I grew up in a classless world. (Not classless as in “Donald Trump ain’t got no class,” but as in “Anyone can grow up to be president.”)
Maybe this was less true for some people of my generation, but I simply don’t remember ever caring two hoots about somebody’s economic class or status or anyone else caring about mine.
The suburb I grew up in was solidly working class (or what would now be called that), ranging from factory workers like my father to schoolteachers to the occasional young lawyer or doctor who hadn’t really made it yet. We kids certainly experienced social divides (often painful) in school, but those were based on individual qualities: good looks, ability to play football, social smoothness, but never on neighborhood, family, money, or even race as far as I was able to perceive.
Our town had two “bad” neighborhoods, but each was exactly one street long and was “bad” mostly because it was still rural and old while the rest of the area morphed into the Silicon Valley hellhole it eventually became modernized. One of my dearest friends lived on one of the “bad” streets and it never occurred to me that her house was run down or her family less than fortunate. To me, her house was a wonderland of quirks and the fact that she lived alone with her mother who wore red and black underwear and actually let us 10-year-olds look in her lingerie drawer to see it was the most fabulous thing.
I was jealous of kids who had more than I did. I’d have died for any one of the seven Shetland ponies one of my classmates had, but that was because — PONIES! — not because I thought she and her family otherwise had it better or in any way were better than the rest of us.
The two toney suburbs a few miles away weren’t places to envy, but places to sneak away to when I was a teenager to enjoy galleries and cool little boutiques.
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Maybe part of my perception of classlessness came from my mother, as proud a hillbilly who ever lived. How many times I can remember her saying something like, “Don’t you ever let anybody tell you they’re better than you are. You and I are just as good as anybody else on earth.”
In my twenties, I worked for a design firm that had one fabulously wealthy, flamboyant, much-in-the-media client. One year the client’s company was having its annual meeting at a Lake Tahoe resort and knowing how much my mother loved to play the slot machines, I asked my boss (not the client) if I could bring her along.
“Okay,” he said, “as long as you keep her out of sight. I’m not going to have you making us look unprofessional.”
So there I am keeping my mother out of sight when one afternoon we turn a corner in a hallway and here comes the Fabulous Client, surrounded by his entourage. I have no choice but to stop and introduce him to Mom. But I figure a quick change of subject is in order. So having been told that the FC had been doing well at the craps table I said, “So, ______, I hear you just won $63,000.”
The FC boozily mumbled something incomprehensible. But at that moment my mother piped up with great cheer, “Really? I just LOST $63,000 myself!”
My mother, who could play nickel slots all weekend on $100, had of course never even laid eyes on such a sum (and this being the 1970s, that was maybe equivalent to $200,000 nowadays). But she was unflapped enough by this wealthy celebrity to joke at him. And know what? She put him off balance while she smiled and went on down the hall. He had no idea what to make of her.
There was a lot Mom said that I paid no attention to, but I seem to have inherited her disregard for status and privilege almost genetically. And that wouldn’t be surprising because her whole family was like that. Humble origins. Self-effacing and full of humor about it. But uppity.
I’ve been hurt or put down in various ways (as have we all of course) and sometimes it’s really stung. But the one time someone tried to put me in my place by pointing out that I didn’t come from money like she did or go to fine schools like she did (so I should always defer to her judgment and approach her with proper humility, dontchaknow), I laughed in her face before telling her exactly how impressed I was with her superior self.
And that, as far as I was concerned, was just the way the world worked.
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So it’s been strange over the last several decades to watch this country fracture into all these divides. Race. Class. Economic status. Urban vs rural. Haves vs have nots. Government dependents vs net taxpayers. Privileged by birth vs privileged by political pull.
Of course the divides — many of them — were already there: black and white, male and female (and that one I was very much aware of, as I’ve written). But “class” was simply never one of them. And looking back, even with my weary, cynical adult eyes, I don’t see class or privilege as having been a big concern for anyone in my world.
Now it seems a huge preoccupation. Of everybody.
And of course it’s no surprise. Once the government and the media told people that it pays to be a victim, would-be victims had to create — and maintain vast categories of! — perpetual oppressors. The one percent. White males. White anybody. Racists. Sexists. Those who fail to create safe spaces for snowflakes. Those who might (not that any actual person did) wear “insensitive” Halloween costumes and those who might (and did) point out that insensitivity goes with being alive.
But in addition to all the made-up or only-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder privilege and oppression, there are a lot of scarily real class divides emerging. Wealth accreting to the wealthy while we on the bottom fall farther every year. The creepy educational divide in which people from Harvard, Yale, and a couple other schools hold most seats of power and others need not apply. (Sure, those schools have always been prestigious, but their exclusive hold on political power is very recent.) Urban vs rural has changed from a symbiotic relationship to an adversarial one ever since “one man, one vote” (and, intriguingly, the power could shift again, Supreme Court willing).
This isn’t just some old fart thinking the olden days were better. The olden days were often quite crappy and I wouldn’t go back if I could, thank you. But this growing obsession with who’s got what and who doesn’t have what (and how to use government or public opinion to get what) does not bode well.
I got to thinking about all this the other day when reader L.S. sent a couple of links. To wit:
Charles Hugh Smith’s “The Class War Has Already Started.”
And Victor Davis Hanson’s “How the widening urban-rural divide threatens America.”
The second is linked from the first, but L.S. called it out because he was so surprised that the L.A. Times printed such a thing. (A good sign, maybe?)
I see how we got here. (Thank you, politics.) It’s where we go from here that’s likely to be … interesting. Those two articles provide intriguing food for thought on that subject.
Class differences are more often self-inflicted than imposed by others, I suspect. There were discordances in the way things happened, the way my father reacted to things, which made no sense to me when I was a child and only found explanation when I was older and could look back on things.
I was raised in a working-class urban environment, but that was only because my father had clawed his way out of a rural poor-white-trash life. But instead of being proud of that, in addition to some other bad things that happened my father was haunted by it. In the possibly spurious (since he never talked to me about any of this) clarity of long hindsight, I think he feared a single misstep might send him careening back to that shithole mid-Michigan farm he barely escaped, maybe because he believed that’s what he deserved to happen. I’m unaware that anybody ever picked on my father because of his origins, but he never stopped picking on himself over it and it blighted his life.
I’m not “white.” I’m Scottish pink… and wrinkled. 🙂
Never could understand much of the racial, class, etc. envy/hate thing. Envy and hate were always clearly nonproductive.
I grew up with a clear understanding that I had no control (and wanted none) of how other people felt or thought. So it was natural for me to reject all efforts of others to control me – that way or any other.
We just left a super affluent town on the East Coast for an economically depressed area on the other one. Lived every day watching those around me playing “keep up with the Rockafellers”. Like Joel said, one little slip and its back to square one. Backstabbing, gossip, slander, its a vicious lifestyle, and that’s just how they play amongst them selves.
Folks are much friendlier where are than where we were.
My late father was a general contractor in the Deep South, building homes on demand. We traveled quite a bit up and down the Eastern Seaboard while I was young (I saw at least 12 schools before I got to the 7th grade), and my summer vacations consisted of nailing down comp roofing or wood floors.
Moving in and out of small school societies never gave me a chance to make friends, or to discover classes or cliques, and I was quite socially inept and withdrawn. But I did learn to gauge people quickly, and learned early, with the help of Pop, that there is a lot of difference between “class” and “classy”. Pop was a classy guy.
Shortly after I was commissioned I heard an acquaintance of my father tell him it was too bad I had been drafted, but it was what “people like us” could expect. His son, of course was destined for better things.
Dad smiled, explained I had volunteered and was an officer, and otherwise let the ass live.
I heard later that the ass’s son’s “destiny” included 5 to 10 for embezzling.
Around here there are quite a few millionaires that wear jeans, drive 10-year-old Ford 250s, and sign contracts with a handshake.
Hmmm. I’ve worked for wealthy people, almost exclusively. Just like any group, there are good people and silly ninnies. And some are truly awful. Money and where you went to school are the new parameters of class for some now, but do you accept those parameters? I don’t. And ‘working class’ should not denote virtue nor lack thereof.
The notion of ‘class’ is so Karl Marx. Reject this poison. It’s un-American, in the truest sense of the word.
I think that VDH’s idea of an urban/ rural divide is closer to what’s happening in America. (And my guess is that LarryA lives in a rural area).
(And my guess is that LarryA lives in a rural area).
Would be correct.
I remember first feeling the effects of this class society in high school. What was particularly strange was that my school was class-pure. I estimate that roughly 60 percent of students at my high school received some form of welfare assistance (thank God I wasn’t in that group, kudos to my mom for knowing how to handle what little money we had), and those that weren’t on welfare were very poor.
Regardless of welfare status, there was no clear-cut divide that separated students into social classes. Most expected and many planned to continue living life on the fruit of the government. However, personal worth was valued in intellectual, personality or physical talent.
Outside of the small town’s borders it was a different story. Kids from my school viewed themselves as being worth less than those from other areas, even though my school consistently performed better in competitions (don’t get me started on the social stratifying power of inter-school competition).
It is amazing (and very, very creepy) that the existence of poverty and the welfare state in my hometown stifled the usual economic-driven class divides. A whole lot of Harrison Burgeron style “equality”.
See http://tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html for the text of Harrison Burgeron.
Well written Claire. I too grew up in a place & time where class was far less important than character. Honesty and having a (any) job were considered more valuable than a basement full of cash. Perhaps that was the REAL America – the one our founding fathers envisioned? I like to think so.
I grew up on a farm outside a small town. My parents were drop-outs who were educated far better than most of the people in the town. However, we, and everyone else who lived in the country, were considered inferior to the people who lived in the town. In school the only country kids who weren’t looked down on were the male athletes. They were invited to the “in” group parties,etc. On the other hand the best students were always from the country.
Dad started as a truck driver, made his way up to being director of circulation of several different newspapers. He had to deal with several unions, including teamsters, but was good at it I think because he came from the same backgrounds as the workers. Mom was a farm girl who even spent some time behind a horse-drawn plow.
My wife came to America with little more than the clothes she was wearing. She is such a natural entrepreneur that we were able to live in some pretty ritzy areas. We tried that once, and decided we didn’t care for snobs and social climbers. I’ve always said I prefer living somewhere that has a dead car in the street, because that’s where liberty is.
If class consciousness is growing, I haven’t noticed it; but I tend not to pay attention to such things. I am mystified at all the people who seem to look forward to ugly disasters like race war or religious war or war due to gun confiscation.
I had to laugh at this point in Hanson’s article:
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Once the state grew to more than 10 million people, California legislators, along with federal officials, created the federal Central Valley Project and, later, the California State Water Project. These joint ventures helped turn the scenic but dry corridor along the coast from sparsely populated to the most densely inhabited in the United States, and helped transform semi-arid desert terrain in the southwestern Central Valley into productive farmland. Because city and country were once seen as complementary, most state residents supported the planning for additional dams, reservoirs, canals and pumping stations to match population growth.
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He’s looking with approval at this vast taxpayer-supported boondoggle, while ignoring that there might be more market-oriented approaches to dealing with water, and that this project amounts to welfare for farmers (while he sneers at welfare recipients in cities!). Also that creation of this vast project harmed farmers in other areas who saw increased competition from central valley products but had no access to taxpayer funds. Yet he gives this as an example of the “good old days” when there were no class splits!
“Internal improvements” has a long and disreputable history in this country. It’s just 19th century-styled cronyism.
BTW I wrote an article about my own work experiences:
http://strike-the-root.com/how-i-got-job
@ Paul B: “Internal improvements” has a long and disreputable history in this country. It’s just 19th century-styled cronyism.” Well said.
I also agree with him on not seeing much evidence of what I would consider “class consciousness”. Yes, there are certainly victim groups intent on browbeating their alleged oppressors, and our boy-king does seem determined to stir up as much racial and class division as he can manage, but most people I know don’t seem to be falling for it. Perhaps it’s because the economic malaise has been dragging on for so long, with no signs of an end. We’re all trapped and being dragged down by it, so there really are few “classes” to divide.
I grew up very poor but never noticed any kind of class discrimination all through my public school years.
But, in Monahans, TX (where I grew up) high school football was the great “leveler.” High school football in West Texas is the State funded religion. So, if you could perform on the football field, then you were the “upper class.” lol
Claire, I’m assuming your mention of the ‘rural v. urban divide/one man, one vote’ was in regards to Baker v. Carr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Carr in which the Supremes declared that state senate seats could no longer be apportioned by geographic area and had to be apportioned by population. I’ve never understood that one – it’s right up there with Wickard V. Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn in the sense that they stretched reasoning beyond all recognition. Baker v. Carr is one of the big reasons California has turned into such a lopsided mess.
Yep, jc2k. That and Reynolds vs Sims.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/377/533/
Noble-sounding principle. Who (other than our non-v*ting anarchist crowd) could possibly oppose “one man, one v*te”? And thus did rural America get turned into a second-class political entity, in some places headed for third-world status.
I am not sure we are any more class obsessed than any other time in history. We have always had an elite class defined by huge amounts of money, Ivy League educations and a lack of cough and decorum. Many of our past rulers wee from that class. the class concious in my town are the ones that are dishonest, won’t honor contracts, have kids always in trouble. I don’t care if I live in w class less society or one that is class obsessed, it is a free choice. My options in life aren’t limited by a perceived class disadvantage, but by my own choices and efforts and hard work.
Finally!
Cthulhu has entered presidential politics:
http://runt-of-the-web.com/cthulhu-for-president?utm_source=runtfb&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=runtfborganic72815
A.G. — If it was a choice between Cthulhu and Donald Trump … well, it would be a tough decision.
OTOH, between Cthulhu and Hillary … no contest.
Not superbly written, but in Aus, firearm registration lists lead to homes being targeted by prepared thieves.
“…A retired resident of the Riverina District in New South Wales, who is a retired gunsmith, has told me that of the cases he was aware of in his district, most of the thefts involved the thieves using grinders to cut open the gunsafes. There was only one case where the thieves used a trolley to remove the gunsafe.
In the State of Tasmania it was reported that the majority of thefts there involved the entire gunsafe being trolleyed out of the residence. The Tasmanians also noted that these burglaries normally occurred about a month after a visit by a Police Firearms Inspector!
http://memoryholeblog.com/2014/09/08/gun-control-down-under/