One of the interesting things about being married to a tall white English man is that Americans almost always assume they know his British class, and always assume wrongly. As if someone with that accent living in the U.S. must automatically have been at least nudging upper class, when in fact his parents had to fight his schools to let him take the tests to continue high school and apply to university--being told over and over that it would be a waste of time because he was working class.
It’s always fascinating not just how powerful our own attachment to identity is, but how much it determines our assumptions about others’ identities.
I’ve been having some conversations about the insidiousness of meritocratic thinking recently, too. How even self-identified progressive friends make assumptions about the kinds of financial situations people deserve or “brought upon themselves.” Class experience seems to be, anecdotally, a major factor there.
Gonna be digesting this essay for a while, Garrett! I really appreciate your call to be honest about our averageness. It feels to me like there's freedom to be found in going there, as scary as it may be to our identities and egos.
Though this may seem random, have you seen Amsterdam? My partner and I watched it Sunday night and Margot Robbie's character has a line towards the end that goes: "I’m very happy to be unimportant and live in a place that has love and beauty."
Your essay and that line clicked mentally as I drink my coffee this morning and got me thinking: I wonder if we as white people partially feel this need for importance because in the U.S., we culturally lack community.
Looping in some attachment theory, if we feel well-attached because say we're part of a greater community of care and solidarity, by extention we might theoretically feel more secure and operate in a more healthy way. I would say that the culture created by white supremacy, with all its individualism and striving, is a form of insecure attachment. And so it makes sense we cling to partially true stories for a sense of completeness or belonging that isn't otherwise available to us within the status quo.
This is so layered and original and important. I think one of the reasons we downplay our class privilege is that there’s no downplaying our white privilege. (Unless you’re really flexible with reality and we’ve seen where that takes people...). I also think White patents genuinely confuse the shit out of their kids around class. Maya just told me that some of her friends at school asked her if we were rich and I had to think on the best way to respond. Comparatively yes. In the shadow of Silicon Valley, no. I’ve got a sociological mind and I found it hard to know how to give her the layers in that moment.
I’ve been thinking about this essay for a couple of days.
I am someone who is currently economically & educationally upperclass, but as an Appalachian, there are identity markers that I cannot shed. (And at this stage in my life, I’m uninterested in doing so.) I don’t feel that I’m “performing class” when I switch into standard American English any more than I’m performing when I speak with a four-syllable pronunciation of “cursive.” They’re both me. And past me was every bit the stereotypical hillbilly who couldn’t afford healthcare—I spent yesterday at the dentist, paying that bill with dollars and pain. I still carry that with me.
I read this a while back, and I thought you might like it:
I think Okie from Muskogee is a really interesting example here, because iirc Haggard went back and forth over his lifetime about whether it was satirical and tongue-in-cheek, or a sincere and straightforward appreciation of a particular type of working-class white guy, very possibly depending on what'd be must useful to him in a given context. I feel like there's often a tendency to assume that the entire genre of country music (like other maligned genres) totally lacks a sense of irony, and all I can say is that people who assume that (which I don't think you are here, for the record) are walking on the fightin' side of me.
(I'm also totally guilty as charged of leaning on having worked in kitchens for a bunch of my 20s for cred 😔)
One of the interesting things about being married to a tall white English man is that Americans almost always assume they know his British class, and always assume wrongly. As if someone with that accent living in the U.S. must automatically have been at least nudging upper class, when in fact his parents had to fight his schools to let him take the tests to continue high school and apply to university--being told over and over that it would be a waste of time because he was working class.
It’s always fascinating not just how powerful our own attachment to identity is, but how much it determines our assumptions about others’ identities.
I’ve been having some conversations about the insidiousness of meritocratic thinking recently, too. How even self-identified progressive friends make assumptions about the kinds of financial situations people deserve or “brought upon themselves.” Class experience seems to be, anecdotally, a major factor there.
Gonna be digesting this essay for a while, Garrett! I really appreciate your call to be honest about our averageness. It feels to me like there's freedom to be found in going there, as scary as it may be to our identities and egos.
Though this may seem random, have you seen Amsterdam? My partner and I watched it Sunday night and Margot Robbie's character has a line towards the end that goes: "I’m very happy to be unimportant and live in a place that has love and beauty."
Your essay and that line clicked mentally as I drink my coffee this morning and got me thinking: I wonder if we as white people partially feel this need for importance because in the U.S., we culturally lack community.
Looping in some attachment theory, if we feel well-attached because say we're part of a greater community of care and solidarity, by extention we might theoretically feel more secure and operate in a more healthy way. I would say that the culture created by white supremacy, with all its individualism and striving, is a form of insecure attachment. And so it makes sense we cling to partially true stories for a sense of completeness or belonging that isn't otherwise available to us within the status quo.
This is so layered and original and important. I think one of the reasons we downplay our class privilege is that there’s no downplaying our white privilege. (Unless you’re really flexible with reality and we’ve seen where that takes people...). I also think White patents genuinely confuse the shit out of their kids around class. Maya just told me that some of her friends at school asked her if we were rich and I had to think on the best way to respond. Comparatively yes. In the shadow of Silicon Valley, no. I’ve got a sociological mind and I found it hard to know how to give her the layers in that moment.
I’ve been thinking about this essay for a couple of days.
I am someone who is currently economically & educationally upperclass, but as an Appalachian, there are identity markers that I cannot shed. (And at this stage in my life, I’m uninterested in doing so.) I don’t feel that I’m “performing class” when I switch into standard American English any more than I’m performing when I speak with a four-syllable pronunciation of “cursive.” They’re both me. And past me was every bit the stereotypical hillbilly who couldn’t afford healthcare—I spent yesterday at the dentist, paying that bill with dollars and pain. I still carry that with me.
I read this a while back, and I thought you might like it:
https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1237182.html
I think Okie from Muskogee is a really interesting example here, because iirc Haggard went back and forth over his lifetime about whether it was satirical and tongue-in-cheek, or a sincere and straightforward appreciation of a particular type of working-class white guy, very possibly depending on what'd be must useful to him in a given context. I feel like there's often a tendency to assume that the entire genre of country music (like other maligned genres) totally lacks a sense of irony, and all I can say is that people who assume that (which I don't think you are here, for the record) are walking on the fightin' side of me.
(I'm also totally guilty as charged of leaning on having worked in kitchens for a bunch of my 20s for cred 😔)