guessing my convictions. It’s been pointed out to me that I expect too much out of many people and am consequently disappointed when they (or me) don’t live up to my standard. And it’s true that I have extensive experience in the social work field for a person of my age–which affords me an advantage over most of my peers. Thus it’s wrong to expect them to know what it feels like to work with a woman who named her daughter Shithead (not that it matters, but she claims it’s pronounced “Shith-EED”), or understand how to navigate the trackless jungle that is the U.S. public assistance system. Many of my classmates did not work in college–most have never really had jobs. The other intern I work with lists her high school stint at McDonald’s on her resume due to the negligibility of her prior work experience.
Still, I wonder if people should be accepted into a program that is billed as being the top in the country for social work and social work research if they think of the working class as a bunch of inbred trailer park denizens too drunk to pull up on their bootstraps.
Oh, and just because I can’t resist: my stereotype of the middle class is sort of informed by that Monty Python sketch in which Graham Chapman is lambasting the Catholics for having more kids than they can afford, then says, “I can wear a condom, because I am a Protestant.” I also have a vague notion of really uptight white people standing around making every effort to avoid touching or hugging, bragging about the fact that their son was just accepted into law school and their daughter’s getting married as soon as she graduates, while secretly abusing prescription pills and wondering where Mother stashed the gin. Yet at least in my scenario, everyone has teeth.
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February 16th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Thank you!!!! I would venture to guess that had I been in your family therapy class, the discussion would have taken a different direction.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:43 am
You’re totally right. It’s always interesting (for lack of a better word) to note how people censor themselves when they perceive that they might actually get taken to task for their statements. I’ve noticed at Michigan that the class dynamic is distinctively different when it’s all white people as opposed to when there are some people of color in the room.