Middle class knockoff

I spent my time as an undergraduate at a small, private, and very expensive college.  At $50,000 a year and rising, not many working-class families could afford attending PC without incurring massive amounts of debt.  That being said, when one of those "working-class kids" came to the campus on scholarship, they stood out like a sore thumb.  In a sea of NorthFace jackets, leggings, and Ugg boots, that one person not wearing the status quo apparel would be immediately noted and outcast.  How to combat this issue?  Assimilation.  By her second semester there, that working-class student would be wearing the full NorthFace/leggings/Uggs attire and no longer be living on the margins of campus life.  What is my point here, you ask?  Hooks notes that class issues are largely ignored in the classroom - well, they are largely ignored in everyday experiences, too.  And by ignored, here, I mean that hardly anyone notices them because those working-class subjects are forced to ignore the issues and become a middle-class facsimile, often in order to survive.

It  angers me that we spend so much time thinking about race matters and often, by doing so, completely neglect the issues of class, which are sometimes greater if not intricately connected to those of race.  I think this is evident in hooks' focus in her two chapters - while in the chapter on race she offers concrete ways for teachers to understand the issue and incorporate it into their classrooms, the same courtesy is not given to class.  This could be because the discussion has already taken place in the previous chapter, but I can't help but wonder nonetheless whether class is as actively discussed in those workshops.  The reason for this, most likely, is because it is much easier for those of a different class to pass of as middle class (I can imagine that it would be hard for an African-American to pass off as white, other than in mannerisms).  I think that this is all the more reason to reach out in an even greater way to those students "under" the middle class, so that they don't get lost and feel forced to be something that they are not.

I remember the first time that I actually admitted that I was not "middle-class" in the way that most of the other students at PC were.  I was in an Introduction to Sociology class, and all of the students had to write down their class on a piece of paper and hand it into the professor, who then turned the results into a tally on the board.  The purpose of the assignment was to show the astonishing majority of the students in the classroom who associated themselves with the middle class, and that we, as Americans, tend to view ourselves as that class whether we really are or not.  Surprisingly, though, I found myself itching not to be associated with them, and I boldly and confidently wrote down "working class" on the sheet of paper.  That was in the second semester of my junior year, and it was the first time I had stopped trying to be a part of the middle class.

I read an article once about working class law school students who passed themselves off as middle class (mostly by silencing themselves, as hooks describes) throughout their time there, and were so much more successful than those who did not attempt to pass themselves off in the same way.  Societal norms work against those of a lower class, and it is so easy for those same students to become lost in the classroom, trying to pass themselves off as something that they are not.  So, in response to hooks article, I ask that we do not ignore class issues in the classroom, even though they may be harder to notice.  Don't let those students get lost in the sea - let them speak, and let their experiences be heard.