The Class-Consciousness Raiser
I'm one of those people who believes that classism is more of a problem in our society than racism. That's why I found this story in the New York Times so interesting. It begins ...By the time Ruby Payne sat down for lunch, she had been at it for three hours straight, standing alone behind a lectern on a wide stage in a cavernous convention hall, parked between two American flags, instructing an audience of 1,400 Georgians in the hidden rules of class. No notes, no warm-up act, just Ruby, with her Midwestern-by-way-of-East-Texas drawl and her crisp white shirt, her pinstriped business suit and bright red lipstick and blow-dried blond hair, a wireless microphone hooked around her right ear. She had already explained why rich people don’t eat casseroles, why poor people hang their pictures high up on the wall, why middle-class people pretend to like people they can’t stand. She had gone through the difference between generational poverty and situational poverty and the difference between new money and old money, and she had done a riff on how middle-class people are so self-satisfied that they think everyone wants to be middle class.Apparently most people who attend her seminars think they're valuable. A number of academics dismiss them because they're not academic enough.
Although I've not attended a seminar, my gut tells me that her ideas could be really worthwhile.
posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 1:18 PM
2 Comments:
While it did sound like she made some huge generalizations, as someone who is middle class and has taught poor kids, I thought it sounded extremely practical.
Paul,
The UUA adult RE curriculum Weaving the Fabric of Diversity dedicates one of its eight sessions to classism.
It's worth checking out and it also covers similar topics that Ruby Payne covers in her work. The curriculum does use some real-life case studies to look at classism in our congregations.
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