We’ve all heard rags-to-riches stories about successful individuals who “pulled themselves up by the bootstraps.” Certainly, many successful business people owe their good fortune to hard work and innovative thinking. But, to describe those people as “self-made” would be to dismiss a big piece of reality—the role of the commons.
Ubuntu and The Self-Made Myth
Thursday, March 15th, 2012Poverty and Disability: the Vicious Circle
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012I first started to look at disability as a class issue when 18 of our members from Piedmont Peace Project and I attended a national peace movement conference in Atlanta. Six of us were disabled and three in wheelchairs, including me. No other group had visibly disabled people present, although I’m sure some hidden disabilities were there. We were in an accessible hotel, but when we got dressed up and went to the main event in a nearby historic church, we arrived only to find out we could not enter. We could not get up the steps or inside the doors.
The most classist comment of 2011
Friday, January 6th, 2012Last January Classism Exposed asked for your votes on which was the most classist comment by a public figure in 2010, offering eight options. Readers weighed in and added their own grisly candidates. But this year, there’s no point in running a poll, since we already know who’s going to win (drumroll, please): Newt Gingrich, for calling child labor laws “truly stupid” and advocating firing union school janitors and replacing them with poor students.
Remember When It Was Poster Board?: Computer Technologies and School Disadvantage
Thursday, August 11th, 2011Remember when it was the poster board? I do. I remember my elementary school classmates—Russell, Missy, Jake—who could never afford it, who would raise their hands meekly, eyes downcast, when the teacher asked, “Who needs help getting poster board?” I pitied them and wondered what else they couldn’t afford: a pack of National Football League pencils, a Hong Kong Phooey notebook, one of those four-color ball-point pens, a mega-box of 64 Crayola crayons with the cool little sharpener built into the back. The teacher would summon them to the back of the classroom, hand each of them a white piece of poster board that she had pulled out from behind a cabinet or bookcase or portable coat closet. The teacher must be rich, I reasoned, stocked up, as she was, with so much expendable poster board. The summoned students would walk slowly back to their desks, poster board in hand, careful to avoid eye contact. Poor kids, I thought. Poor, poor kids. Pity, I know now, is the worst form of disgust.
Query: How to open discussion with a poor-basher?
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011Dear Class Action, What should I do? My neighbor in my conservative rural town emailed this racist/classist piece of junk to me. I need some advice on what to do next.
Middle Class Brats?
Saturday, April 9th, 2011I fear I am raising spoiled-rotten, middle-class brats. I fear I am raising the very kind of children I would have hated as a child. Why? Because they are comfortable and cozy and have everything they need in their day-to-day lives.
Caregiver Unions: Much Needed But Most Vulnerable Now
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011Often overlooked amid the current attacks on long-established public sector unions around the country is the threat to recently organized workers, who are the lowest paid and most badly treated. When “regular” state workers are under attack, it’s not easy to improve the conditions of a contingent workforce of direct care providers at the bottom tier of public employment, such as home health care aides and child care workers.
Defending my vibrant neighborhood
Thursday, November 18th, 2010Recently four people were killed about ten houses away from where I grew up in Mattapan, a neighborhood of Boston. The neighborhood was maligned by the media coverage which plastered the headlines “Massacre in Mattapan” in large print across the 6:00 news every night. That image of Mattapan was permanently emblazoned across the minds of the nation.
A Wealth of Whammies for Youth in Poverty
Friday, November 12th, 2010It is unjust enough that scores of young people in the United States are denied basic human rights; that even in a country which paints itself as a global model of human rights, kids go without food, safe and affordable housing, equitable schooling opportunities, and healthcare. Heck, in a country with the level of resources the U.S. has, the very existence of homelessness, hunger, and poverty in the face of growing corporate profits is inexcusable. In this way, the U.S. is the very definition of systemic classism: a country in which poverty rates, income inequality, and corporate profits often grow simultaneously.
