Mentioning things

[mmcirvin]

So which is it? Do people constantly talk about class in America because they don't want to mention race, or do people constantly talk about race in America because they don't want to mention class? Because apparently both things are true and I want to know which taboo to fight first. Or are these different groups of mentioners?

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

#1. Nobody talks about Race Club.
#2. NOBODY TALKS ABOUT RACE CLUB.

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

nah, they talk about race AND class because they don't want to mention caste.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The flightless workers just paged you with a pheromone droplet on level 6. The grubs are hungry again.

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

This is one of those quantum things, right?

[jarai.livejournal.com]

I feel like race is a more taboo subject, but that class probably deserves a whole lot more attention than its been getting in the past decade or two.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that when Americans don't want to talk about race and racism, it's because the subject is actually making them uncomfortable because it's such a large part of the American experience, and connected to harmful irrational feelings that even well-intentioned Americans absorb from the culture, and have to fight. Whereas when they don't want to talk about class, it's because they honestly think they live in something like a classless society.

Which from, say, a British perspective, may even be partly true: here class is mostly about money, whereas over there it has another dimension that strikes me as similar to our fixation on race. Which is not to say that it's completely absent here; we have the distinction between "new money" and "old money"; but it's nowhere near as powerful in people's minds, and race occupies that brain lobe instead.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...The relative weakness of the European notion of class, by the way, is probably the reason for the all-devouring advance of the casual in American culture that op-ed writers have such a grand time decrying. Think of the origin of words such as "vulgar" and "classy" and the way that America is generally supposed to represent the triumph of the former over the latter. Yet the purely monetary notion of class is incredibly strong here because of how our government and economy work, and racism in turn still feeds into that.

[aderack.livejournal.com]

Money doesn't buy you old-school class.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

Poor white people talk about class. Rich black people talk about race. Others suit it to their audiences.

[pantom.livejournal.com]

Past racial struggle is fine to put on TV. Past union struggle (a class thing) isn't, because of the obvious reason that the broadcaster is a corporation.
OTOH, the fact that schools currently are more segregated than at any time since the late sixties is definitely due to race, but there is an element of class in there, as upper-class people, white or black, simply refuse to allow their children to have anything to do with children of a lesser class. I almost divorced my wife over that argument. I lost, so I'm still married. Still makes my blood boil every time I think about it. BUT, she's the one who got the local school board to make MLK day a holiday. I held my tongue about the contradictions in her position when she did that, of course.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

My parents put me in public school specifically so that I wouldn't be in an upper-class bubble. It was in one of the most lauded and richly-funded public school systems in the country (Fairfax County, VA) but at the west end of the county (originally semi-rural, though that rapidly changed) where the money gradient was palpable. And I ended up bugging out to special programs over at the rich end of the county for part of my time in the system, though not all of it. It took me a long time to realize that some of the bullying that went on was actually fueled by class-based resentment, whether the kids involved knew it or not.

they have more money

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...My time over at the other end was also when I realized that there were people who were much, much richer than I was, and that they were Different.