#FirstGenThrowback
Reflecting on my own experience as a first-generation college student, I rarely used the educational resources of the academic library. Being a first-gen, library usage... Read More
They’re Just Like Us: Race and the White Working-Class on Roseanne
On Tuesday, May 29th, ABC Entertainment canceled the reboot of Roseanne after Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, comparing the former Obama advisor to... Read More
Weighing Every Cost: A Genteel Poverty
I am the youngest of 10 siblings. My dad built a successful plumbing business, bought his own shop and employed a few helpers at the... Read More
Why Do You Want to Be Poor?
Growing up poor on Long Island builds character. While trying to balance personal responsibilities with maintaining a GPA high enough to make myself a competitive... Read More
Breaking the Silence about Class in One Liberal Denomination
In 2012, I was lucky enough to attend a remarkable weekend-long Class Action Train-the-Trainers mega-workshop. I did not attend to learn techniques to raise awareness about class and... Read More
Feel the FLoW
Throughout my first years of college, I couldn’t help but notice I was different than my peers. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but... Read More
Roseanne and the Changing Working-Class
When ABC’s Roseanne premiered in 1988, it arrived in the era of Reaganomics with policies that stripped power from unions, sent blue collar jobs overseas and... Read More
Roseanne: A Working-Class (S)hero Returns
The Roseanne reboot promises to tackle love and politics. Pack your bags and hit the road, folks. On March 27th we’re going back to Lanford.... Read More
Andy’s Story: Class and Homelessness
Before the year 2004, the word “classism” was not in my vocabulary. As a music teacher at a prestigious private elementary school and a private... Read More
Cross Class Dialogue Circle
It was on a bulletin at a local coffee shop, Cross Class Dialogue Circle. What did those words mean? Cross made me think of the... Read More
No Retreat in Confusion: Classism in Germany
When I talk about classism in Germany the common reactions range from an unknowing Never heard of it to a disbelieving and doubtful Do you really think classes... Read More
Reader Feedback on Classism Exposed
More than 100 people responded to the summer 2017 Classism Exposed 5-Minute Survey. The responses were as diverse as the people who responded, as evidenced by... Read More
Is Elvis-Hating Classist?
So much depends on whether you are looking up at Elvis from the working poor or working-class or down at him from the middle- and... 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
Five Classist Pitfalls to #Resist in Your Activism
In a moment of potentially revolutionary activism and mobilization, don’t let classism undermine your efforts. The past few weeks have been both terrifying and inspiring.... 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
Changing Classes, Changing Vacations
I was born to two African-American strivers. My dad had been born poor and my mom came from people who had “clawed their way up,”... 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
Brexit: Race and Class
I had very mixed emotions about the Brexit vote. Having watched the manner in which the European Union strangled Greece, I have not been very... Read More
Brexit – A Class Issue
Two weeks on, a lot of progressive people in Britain are still in deep shock or fury or despair – or alternating rapidly between all three... Read More
Poor Little “Not-So-Rich” Girls
It wasn’t until I began to write about class from the perspective of the 19th century women about whom I’ve written two biographies that I... Read More
Can’t Buy Me Love
Being Poor in a Cross-Class Relationship We had just turned 18. We had just started dating after two years of friendship. We had just walked... Read More
It’s Not What You Say, but How?
Using Language as a Weapon of Classism A British friend of mine, who met and married his American wife in London, told me that he... Read More
Language Matters, Too
My brother, sister and I were all brought up to speak a very clear, accent-less English with good grammar and syntax. We were not “perfect,”... Read More
Oh No He Didn’t!
Check biased behavior before it keeps your holidays from being merry and bright. As I thought last week about Thanksgiving dinner and hosting my extended... Read More
Visiting the Relatives: A Worthy Vacation
My nephew Christopher loaded his three kids and his partner Sam’s three kids into their 2004 passenger van and drove the 300 miles out of... Read More
A Hard Lesson about Free Money
“Congratulations, you have been awarded a scholarship by your high school foundation. You are invited to attend awards night and be recognized for your achievement,”... Read More
On Being an Other
“I don’t want to sound stupid or anything,” said my aunt as she made a remark about the weather being cold, but not as cold... Read More
When Love Crosses Class Lines
What’s it like to be married to someone who grew up in a different class? If you asked most of the 64 college-educated adults who... Read More
Is That What They Would Say?: Home Knowledge vs. School Knowledge
Two incidents from my school years illustrate the clash between home experience and school assumptions. In second grade, I was drawing in my Alice and... Read More
Gifts and the American Dream
As I’ve struggled with the incredible pressure of the season to buy in order to prove our love and our worth, I’ve been helped by... Read More
“Tell me more about your social class”
It was a long time ago. The first time that I strongly expressed my opinion about how human behavior varies depending on social class was... Read More
Demolition Derby
I remember my first demolition derby, years ago as a young parent. It was the thrill of illicit activity that drew me there. My parents—middle... Read More
A surprising class culture pattern
When I was studying 25 social justice groups for Missing Class, one of my biggest surprises was a class category I hadn’t even thought to... Read More
Gentrification and My New Old Neighborhood
In 1999 my classrooms in Somerville, Massachusetts– a culturally diverse city bordering Boston– were mosaics of colors and cultures, with students from as far away... Read More
When Love Crosses Class Lines
What’s it like to be married to someone who grew up in a different class? If you asked most of the 64 college-educated adults who... Read More
Psychiatry and the Imposition of Upper Middle Class Values
Psychiatrists do not have objective tests to confirm their diagnoses. They are often imposing Upper Middle Class values on their patients and then calling it... Read More
Lessons from a Class Straddler: Upward Mobility in Literature
Are you a straddler like me? According to Alfred Lubrano’s Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams, a straddler is a person who was reared in a... Read More
The Price of Passing
Recently, a community college newspaper offered a fashion profile of several students. I was amazed and alarmed to learn that, if they were telling the... Read More
Hopscotching the Tracks
In my last essay, I spoke of my experiences of the disdain I receive as a working-class woman walking among the denizens of the middle-class... Read More
The Invisible Majority: Class and the National Election
Working class people are approximately 63% of our population, but they are all but invisible in the upcoming national election. What you don’t see can... Read More
“Jumping the Broom”: African American class divide
When you were a young child, did you think about getting married? We may plan our wedding and visualize the person of our dreams, but... Read More
“Is This for a Rental?”
Ever gone to a hardware store to buy a toilet, sink, or door and have the salesperson ask, “Is this for yourself, or for a... Read More
New classism book holds the keys to movement-building
Barb Jensen was a rebellious teenager. When she tells her own stories in her new book Reading Classes, readers can vicariously enjoy her mouthing off... Read More
Exploring Classism
Just recently I attended a Class Action workshop. This was my first workshop ever dealing on the issues of classism. Heading into it, I didn’t... Read More
Ubuntu and The Self-Made Myth
We’ve all heard rags-to-riches stories about successful individuals who “pulled themselves up by the bootstraps.” Certainly, many successful business people owe their good fortune to... Read More
An interesting class culture question
To what extent is a person’s class culture determined by the environment they are raised in, and to what extent is it determined by their... Read More
What about those hand signals?
The same week that Steven Colbert pretended to mock Occupy Wall Street’s hand signals, I saw them used at an Occupy Boston General Assembly, and... Read More
Owning Class Folks – Let’s Explore Some Tough Questions
How can we owning class folks who care about enormous horrors going on today initiate a systemic difference by speaking up about the harm that... Read More