What Happens When Degrees Aren’t Enough?
Being a first generation college student often feels like being perpetually caught between two or more worlds. Many of us learn that we must... Read More
Vulnerability Is Courage: A First Gen Student Journey
Feeling Vulnerable as a First Gen As a first generation student, I felt vulnerable, and I didn’t want anyone to know it. So I didn’t... Read More
Trump’s War on the Poor, Working-Class and …
When explaining why his cabinet is filled with billionaires, President Donald Trump uttered what might just earn him Class Action’s 2017 Most Classist Comment of... Read More
Trump’s Presidency: What We Deserve
Type “Trump voters deserve” into your search bar, and the two suggestions that pop up are “Trump voters deserve what they get” and “Trump voters... Read More
Take our Classism Exposed Blog Survey
Please take our Classism Exposed survey and help us make the blog more engaging and ultimately more useful to you in our mutual effort to counter policies... Read More
Living “Relatively Visible”
I am born to a Tamil, working class, OBC (Other Backward Caste) couple who immigrated to North India to earn their livelihood in the mid-1980s.... Read More
Funding Relationships: What’s Our Part as Donors?
Recently I have been giving a lot of thought to how donors can take more initiative in the fundraising/funding process. I have noticed that in... Read More
Class in Capacity Building
I have been fairly obsessed with issues having to do with nonprofit capacity building since 1991 – leadership, governance, sustainability, constituent voice, hierarchical organizations versus... Read More
Spring Break?
When I think of spring break, I think of MTV and early 20-somethings soaking up the sun. I believe that this ideal spring break is becoming... Read More
How Class Affects My (Breaks from) Class
As a teenager, I became acquainted with our modern society’s expectation of “spring break” through MTV’s spring break specials. I remember as a teen feeling... Read More
Debbie Downer’s Spring Break
Spring break is coming up. That means hearing about Cancun and Barcelona while walking by students, seeing Airbnb and hotel tabs on 101 laptops, and... Read More
Classism in Literature: Poor Boy Syndrome
In the song “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Freddy Mercury sings, “I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy.” He’s right, you don’t. Yet, it seems that... Read More
Social Class and a Writing Conference
Though not all writing conferences are expensive, many are. A number try, essentially, to take money from those who can afford it to subsidize those... Read More
Text, Lies and Videotape
It might be 2017, but it sure feels like 1984 to me. When terms like post-truth and fake news are used to explain what we used to... Read More
Resistance Is Critical
The election outcome was a shock – but wasn’t something new. Throughout U.S. history we’ve had waves of right-wing populism, when people bought into explanations... Read More
Safe, Affordable Housing Is a Human Right
On the morning of December 3rd, 2016, the deadly effects of the affordable housing crisis became clear. If housing were treated as a human right,... Read More
Politics of Work, Socioeconomics, and Classism in Classrooms:
Education to Work to Live or Live to Work? I am a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Dhaka, Bangladesh, so I could make it big... Read More
5 Class-Based Microaggressions
Microaggressions* have been a highly debated topic, particularly on college campuses. Some have suggested that the discussion of microaggressions, essentially, is making people overly sensitive.... Read More
Beyond Trump: The Forgotten White Working Class Communities
Part of the White, Working Class, and Worried about Trump (#WhiteWorkingClassVsTrump) Campaign*: I drove through my hometown last night. It’s a little suburb just outside of... Read More
Beyond Trump: Creating Class-Race Alliances
Part of the White, Working Class, and Worried about Trump (#WhiteWorkingClassVsTrump) Campaign*: I grew up in economically depressed, though beautiful, northeastern Vermont. My family was on... Read More
Beyond Trump: Donald Trump Needs Our Racism
Part of the White, Working Class, and Worried about Trump (#WhiteWorkingClassVsTrump) Campaign*: Throughout the 2016 election cycle, the U.S. electorate has subjected to overt and systemic racism... Read More
Beyond Trump: Building a Coalition for Change
Part of the White, Working Class, and Worried about Trump (#WhiteWorkingClassVsTrump) Campaign*: I grew up in South St. Louis City in a multi-racial, working-class neighborhood. My... Read More
Risk Telling the Truth
I thought I was going to be a career teacher. But after a decade, I hit bottom. Teaching in inner-city schools, I saw the barriers... Read More
Being an Owning-Class Activist
All of us are more than a label, right? We each are more than one of our identities standing by itself. We are complex, changing,... Read More
Wealthy, Come Home
Here’s my invitation to those of you, like me, in the top of America’s income and wealth ladder. Come home. What I mean by “coming home”... Read More
The Sound of Class
The final days of summer always remind me of the time I left home for college. In an instant I can recall what I felt... Read More
My Summers on the Cape
Working, Not “Summering,” on Martha’s Vineyard Summer rolling around means vacations for many. But for others it means seasonal migration to restaurant and hospitality work.... Read More
Vacationing Broke
Being poor can feel like you’re stuck, and when everyone you know disappears into the world when they have the chance, you realize how truly... Read More
Juneteenth: Winner Take All
A January 2016 survey by YouGov.com revealed that the majority of white Americans view African Americans as takers vs. givers by a significant margin, 50%... Read More
No Interest in Sharing the Wealth?
As a young person with inherited wealth who is public about my identity, sometimes my friends will ask me for a gift or for a... Read More
Choosing Not to Go Into Debt for College
Nicole Brown wrote the following after reading, and being so affected by, last month’s (May 2016) Classism Exposed blog post on the possibility that students are deciding not to... Read More
Crowdfunding as Community
Crowdfunding, a type of online fundraising where many people come together to contribute small amounts of money to fund a larger project, is happening now... Read More
Too Afraid of Debt to Go to College
Recently, students in a class taught by Classism Exposed contributor L.A. Kurth responded to an essay in Yes! magazine about the student loan debt and... Read More
When Pregnancy Is the Biggest Scare
Stephanie Jones, writing in Class Lives, says, “But poor girls are so strapped by their finances, we can’t imagine a pregnancy: the furniture needed, time... Read More
First in the Family: Social Mobility as a
First Generation College Student
As the first in my family to pursue a college degree, I have found challenges in navigating the privileges and isolation encompassed in the system... Read More
Finding My Place in Academia as a First-Gen
As the first in my family to attend college and to go on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees, I have definitely struggled to find... Read More
Surviving Rape and then
Surviving the Burden of Class Bias
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Here Class Action’s Annie Hamilton writes about the benefit of not actually “seeing” rape survivors, so she and other people... Read More
Class Inequality in Children’s Movies
A new study, Benign Inequality: Frames of Poverty and Social Class Inequality in Children’s Movies, from Duke University sociologist Jesse Streib reveals that almost universally G-rated movies... Read More
Classism in the Nurturing World of Early Childhood Education
It might seem strange that classism could find its way into the nurturing world of early childhood education (ECE). Most people think of the ages... Read More
At What Price Common Core?
In the Kindergarten Classroom For decades, five-year-olds have been entering kindergarten with varying levels of academic proficiency. Some might be able to read. Others may... Read More
Class, Money and Mental Health
When I was in high school, I knew something was wrong with me. There were many days where I felt like I had lost all... Read More
SCOTUS: Public Sector Unions Safe for Now
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it was deadlocked in the case of Friedrichs v California Teachers Association (representing 325,000 teachers in 1,000 school... Read More
African Americans and Classism:
It’s Complicated When I started this post, I thought it would be a straight-forward musing on classism on and in African-American communities. A few minutes in, and... Read More
Walk a Mile
They are phrases we’ve all heard a million times and show up in comments on social media: “If you’re on food stamps you don’t belong... Read More
The Bridge to Love
I’ve watched romantic comedies all my life. The lies they told got me through living with a bad boyfriend in an apartment below a drug... Read More
Respect the Laboring Class
I’m British, I’m white and from a poor working-class background in a Northern English city. I am lucky enough to have a university education. I... Read More
Class Mobility – Climbing Up, Stepping Down
I grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, the granddaughter of Hungarian Jews who survived the Holocaust and came to this country with nothing. My... Read More
Health Equity: What’s Working
We have lots of ways to measure what’s not working in the United States. We can quickly pull the latest numbers that track growing inequalities... Read More
Tis Better to Give than to Receive?
Every year in preparation for the holidays, there’s a lot of talk about how it’s better to give than to receive. Many people say we... Read More