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 world. Just yesterday I received another cool reception – in my old neighborhood, of all places. I still cling to my working-class ways, including shopping at thrift stores, and I […]
class cultures
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 hurt you. While President Obama and other democrats have numerous policies designed to “lift up” people from the working class, they offer little verbal validation for a working class way […]
“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 we never stop to think that our class backgrounds and family values could possibly clash with theirs. In the movie Jumping the Broom, Sabrina Watson and Jason Taylor come from […]
“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 rental?”? We all know that if it’s for ourselves, the owners of property, we’ll be wanting something nicer, better-made, more durable, more functional and often more efficient. If it’s for […]
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 to teachers, flouting school rules and delighting at turning a classroom into a circus. And unlike most writers about kids disengaged from school, who focus on their deficits and fret […]
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 know what to expect. I had an open mind and was willing to work with others I hadn’t met. It was definitely a big step to go outside my comfort […]
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 hard work and innovative thinking. But, to describe those people as “self-made” would be to dismiss a big piece of reality—the role of the commons. Would Bill Gates have enjoyed […]
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 parents’ class culture? What do I mean? I have noticed an interesting phenomenon: In owning-class old money families eventually the money runs out and people are forced to raise the […]
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 my Social Movements class studied the pitfalls of too much and too little “movement culture” – quite a serendipity! Using the six measures of degrees of movement culture that my […]
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 continues in a drastically different manner? For some of us, the origins of today’s enormous inequities are from the source of our wealth. Will you join me in this conversation? […]
