What is class anyway? Is it economic? Social? Religious? All of the above? We all know it exists, but it is at once distinctly tangible frustratingly intangible. Some spend their entire lives fighting it as steadfastly as others try to define it. We’re always acknowledging its presence, yet continually downplaying its existence unless there’s something distinctly in it for us.

A little story about a private high school outside Minneapolis from City Pages:

It wasn’t going well. The teacher left the room to free them up. I asked them to read me some of their work. He volunteered, but said he didn’t want to read his piece, so a friend read it for him. It concerned going to church in “the inner city” (St. Olaf’s in downtown Minneapolis), and how much he disliked the poor people around him who stank of shit, and the man with a toupee in the pew in front of him. It was callow and bald-faced and it made fun of everything it touched. He had the good manners to insert an I-shouldn’t-feel-this-way caveat at the end, but his thesis was clear: I’m better than you.

…

I took a breath. I told the kid it was a good piece of writing insofar as it managed to be honest, but that he should take it further. I told him to think about why he felt the way he did, and mentioned that the church setting was an ironic frame for his own cynicism. I told him a lot of good writing exposes the writer, warts and all, and I told him that even though I didn’t know anything about him, I was pretty sure from what he wrote that he came from money and that he didn’t give a shit about people who weren’t like him.

My girlfriend (who sent me this link) went to a wealthy private school in the Twin Cities just like the one mentioned in the article. Maybe the same school.

Class doesn’t often translate onto a college campus the way that other things do. We’ve designed it that way. Occasionally you’ll note the way someone spends their money, or the car they drive, but at Carleton at least, conspicuous consumption is–with a few exceptions–decidedly gauche. Maybe that’s why a reminder of how class plays out in the rest of the world can be so jarring.

This is class in America today.

Posted on March 2nd, 2005 by Lee
Filed under: Uncategorized