Class Thoughts

I was looking at Hafidha Sofia’s really interesting blog Never Say Never To Your Traveling Self where I ran across her link to a list of points for middle class folk to avoid who wish to work with working class people.

I’m someone who originally comes from not quite the poorest strata of our Society, my daddy was a petty criminal and I remember more than one Christmas that happened because of the local fire department (God bless all fire fighters). Now I’m pretty solidly middle class and happy as a clam I’m not poor. I do have a bunch of emotions around it. Enormous sense of good luck. Knowledge that some of the reasons I was able to climb up was being “well spoken” and white and male, each unearned leg-ups along the way. I also have a haunting sense I could be discovered and sent back at any moment. I have a considerable discomfort around the poor. And guilt for feeling such. All grist for the introspective process, no doubt. Keeps me humble. (Okay, those who know me know, only sort of…)

Out of this mishmash I’m mostly bemused by discussions of class among my nearly universally middle class UU and largely middle class Zendoid friends. Usually I find their thoughts on the subject are terribly romantic and not very interesting to me. But I found Hafidha’s found list pretty interesting…

In one’s encounters across class try to avoid the following common mistakes. It is almost always a mistake to:

1) Overlook necessity
2) Overlook intelligence
3) Romanticize working-class people
4) Impose inessential weirdnesses
5) Hide who they really are
6) Think they know it all
7) Think they know nothing
8) Focus on education more than organizing
9) Focus on goals and tasks more than people
10) Take over

Heck, this sounds like a list of mistakes in living life in general.

Not bad at all…