Hm

[sciatrix]

So I asked Metafilter about class and socioeconomic status yesterday. Not theoretically, either: I was pretty direct about where I was coming from and openly curious about other people and their thoughts.

(I'm honestly kind of surprised the thread went up immediately without workshopping from mods; I'm not bothered by it either, just startled.)

And... predictably, people are really uncomfortable! I totally understand that--I'm uncomfortable having written it out, frankly--but I'm kind of impressed at the number of people who jump to "this thread is a doxxing honeypot" or "this thread is an exercise in making us all feel bad!" Not really surprised, but impressed.

I mean. I didn't bring that here. That's you, buddy. I'm trying to be careful to signal both "I come from an incredibly privileged class background that just got more so after I left" and "I am currently struggling in SES but I have a way forward not everyone does." I'm actually more vulnerable feeling about the first one, which is why I took care to bring it. Economic inequality and class privilege exist. It's not a personal insult to talk about where I stand and invite others to do the same.

(At the same time I totally understand why that makes people feel vulnerable and why people might feel uncomfortable both that they feel like they're being pressured to contribute--I tried not to do that but you know how that goes--and like the conversation itself is something of a threat.)

In some ways I think internalized classism is harder to deal with because it is so complicated, and you get the same privilege fragility as you get on any axis except it's coupled with more defensive "I'm not REALLY privileged because--" thought because it's complex and there aren't discrete categories that any given person obviously belongs to. And also everyone quietly hides their advantages.

I'm not really bothered by the defensiveness, but I'm thinking about it. I spend a fair bit of time sitting with my own class based discomfort, often because T has heard something fall out of my mouth and explained why it was a real real "wow your class background is obvious" moment; our backgrounds are really different and mine is a lot more divorced from many of our friends' realities.

So. I don't know. I'm sitting thoughtfully right now and putting my thoughts here rather than there. I'm not feeling much in the way of personal emotion, just intellectual interest. But I had thoughts, and I figured this was probably the place to have them without distorting the entire conversation around me.

Comments

[cbrachyrhynchos]

For the record, I was not at all worried about your intentions. It's other people who were participating in that thread that I'm not willing to discuss my family economics around, given what's going on elsewhere on the site.

[sciatrix]

Oh, noted! And I'm not--like, I don't blame anyone for not being willing to put that information out there, that's completely understandable for a whole bunch of reasons. So is the sentiment of "oh god this idea is terrible," tbh. It's more the repeated sentiment of "this is a discussion that will only make us all feel bad" and even more "this discussion is intended to make us all feel bad" that I'm sitting and going "hm" at. Does that make sense?

[siderea]

It's more the repeated sentiment of "this is a discussion that will only make us all feel bad" and even more "this discussion is intended to make us all feel bad" that I'm sitting and going "hm" at.

Class-blindness is no more a virtue than color-blindness. Insisting that discussing class and personal income inequality will be divisive is like insisting discussing race or sex or sexual orientation or culture will be divisive.

If one can only tolerate the presence of people different from oneself when one is permitted to pretend they don't exist, then maybe one isn't really tolerating those differences, eh?

[sciatrix]

Riiiiight, and it's like an extra special complicated difficulty-dealing-with-privilege because a) it's complicated and b) one's actual status is often not clear even to oneself in part because c) people tend to pretend that differences don't exist, so people don't... have a lot of practice sitting with that. In some ways, class is like--take all the general problems with privilege fragility and blow them up two or threefold.

I say this as someone who routinely gets checked on class assumptions, ofc, and someone who has also experienced the special brainfuckery of people who own a multimillion-dollar house and a beach house and routinely go on expensive vacations insisting angrily and with some fear that they are merely middle class and "about average."

We don't talk about this shit! It's hard! And that lets us all tell each other we're really all the same. Which means that people in certain places who don't have, say, regular parental infusions of money think it's their fault and not an unfair system. It makes me mad.

[siderea]

Sure, and adding to the difficulty is the pretty naked demonstrations of class-based hostility most of us have witnesses in our lives.

I mean, every time one hears someone go on a rant about, "I saw a woman buying steak with an EBT card, how dare she", it reminds one that there's this very venomous, very open, policing of one's class performance. It's okay to be poor, just so long as nothing you have is Too Nice, because then you are a Bad Poor, stealing from others. It's okay to be rich, just so long as you are folksy and/or ostentatiously generous, because otherwise one is a Snob. It's okay to be middle class, just so long as you aren't into anything Pretentious.

One of the reasons people are afraid of being open about their resources is becase of, well, exactly the phenomenon demonstrated in that MF thread: other people might decide you have too much. If you say, "I only make $x" someone might come along and say, "You make $x?!? I would kill to make $x! I make half that!" They might decide that you are unworthy of sympathy. They might decide to make some sort of example of you.

We can take money out of it and the problem is still there. I was having a convo with the professor who was basically my unofficial advisor in grad school, and while I respected the hell out of the guy for many reasons, he said to me that once I started working with poor people, I would find it difficult to go treat upper middle and upper class people, because poor people have real problems. And he launched into a whole story about how he once took as a client for couples counseling an upper middle class couple, and he wound up just yelling at them that they were making a mountain out of a mole hill, because they didn't have any real problems, and that caused them to resolve their conflict and not need any more treatment. Yeah, apparently in his reality, sexual assault, child abuse, cancer, schizophrenia, drunk driving accidents, and drug over doses don't happen to rich people. :|

I'm always reminded by these discussions of an incident on a local news blog, which reported on the salaries of top MBTA (subway/mass transit) employees. Commentors got all outraged that a third-shift track welder was making about $300k. I'm pretty sure that they're all okay with stockbrokers and CEOs and movie stars and NFL players making that kind of money or far more. But for a welder to earn that...! That, clearly, is not because this is a highly skilled craftsman on whose work other people's lives will literally depend, who is working in the middle of the damned night and this is what the market for that sort of labor requires, but because this is a profligate waste of our tax dollars. :|

This is the social world we live in. One in which if you let other people know what you earn, they will unleash their venomous opinions on you of whether you are perhaps making too much for a whatever it is they think you are, or whether you're not performing the class attributed you by your income.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I don't think the idea is terrible. I think the idea is terrible on metafilter, and I wasn't particularly surprised to see someone pontificate about education debt and bad life choices in the first few hours. And I have better things to do with my weekend.

[sciatrix]

Totally fair.

[horusporus]

I don't actually hang out at MeTa a lot, so I'm only just going thru the thread now, but to this non-American eyes, what's jumping out is how much class is being talked about in terms of money/earnings. to me, it's more than that, you can absolutely be the 'genteel poor' and be of a class without having the money to reflect it.

[sciatrix]

Right, and I think that's probably in part my own (America-centric) framing, in which I did mention some actual dollar amounts. I think there's been a fair few people going "hang on this is more complicated than salary!" in the comments, though, and shaping class as something that really does touch on more complicated issues than current income, including factoring in cost of living. In the US, everyone identifies as middle class, which partially motivated that salary mention: it's a way of gently pointing out that there's only so far you can stretch that word.

I think for me one of the things standing out, which motivated the piece on my end, was the whole "everyone feels average" thing. And when you do know people from very distinctly different income levels and class levels--and those things aren't quite as disentanglable as they sound, I should say, because I think class can be distinct from income but not long-term* distinct from wealth either personally controlled or familial--that "I'm average!" protestation sometimes starts to ring hollow.

*long-term: more than a generation

[horusporus]

yes, as i'm scrolling through, i see some comments saying class is more than just money. and i think it ties to what you're observing. privilege is often the ability to exercise a certain type of capital, and I think most people (certainly in that thread) don't really engage with the other kinds of social/cultural capital they can access to, especially if they're not visibly and materially well-off. my long way of agreeing with you that class is a lot more stable in the long-term, despite (temporary) dips in actual money.

and yeah, the whole protestations about how average they are can possibly tie to how the american narrative is that everyone's middle class. like, i feel in more class-conscious societies, there is usually a custom that you're meant to be more outwardly humble the wealthier you are, but that's not the same thing with what's happening here.

i don't know if i'll join in the convo there, but my experience is a bit more different, as i'm from one of those thirdworld post-colonial countries that literally committed itself to an economic social engineering programme, and the scholarships and programmes we had/have is more than just getting bursary support. like, my mum remembered in her time, the dorm is to serve rice for dinner a couple of times a week only, because the scholars were meant to get used to eating bread (and thus equipping themselves for overseas study). there are obviously colonial-era elite classes that still survive but that programming really did vault tens of thousands of people into at least a class above their starting point.

[ursula]

Something I've been noticing a lot, lately, is that in America right now you kind of have to be upper-middle-class to maintain the old middle-class living standard (a house, a car, a little bit of savings), so everyone feels stressed and disoriented.

[sciatrix]

Oh, I feel like this is a big point. It might just be that middle class qua middle class is shrinking--either you're telling yourself grimly you're middle class and aren't really, or you're upper class and trying to cling to the virtuosity of the middle class, but either way it's a lie to self.

Also, like. The savings thing. The savings thing is huge, and people get very, very, very moralistic about it. Ditto debt.

[moem]

my own (America-centric) framing, in which I did mention some actual dollar amounts.

Not just that, but also:
we tend to assume everyone in the room is coming from the same background we are. And that's rough, because class identity at least in North America is nebulous and difficult to describe

That's the first thing I noticed because it felt sort of ironic to me. Apparently 'we' also tend to assume that everyone in the room is in North America. Mind you, I'm not saying this to be snarky. I'm amused more than irritated.
It's just something that happens a whole lot on MF and that is why it does not feel like an international site to me, but like a US American site that tolerates people from other countries.

I realise this is a tangent from the topic of your post. The thing is, I don't tend to think about class a lot and I don't have strong feelings about that. I do agree that class and income are very different things and that your post as stated seems to equate them somewhat.

Furthermore (and that's squarely on me) I suck at numbers and a number that indicates a yearly income in dollars doesn't mean anything to me.

[sciatrix]

Fair! I think I think about it, especially linked with SES, because my personal life has some very extreme financial disparities and my class background is wildly different from my partner's and there are a lot of class variations among my friends. So it's... underlined for me, I guess.

And I do link them with income in part because... well, it's hard to disentangle those things for more than a generation here in the US, not without semi-regular infusions of cash. Which I don't think is the case so much elsewhere? And we are so much more focused on race, too, which tends to add a dimension of difficulty.

[moem]

Yes, all of that makes sense, thank you.

[kore]

I think in the US the idea of the 'genteel poor' was tied more to higher education and bohemianism, but that's fallen almost completely out of favour in the past couple of decades -- the emphasis is on college as a way to get started in a career (and yet there are still people getting lots of degrees in the humanities). Or that was also maybe the class of university professors, who were seen as highly educated and were often artists teaching on the side, but now with the hiring crises a lot of the labour falls to adjunct faculty who are often just plain poor.

But it was kind of amusing how many US readers thought the Weasleys in HP were on the economic brink!

//probably not making sense, haven't had enough coffee

[siderea]

... the idea that the Weasleys are a class Rorschach test is kinda brilliant.

[kore]

Heh, I only knew that type by being very familiar with that kind of British shabby-genteel character from other books. Including Pratchett, but Raymond Chandler also once wrote this hilarious bit about the more down-at-heel a British man was, the higher up the class strata he seemed to be. I think even Dickens gets into that, but I can't remember.

[sciatrix]

I think the emphasis being on college as a way to get a foot in a career is more of a symptom of economic stress than anything else, and I also think that the emphasis on STEM as a way to do that is more of a way to undermine the value of STEM workers than a statement on the actual value of the occupation.

I might be a touch bitter.

But I think that as economic stresses get more risky, the pressure on students to study something that is perceived as financially comfortable increases even when those occupations are not necessarily more lucrative than others, in part because then the market gluts and often the salaries erode. Especially if too many of "not the right sort" get into the field.

[horusporus]

good point. and it's probably related to the story of immigrant America, and starting with a clean slate, and the idea that you can leave the old elites behind (to varying success depending on the group -- tangentially i've been meaning to share a couple of posts on hindu casteism surviving in the usa), but stratification inevitably happens anyway, so the american set of cultural markers are still mostly 'achievable' things you can do in one generation. now that more people are making less, that chips away at income being a proxy indicator, so the other capital sources are made more apparent.

[kore]

Exactly, plus in early Gilded Age America there was still the difference between the nouveau riche and I guess inherited money? (One of the big problems in the Great Gatsby is even after Gatsby makes his fortune, it's from dodgy shit and he's "Mr Nobody From Nowhere.") There was the stratification and also the younger generations pulling away from it in Edith Wharton's novels. But the division persisted a long long time -- I remember reading Dominick Dunne's People Like Us in the late eighties. Now if anything being nouveau riche, making your own billions before you're thirty, is the height of aspiration.

now that more people are making less, that chips away at income being a proxy indicator, so the other capital sources are made more apparent.

Gosh now why does that make me think of the current US President :-/

[to_do_list]

Class is an important and difficult topic to me, so I am browsing through the thread and thoughts in it with a lot of curiousity.

Your words about shame deeply resonated with me. It almost sounds like shame is attached to every angle of class discussion or every position in it: It's like there is always some expectation one is not meeting no matter where they are (e.g., am I too low, am I too high, what do I do or not do enough - the whole role of personal responsibility versus circumstances and systemic barriers, etc.)

[sciatrix]

I do think that shame is attached to every angle of class and financial discussion. Someone in the conversation mentioned culturally-Catholic guilt, and that also resonated very much with me. I also think a lot of it on the "below where I should be" thing is shame attached to the American concept of hard work generating success: if I'm not in a place that feels secure, is that my fault for just not working hard enough?

And on the "has too much" angle, there's a ton of shame related to whether or not you deserve all those resources, and whether you deserve to be on the positive sign of an inequality. Which is the genesis of a whole lot of that moralizing about how the rich got that way, of course, and tends to be the locus of a whole lot of guilt on the behalf of other people who are comfortable.

And then you apply all that to "where did I start out?" and that's another angle of interrogation.

[to_do_list]

I have the exquisite pleasure of living both angles: Thanks to my partner, I live in a secure wealthy household, while I personally make very little money and struggle in my career. So I have the should/guilt in all directions: the not working hard enough that you mention and not being successful enough on my own, and then simultaneously not giving enough back to society and others…

I am not sure that hard work generating success is a uniquely American concept. My Russian family definitely had the same ethos for several generations (even though systemically, much of the Soviet Union did not work that way). I guess, working hard for success may have been the philosophy of technical intelligentsia; and success may have been more about education and reputation than wealth, because my grandparents were comfortable but had no access to the variety of consumer goods available in the West.

I heard the “deserving” argument a lot. On a personal level, it infuriates me: I have seen too many amazing people in really shitty situations to buy into any concept of deservingness. Yet it is clearly something that many people buy into. It fits with the Just World Theory and all the attempts to feel more in control.

And I wonder if that’s another divide: Some people seem to understand the inherent uncertainty of the world (not the same at all as dealing with it, understanding and anxiety here likely go hand in hand) and how any fairness in it is what we make ourselves - while some expect it to be fair and perceive what happens to others in light of this expectation. I usually think of traits, attitudes, and beliefs as continuums, but in this, I keep finding one or the other as a kind of foundational position.

[writerkit]

I'm finding it's making me *panicky* reading through the thread, it's just that I have a certain ability to sit and interrogate that because I'm used to having to sit and interrogate whether my emotions are caused by real things or brain weasels. I wonder if some of the people who jump straight to "it's an exercise in making us feel bad" don't have that experience dealing with their emotions.

Mind, my reaction is bound up in a set of reactions I don't think are the ones they're having, since I have all the class-background advantages but no real future or ability to survive without my parents as a safety net and being reminded of how precarious my situation is is and how little I have a plan or the mental-health-ability to *form* a plan is the thing that's making me panicky, along with some guilt about the fact that I don't have a full-time job and how much of that mental-health thing is real and how much is just an excuse for not functioning...

[sciatrix]

Oh god yes all of this all of this is extremely relatable hi hi hi

I mean, I found out yesterday that I have not been covered for health insurance since February and that was enough to send me into a big ol' anxiety spiral for the rest of the day, even though I found out from HR when I went "um, excuse me, what the fuck?" that they'd cover it and not make it my problem because it was their error.

(And yes, I think a whole lot of that "this is intended to make us all feel bad" or "this will make us all feel bad and is therefore bad" sentiment is centered around that inexperience dealing with that kind of need to sit and question an emotional response.)

[potofsoup]

Class is ... hard to talk about. As someone who went from "4 people in 1 bedroom and ramen every meal" as a kid to "not having to worry about college tuition", it's definitely been very jarring. I'm sorry that the metafilter reaction was so visceral.