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.”)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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 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<\/i> better than the rest of us.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n 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.”<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n “Okay,” he said, “as long as you keep her out of sight. I’m not going to have you making us look unprofessional.”<\/p>\n 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.”<\/p>\n The FC boozily mumbled something incomprehensible. But at that moment my mother piped up with great cheer, “Really? I just LOST $63,000 myself!”<\/p>\n 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<\/i> off balance while she smiled and went on down the hall. He had no idea what to make of her.<\/p>\n 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>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n And that, as far as I was concerned, was just the way the world worked.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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<\/a>). 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.<\/p>\n Now it seems a huge preoccupation. Of everybody.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, Supreme Court willing).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n I got to thinking about all this the other day when reader L.S. sent a couple of links. To wit:<\/p>\n Charles Hugh Smith’s “The Class War Has Already Started.”<\/a><\/p>\nmorphed into the Silicon Valley hellhole it eventually became<\/del> 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<\/i> was the most fabulous thing.<\/p>\n