power, privilege, and everyday life.
Have a question/comment/similar experience to share? Email us or fill out our contribution form.
Note: The comments section provides a space for people to LEARN from one another.
Search
Pages
Loading Tweet...
Find us on...
Tag Results
241 posts tagged class
When I’m meeting my partner’s extended family for the first time, his rather well-off aunt latches onto the fact that I might be from a different socio-economic background and takes the opportunity to grill me about every life detail: who are my parents; what they did for work; what sort of house I lived in as a child; where I attended college…you get the idea. Much to her chagrin, I reveal that I didn’t go to college and did in fact grow up poor in rural America. Another family member has to tell her to leave me alone.
“So every week, do the Guatemalans come and mow your lawns?”
My world history teacher, mocking students for living in a generally wealthy town.
When my father (who is Mexican) picks me up from school, the people in the office assumes he is the gardener or custodian. The yard duties are also not as kind to him like how they treat the white parents.
Old woman:: “Schools shouldn’t offer free lunches to kids, since that means their parents just take advantage, and don’t bother trying to find jobs to support their kids.”
Me:: “So you think we should allow kids to starve?!”
Woman’s husband:: “You see [myname], if you give them handouts, these people don’t work. When I got out of high school, if you wanted to eat, you had to find a job. Nobody has any work ethic anymore.”
At a party. Made me feel like I was talking to a compassion-less brick wall.
“Look, it’s a dog walker. You have such a cool job!”
A white woman in the lobby of my condo. To which I replied: “These are MY dogs and I live here.” Her [totally oblivious] “Oh! He does too!” I shook my head and got into the elevator. It felt as if she were implying that a Afro-American person–much less a woman–could afford to live in this building.
Office setting. Insurance claims. First day on job. Three co-workers quote Shakespeare throughout the day. Ask me if I studied Shakespeare in college and I replied “no.” They roll their eyes and someone comments: You have a normal name, Barbara. I am African American. I felt patronized.
I mention to a co-worker that I grew up in a trailer park, and she says, “But you’re so smart!”
“It was cleaner when white people lived here. Then the Blacks came in and now look! There’s trash all over the streets, dogs running loose, and the smell of smoke every sunny day.”
Sometimes when I say I’m from Detroit, people’s tone of voice becomes uneasy. They might even cringe. One even said that they never guessed, as though where one lives should be obvious. It’s a shame that people think I’m a criminal just because of where I live.
Went to a friend’s softball game, and sat at the far end of the bleachers because there was nowhere else to sit. There are two white women there. One had her purse on the bleachers. As I sit down I think to myself watch her grab her purse. Sure enough not ten second later she grabs her purse like I was going to try to steal it.
People need to realize some of the worst criminals wear three piece suits, and not some brown skinned guy watching his friend play softball. Made me feel sad at the ignorance of some people.
“I don’t get why you’re excluding me like this. I’m Jewish; I know oppression.”
A peer to me (a black male) in the midst of a discussion on discrimination and privilege. He is a white male, the son of two doctors, who went to boarding school and is attending an Ivy League university. I was raised by a waitress mother in the inner city and am attending community college.
“Don’t you think your reaction was offensive to others as well?”
White teacher to a black student who was offended that another student described a neighborhood as “ghetto.”
“That could be more affordable for you.”
Sales woman pointing at the clearance rack to my darker-skinned Mexican friend, while my other light-skinned Mexican friend was pointed to the regular/more expensive section.
My boss talking about the role of socioeconomic factors in education, “So the star kids would be the kids from stable families, you know, mom and dad, stable homes, good income, and the bad kids were the kids with unstable families, a lot of fighting, alcohol, poor, single-parent households, living in bad neighborhoods. In fact, the star kids’ parents all lived in the same side of town as opposed to the bad kids’ parents. Kinda like my side of town and your side of town, because your side has a history of being very poor and unstable and you know, my side has all those stable families.”
My boss is a white woman with a very high socioeconomic status and I’m a latina women living in an apartment complex with my husband because we can’t afford anything else. Made me feel like I’m less than her for not having the economic advantages that she has.
A girl at work straight up told me that colleges didn’t accept white people like herself. She said they only want brown people, like me, and poor people, also like me. She should really tell this to all the colleges that are +50% white. I had no response. I just kind of went deer in the headlights.