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by Felice Yeskel
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Opening Pandora's Box: Adding Classism to the Agenda
Felice Yeskel, Ed.D.
The Diversity Factor © 2007
ISSN 1545-2808
Winter 2007
The Changing Currency of Diversity
Volume 15, Number 1
Imagine sitting in a room in a circle of chairs. Across from you is someone
who grew up in a small mansion where servants, responding to a bell,
served meals. Her current net worth is over 14 million dollars. To your left
is someone with a net worth significantly less than zero, due to health
care debts. He grew up in a trailer and never attended college. She was
raised with unexamined and unaware class privilege, while he was raised
with the humiliation of public assistance. Six other people, with various
class experiences, also sit around the circle.
Most of us had never really discussed our own class experiences with
anyone, nor shared our feelings about our class differences with others. I
helped form this Cross-Class Dialogue Group (1) a little over ten years ago
when eight of us began a journey of dialogue about class issues. Four of
us were millionaires and brought up in privileged families. Four of us were
raised poor or working class/lower middle class. We all passionately
desired a world with greater equality and justice.
We began this journey with the belief that we had to talk to each other across our differences if we wanted to really understand one another. We believed we must know each other if we are to allow compassion, rather than fear, guilt, anger and resentment, to determine our strategies for social change. We wondered if there was a way to make sense of our diverse experiences and emotions and bridge the class divide. Starting with an attitude of
experimentation, we weren't sure what we would find or how useful it might ultimately be.
Our group met monthly for about six hours over six and a half years and became a learning laboratory for understanding class differences and dynamics. Although I had been an activist, teacher and author for many years — exploring class issues on a personal level, experiencing some cross-class relationships, organizing activities on issues of economic inequality — never before had I explored the depth of feelings and experiences as I did during those six and a half years.
At the age of five, I was sent from my neighborhood in New York City to Hunter College Elementary School on 68th Street and Park Avenue, to a school for "intellectually gifted" kids. I not only crossed the miles on the way to school, but the cultures too. I learned to act differently, talk differently and basically to pass as middle class. I never invited anyone home from school because I was ashamed of where I lived. In our dialogue group I met someone who came from a super-privileged family who never invited anyone home either because she was embarrassed by her big, fancy house. I was surprised we shared that common ground.
We learned that the person who came from the most poverty wasn't saving for retirement, not because they couldn't have done so financially, but because it was hard to imagine living that long. Most of his family members had died well before 60 due to work-related causes. It was an illuminating and liberating experience for all of us in the group. As our group came to a
close, we wondered how we might bring some of the lessons we learned out into the world so that others, who weren't likely to spend six and a half years in dialogue, could benefit from what we were learning. It was out of that experience that Class Action (2) was born.
Class: Our Collective Family Secret
Walk into any hospital cafeteria and you'll seldom see the class lines broken. At lunch or dinnertime there will be tables of nurses, tables of doctors and tables of working crews (maintenance, food service, security, etc.). This same dynamic is replicated in many other workplaces across the U.S. The divisions
aren't only based on race or gender; they are based on class — what Noam Chomsky calls "the unmentionable five-letter word."
Class is our collective family secret. We pretend it doesn't exist and if it doesn't exist how can we talk about it? This invisibility and lack of attention, unfortunately, is often as true among diversity professionals as it is in society at large. The idea of adding issues of classism to our existing list of issues causes discomfort. We worry about what might happen when we open this Pandora's box.
Workplaces are one of the few places where there is any cross-class contact. Most of us tend to live in a class segregated world. Because of the way housing works, our immediate neighborhoods are usually homogenous. So, too, are our social circles. Even those of us who regularly socialize with folks of varied races, ethnicities, religions and sexual orientations, don't typically spend social time with folks different from us class-wise.
In many of the workshops I facilitate, I ask people how many have graduated from a four-year college. I then ask those who have a college degree or more, how many have friends who didn't go to or graduate from college. Very few hands are raised. Since only 28 percent of those over age 25 have graduated from a four-year college, (3) random odds tell us we would have a decent percentage of friends who didn't go to college. But there is nothing random
operating; we are experiencing the systemic effects of class segregation and classism.
When I recently asked this question of diversity professionals in a train-the-trainer session focused on class issues the response was the same. If we are the folks who make a living teaching others the importance of valuing diversity and how to eliminate systemic barriers and discrimination, then why isn't this on our agendas? There are many reasons for this and one is the lack of clarity and consensus about what we mean by class. Fifteen years ago I wanted to write my dissertation on anti-classist training and education. After spending eight months trying to define "class" to the satisfaction of my committee, I switched topics.
There are no commonly agreed upon definitions because different disciplines focus on different aspects of class. Some economists focus on income strata as the main criteria, such as whether someone is in the bottom or middle quintile. Some sociologists tend to focus primarily on occupational status; is someone white collar, blue/pink collar, etc.? Still others focus on the issue of ownership, power or control; does someone sell their labor or own the means of production? For others it is how much control does someone have in the workplace and over the conditions under which they work? Still others talk about class as culture, which includes values, cultural capital (what you know) and social capital (who you know). If we don't have clarity about class, social class or socio-economic class how can we tackle classism?
Many Americans take pride and comfort in the belief that all people have boundless opportunity. We believe that since there are no landed gentry, aristocracy and titles based on birth, that class no longer matters today — that class was a problem of a different time and place. However, the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. is the greatest it has been since 1929. Since the late 1970s, the wealthy have gained a bigger share of the nation's private
wealth; the richest one percent of the population now have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Income inequality has grown as well. Average Americans were actually making less, on an hourly basis, at the end of the 1990s than they made in 1980 (4).
Classist Ideology and Mythology
In addition to these material realities, classist ideology and mythology shape the beliefs that provide the rationale for such excessive inequality. The American Dream — the belief that people in this country can attain enough income to own their own homes and provide comfortably for their families if
only they work hard enough — is pervasive. The fact that most Americans can point to at least one example where this is true reinforces the myth of class mobility and the assumption that those who don't move up the class ladder lack a strong work ethic. We locate the credit and blame for success or
lack of success solely in the individual.
While it is true that there is some class fluidity, and that our class position may change over the course of a lifetime, the current reality is that economic class is much less fluid than most people think. A series on class in America (5) reviewed research on class mobility and concluded that, "mobility... has lately flattened out or possibly even declined." At the same time, according to a New York Times poll conducted in 2005, "More Americans than 20 years ago believe it is possible to start out poor, work hard and become rich." There is a cruel irony to this situation; people are more likely to believe that they can make it, while in fact they are less able to succeed economically. People in this situation, without an adequate systemic understanding of how class works, often internalize classism and blame themselves. They find scapegoats and blame others. They buy lottery tickets and engage in some level of fantasy that they too will some day be rich.
Particularly during periods of social and economic stress, in the absence of a framework for understanding classism, people often turn to scapegoats and distractions. Thus the underlying factors (6) that create vast inequalities in wealth, along with the beneficiaries of these policies, remain largely invisible (7). Instead, people on welfare are blamed for causing our budget woes;
urban young men of color are blamed for crime; immigrants are blamed for taking away jobs; working women, gays and lesbians are held responsible for the breakdown of the nuclear family and the moral decay of society.
Issues of class and classism also intersect with every other form of oppression. Race and class in particular are very intertwined in the U.S. While about half of all poor people are white, wealthy people are disproportionately white. Poor people are disproportionately black, Latino/a and Native American. The racial wealth divide is even wider than the income gap: for every dollar of assets owned by Whites, people of color own about 18 cents of that dollar (8).
People living in poverty are more likely than others to be disabled, and disabled people are more likely than able-bodied people to be poor. A far higher percentage of people with disabilities live in households that are below the poverty level (29 versus 10 percent overall), and a similarly is proportionate number report not having adequate access to health care or
transportation (9).
The feminization of poverty over the last 30 years has increased the classism and sexism connection. There is the two-job phenomenon for women, who still perform endless hours of unpaid work caring for children and the elderly at home on top of their paid work out in the world (10). Men are socialized to equate self-worth with what they produce (their net worth) and women performing comparable work to men are still not paid an equal amount.
Beyond the Economic Realm
The harms from classism, however, extend far beyond the economic realm. Prejudice exists in our language, in words such as "trailer trash," "white
trash," "redneck," "ghetto," "low-class" and "classy." The same prejudice is manifested in the treatment of service workers; underpaying them, disregarding their humanity and often creating unnecessary tasks for them to do. Popular culture and the U.S. media are full of classist stereotypes. Working-class people are often portrayed as dumb buffoons while poor
people are depicted as criminals, tragic victims or heartwarming givers of wisdom. Wealthy people are rendered as shallow and vain or as evil villains. "Normal" is portrayed as an expensive uppermiddle- class lifestyle that no more than ten percent of American families can actually afford. This combines with manipulative advertising to fuel consumerism, the overemphasis on buying more and better things as a component of happiness, which in turn fuels excessive consumer debt (11).
The lives of many working-class people, especially those of people in poverty, are full of stress. The shortage of options and scarce resources take an emotional toll (12). Bad health outcomes, such as shorter life expectancy, higher infant mortality and more preventable diseases are prevalent among working-class and poor people. These stem not only from inferior health care, poor diet, long hours and physical work that take a toll on workers' bodies, but also from the stress of living in a society that looks down on them. Disrespect is harmful (13). Interestingly, it is not just poverty that creates bad health outcomes. In a given population where basic needs are met, greater levels of economic inequality correlate with negative health outcomes for everyone. People higher up the economic spectrum as well as those lower down have worse health outcomes when the inequality is greater (14).
Classism, like other forms of oppression, can be internalized causing self-blame, shame, low expectations, discouragement and self-doubt, particularly about one's intelligence. Internalized classism (15) can also be manifested through disrespect towards other poor and working-class people, in the form of harsh judgments, betrayal, violence and other crimes. Upward mobility,
far from bringing relief from classism, can bring culture shock and painful divided loyalties (16).
Professional middle-class people are harmed when they're isolated from working-class people and taught they are superior to them and should be in charge. They are harmed by misinformation about how society works (they are sometimes less clued in to social and economic trends than working-class, poor or rich people), and by conditioning that shapes their behavior to a narrow "proper" range (17). In addition to the same isolation and lack of awareness that impacts middle class people, wealthy people also find that others sometimes connect with them primarily in relation to their money, and they may have trouble trusting others' motivations. Some develop a sense of entitlement and arrogance that makes them unable to connect across class differences.
Many of the ways we "read" someone's class, or "size someone up" in terms of class (a process that can be quite unconscious), is based on our own class culture, which includes normative behaviors such as language use, manner of dress and the "proper" guidelines for conducting ourselves. While these things can be learned, the process is not easy. We also judge others' cultural capital, which refers to their familiarity with cultural objects such as books, fine art, theater, restaurants, vacation spots and jewelry.
Encouraging Diversity Professionals to Step Up
Part of the challenge of adding issues of class and classism to the agenda is the prohibition on talking about it. In the U.S., discussions involving issues of
class and money are often more taboo than discussing sexuality. Deep-seated prohibitions about disclosing the facts of one's class identity are learned quite early in our lives. Shame of being poorer or richer than others leads to secrecy and silence. This silence powerfully maintains the invisibility of class. Issues of class may be less familiar than other issues of oppression partly due to secrecy about the personal aspects of class identity and the confusion surrounding the societal and economic aspects. Diversity professionals with math anxiety or who are unfamiliar with the economic basics, e.g., the difference between income and wealth, or between salary and wages or the meaning of terms like Gross National Product (GNP), often feel overwhelmed while tackling issues of class.
A central reason most diversity professionals don't add classism to the agenda may be because classism is a different type of "ism." It is possible to imagine working for equality between the sexes, or equality for gays and lesbians or people of color, without necessarily eliminating gender, sexual orientation or race as identities. However, by definition it is impossible to have equality between classes while still having different classes. You can't have an owning class without having a working class, a serf without nobility or a slaveholder without slaves. The existence of class necessitates class inequality. I think it is because of this that the rationales that underlie class inequality are so strong and persistent.
Ultimately, I don't think we will be successful in any of our work against racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc., until we begin to take on the issue of classism. I encourage you to add issues of classism to your work.
Parts of this article were adapted from Class Action's forthcoming Cross-Class Dialogue Manual (by Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, Jennifer Ladd, and Felice Yeskel) and from a chapter on Classism in Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, (also forthcoming by chapter authors Betsy Leondar- Wright and Felice Yeskel).
To learn more about Class Action, a national non-profit organization working to end classism through education and catalyzing action, please visit www.classism.org.
"... by definition it is
impossible to have equality
between classes while still
having different classes.
You can't have an owning
class without having a
working class, a serf
without nobility or a
slaveholder without slaves.
The existence of class
necessitates class
inequality."
Endnotes
1. I would like to acknowledge Jennifer Ladd, who started the group with me.
2. Class Action has developed a variety of resources including a wonderful web site full of useful resources. We publish a
monthly e-newsletter that highlights resources, actions and events. If you are interested in subscribing please visit our web
site. Class Action helps organizations better fulfill their missions by reducing class barriers and facilitating cross-class
connections.
3. In 2005, 85 percent of all adults 25 years or older reported they had completed at least high school. More than one-quarter
(28 percent) of adults age 25 years and older had attained at least a bachelor's degree. October 26, 2006 Census Bureau
News Release, " Census Bureau Data Underscore Value of College Degree."
4. Collins, Chuck & Yeskel, Felice, "Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity," New
York: The New Press, 2005.
5. The New York Times, May 2005
6. For example, domestic tax and spending policies, U.S. imperialism, war, global trade policies, multinational corporate
power, etc.
7. Collins & Yeskel, 2005; Kivel, "You Call This a Democracy?" New York: The Apex Press, 2004.
8. Lui et al., "The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide," New York: The New Press, 2006.
9. National Organization on Disabilities, 2000.
10. Folbre, "The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values," New York: The New Press, 2001.
11. Degraaf, Wann, & Naylor, "Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic," San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2001; and
Frank, "Luxury Fever," Princeton University Press, 2000.
12. Sennett & Cobb, "The Hidden Injuries of Class," Vintage Press, 1973.
13. Lawrence-Lightfoot, "Respect: An Exploration," Perseus Books Group 2000; and Miller & Savoie, "Respect And Rights:
Class, Race, And Gender Today," Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc 2002.
14. Wilkinson, Richard G., "The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier," New York: The New Press, 2005.
15. People who are poor / working-class often internalize the dominant society's beliefs /attitudes toward them, and act them
out on themselves and others of a similar class. The acceptance and justification of classism by working class and poor
people, plays out in feelings of inferiority to higher-class people and feelings of superiority to people lower on the class
spectrum. Often hostility and blame is projected on other working class or poor people, including beliefs that classist
institutions are fair.
16. Lubrano, Limbo, "Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams," Wiley; 2003.
17. Leondar-Wright, "Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle Class Activists," New Society Publishers, 2005.
Published by Elsie Y. Cross & Associates, Inc.
Developed by Rutgers University - Division of Continuous Education and Outreach
© 2007 The Diversity Factor.
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