Class and Inessential Weirdnesses

Read a great article on class difference here.

"Corny."

I can't tell you how many times I have heard the word "corny" coming from poor/working class friends and family to describe things that are understood as higher class activities/values. My family is extremely uncomfortable with corniness. It's hard to define.

I cannot imagine the reaction my friends and family from back home would have had to the Thirteen Grandmother's Meeting. The chanting, the forced happiness, the smiles from strangers. All of that would have felt very strange and alienating. I can hear my older sister saying, "Bitch- you don't know me- don't smile at me" to one of the organizers. You may think that sounds awfully crude and violent, but, believe me- it's very complicated. I can't tell you how insulting a mere smile can feel from people you feel are looking down at you, from people who think that since they are organizing and you are attending, everything is equal and everyone can be friends instantly without introduction or shared experience. People whose hands are always giving, never receiving. (An anarchist punk girl from Pittsburgh tells me proudly that she is studying to become a nurse because she wants to open up a clinic to help poor women. I ask her if she ever was a poor woman. If she ever had to go to a free clinic for help. She doesn't get the question. Why would that matter- she wants to help!)

Or they just feel sorry for you. Also, I personally experience the prevalence of smiles from strangers at these events to reflect a levity and privilege in their lives which makes them so happy and calm and open in their eco-friendly shoes and Tibetan turquoise earrings- a levity I don't have because when I walk in I feel noticeably poor and awkward and angry and jealous. All of these feelings inside of me and I can pass. I'm white and semi-college educated and I know the lingo and the dress-code, so I can pass easily, but my family and friends could never and so, they would have walked right out the door. I also think the presence of the 10,000 dollar spot on the donation form was insulting and insensitive. Why throw in my face that there are people present who can afford to donate that much to anything when I had to skip a meal just to give five dollars? Why throw that number in my face when I spent that morning in the Social Security Office with my mom watching her kiss ass and get mistreated so she could get an advance on her crazy check to buy milk and bread? Do these people ever consider that their world might include poor people and just seeing that number might have fucked with me and traumatized me?

Nina and I read the above article together and went on to laugh about all the "Inessential Weirdnesses" we have experienced in our travels through class. This article is great, but it overlooks some of the other things working class people find very alienating and strange- specifically, the "everything is great" and "we are all so happy" attitude that higher class people have when organizing events. Chanting at spiritual events where people hold hands? Corny. So corny and weird.

I have experienced touch at these events strangely because from my experience of upper middle class families- touch isn't a big thing. The upper middle class families I have experienced (and there haven't been a lot, honestly) have always seemed cold and empty to me. Families with one child and no cousins anywhere. No grandparents living in the house. That is something I always experienced as strange because where I am from, families are big and people are always together and family members touch each other- whether that's your grandmother hugging you or your mom slapping you in front of relatives who just shake their heads and say you should have listened the first time. So, the big touching of strangers thing always seemed to me to be as an over-compensation for a lack of it in their personal lives. I could be wrong about this.

Corniness is marked by a lack of sick, twisted humor we have in my family and my community. A community where, if a child falls into a mud puddle, we might all stand around laughing while he cries before we run to help him up. This may seem cruel and cold, but it comes from living in a place where life is hard and you better learn to laugh at it or you are never going to make it.

Once, a few working class people and I sat around a bar table laughing and reminiscing about childhood- specifically all the beatings we survived. Leather belts beatings particularly. We laughed so hard telling the stories of what we did wrong and how bad we got our asses beat when we got caught. A friend at the table who grew up with money was horrified. She couldn't believe we were laughing. She kept saying cliche things like "hitting children is wrong" and all I felt was irritation that she felt she needed to tell us that, that it never occured to her that we experienced it first-hand and maybe our laughter was more complicated and interesting than us merely being complicit in our abuse.


"And if you hear a parent negotiating with a child about when to leave the playground, look around for who's rolling their eyes, and listen for the class overtones in the comments, like "F**king yuppies!"

In Whole Foods, parents are always letting their kids rule the day and it enrages me every time. A friend of mine spends twenty minutes trying to convince his little daughter to put her shoes back on after she plays in the park. My childhood was worlds away in harshness and discipline and babying your spoiled kids just leads them to be spoiled brats who expect the world to baby them, and I guess this works well for rich kids.... They grow up to expect the world to cater to them and it usually does.

Enjoy the article and remember, the Food Not Bombs kids are in fact being snobby when the prepare all vegetarian meals for the homeless people downtown.