22 Class Steps Forward

[EDIT: Because all the comments I’ve gotten for this entry recently have been spam, I’m disabling comments. If you’d like to comment on this entry, email me and let me know.]

Here’s the relevant information for you to know:

1. This exercise is based on one developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University (see the “looking at privilege” post in the above paragraph, for additional links).

2. The exercise’s developers hold the copyright and have given permission for it to be posted, with links, on the Quakers and Social Class blog. They ask that those of us who participate in this blog exercise acknowledge their copyright, which I’m doing here.

3. If you cut-and-paste this exercise on your own blog, please leave a comment on the relevant post, pointing readers to your own post.

4. Copy and paste the list below into your blog (or as a comment in the relevant post), remove my own personal comments, and bold the items that are true for you. My own replies are below.

The Exercise

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
5. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
6. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
7. Were read children’s books by a parent
8. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 (Riding lessons once or twice a year for 3 years or so)
9. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 (also had some swimming lessons when I was really young because I had physical limitations and was really struggling)
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively (I dress in t-shirts and jeans usually; the people my age in the media who dress like that tend to be slackers, gay, unemployed, etc.)
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
10. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
11. Went to a private high school
12. Went to summer camp (ARTHRITIS camp, on full scholarship from the Arthritis Foundation)
13. Had a private tutor before you turned 18 (yes, because senior year I lost the ability to write and needed a lot of help catching up in both pre-calculus and accelerated physics)
14. Family vacations involved staying at hotels (some)
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
15. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
16. There was original art in your house when you were a child
17. Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
18. You and your family lived in a single family house (my father actually lived with his mother for several years or in an apartment, but my mother, who I lived with most of the time, usually had a house… do half-houses count here?)
19. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home (I think the bank still owns most of it, but they’re not renting, no)
20. You had your own room as a child (starting at age 12)
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School (my 8″ black and white hand-me-down from the 60s doesn’t count here)
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
21. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
22. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family (I had a general idea)

A few thoughts, now that this is done. I’m participating in this out of respect for Jeanne and her Quakers and Social Class blog and how important it is for Quakers to acknowledge our classism, which is usually ignored outright and almost never talked about. I think it’s of paramount important that we be able to talk about our classism, with the hopes of becoming less classist.

But I do feel that exercises like this tend to become a competition of who has suffered/overcome more. And I don’t think we need competitions like that. Like I’ve said in comments elsewhere, this exercise assumes all other things except class are equal when that is almost never the case. For example, I grew up physically disabled. I went to summer camp for 8 years, but it was a camp for kids with Arthritis and my attendance was fully paid for by the Arthritis Foundation. I had a private tutor for part of high school because I couldn’t write and had trouble following math and science classes that year. We had art in our house because one of my mom’s friends is an artist and gave us art for free (I think that accounts for most of it).

We need some way to look classism in the eye without continuing to be classist, and I’m not sure we’ve found it yet. Punishing those who are of a higher class isn’t the way forward. Neither is ignoring the problem altogether.

I feel that, in general, we as Quakers need to be more open-minded and sensitive to other people who attend or are members of our Meetings. We need to stop assuming that their life experiences are or were the same as ours. We need to stop assuming that their goals and dreams are the same as ours. We need to accept that we are a society of shared faith (one hopes), but that doesn’t imply we are a society of shared social status, physical ability, family aspirations, or sexuality. If we can talk to each other without making assumptions and start being truly open to the person with whom we are talking, I think it would go a long way to not only confronting our classism, but our ableism, ageism, heterosexism (I don’t even know if that’s the term I’m looking for, but it’s the only one that comes to mind) and racism as well.