Waking up White Chapter 3: Race Versus Class

In late high school and college, I was fully immersed in Seattle’s grunge culture. I wore ripped jeans and flannels. My hairstyle changed from long to shaved to green to purple whenever the mood hit, which was often. My free time was spent moshing to small local bands in tiny venues all over the U District. In the photo, you can see me and my friends, all dressed up for a dance in gear we scored at the local Value Village.

Even though we got in trouble for moshing at that dance, I was still a really, and I mean really, good kid.

So when I wandered into a high-end jewelry store with a friend, and found the employee following us around, it took me a few minutes to realize, She thinks we’re here to steal something. I flashed her a confident, disarming smile and stayed in the store until we were done looking, and didn’t give her another thought.

Compare that to the story of John Hope Franklin, which Debby Irving shares in Waking up White: “In 1995 President Clinton awarded Mr. Franklin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  In celebration of that honor, Mr. Franklin hosted a small dinner at Washington, DC’s, exclusive Cosmos Club. That evening, a white club member handed Mr. Franklin–who was dressed in a tuxedo–a coat check tag and asked him to fetch her coat.”

Wow.

This is my third installment in the Waking up White Blog Challenge, where we’re asked to examine our personal experiences with class, so we can further root out our own latent racism. The questions this week:

Class is determined by income, wealth (assests), education, and profession…. [T]hese categories [are] a way of thinking about class:

Poverty

Working Class

Lower-Middle Class

Professional Middle Class

Upper-Middle Class

Owning Class

How would you characterize your parents’ class? Your grandparents’ class? Your class as a child? Your class now?

My mom’s parents grew up in poverty, as did my mom. She lived in a series of shacks with no heat and no indoor plumbing (read: wood stoves, outdoor pumps and outhouses). At least one place had a dirt floor.

Imagine a Montana winter where you had to wake up in the bitter cold, in a house with no insulation, at night when the fire had gone out, and walk outside through the snow to use the bathroom.

My birth father had it better off: he grew up in a cute little two-bedroom house with heat and plumbing. While his family wasn’t literally “dirt poor,” they were still below the poverty line: seven kids, single mom who waited tables at the local diner. If you guessed my grandma slept on the couch, you were right. They didn’t own a car, and Grandma walked several miles to and from work every day, through whatever the Montana weather threw at her, until she was well past retirement age.

Some people don’t get to retire.

My (step) dad grew up professional middle class.  My Grandpa was a railroad engineer; Nonna had stayed home and raised two boys, who both went to private Catholic school. They lived in the same house as when my (step) dad was a kid: a gorgeous, four-bedroom, two-bathroom house with full basement that was the most amazing place I’d ever been. It had a basement to play in! And a yard, with grass and flowers!

As for me, by the time I graduated from high school we’d moved up to working class, which is still below the poverty line; at least it was for my family. While my early years had been a series of empty cupboards, bounced checks, and eviction notices, by high school we were living in a house my parents had signed a mortgage on, and both my parents had jobs.

You still didn’t ask them for money though.

My junior year, a close friend of mine had a birthday party. I loved being with my friends and wanted to go but knew better than to ask for cash to buy a gift. So I looked around my room, found an elephant figurine I’d painted, buffed it to a shine, and put it in a gift bag I’d saved. Since I had no tissue paper, I grabbed two used dryer sheets from the laundry and fluffed them into the bag.

At the party, someone asked, “Are those dryer sheets?” and I died of shame.

My class now is probably lower-middle class. My husband is a teacher with a Master’s; I’m also a certified teacher but am not working a paying job right now. Making this choice has meant that we’ve stepped down a rung in the class ladder used here.

It’s not without its struggles, but we don’t regret it.

What messages did you get about race in each [class]?

I’m nervous about answering this question, because I don’t want to send a message that poor people are more racist than wealthy people, or that city people are less racist than rural people. That’s not true at all. I’m just one person, with one experience, so please read it that way, and not as any kind of generalization. For me, racist terms were common in my youngest years, when we were very, very poor. By the time we moved to Seattle, in fifth grade, we’d moved out of trailers and into apartments, but also to Seattle, known for liberalism. My mom told me recently that she chose Seattle over other cities precisely because of its diversity. She wanted her daughters to live respectfully and peacefully with all different people.

By my adulthood, I briefly dipped a toe into the professional middle class. I still remember the one magical year both Erik and I worked full-time. “We can buy real butter,” I said with awe. “We’re going to actually pay taxes this year.” But then we had kids and made the decision to share only one full-time job between us and stepped back to lower middle class.

Meanwhile I was teaching in a highly-diverse school, with kids from all over both the class ladder and the race map, and heard plenty of racism in the hallways.

When you teach teenagers, and have to deal with their daily selves—the arrogance and humility, the backtalk and respect, the self-pity and confidence, the rudeness and kindness—that teens cycle through (sometimes all in one class period!), you learn quickly that there are only two options for teachers: fierce love or soul-crushing burnout.

I chose love.

Doing this was good for me in so many ways, one of which being that love always looks for the best in people. It forgives. It seeks to understand. What a gift my students have been to me! I may have taught them how to express themselves in writing, how to find themselves in stories, but they taught me so much more.

Including how to love someone with different ability. Or gender. Or faith. Or personality.

Or, per this discussion, skin color.

Not to imply that I’ve arrived. I’m still working on this. I don’t even understand the relationship between race and class, though I’m convinced there is one. But I’m so grateful my mom chose to bring me here, to this amazingly diverse and vibrant community, where I daily get to see God’s creativity displayed in the mountains, the water, and in the people he’s made.

(If you enjoyed this post, or want to read more, please check out my posts on chapter 1 and chapter 2. For my friends’ posts on chapter 3, click here for Stephen and here for Di. Finally, of course and always, consider reading the book Waking up White by Debby Irving.)