Class discrimination - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Class discrimination - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

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http://www.classism.org/classism-book-points-movementbuilding rgy, as Bruce Levine has documented.

In the fieldwork for my dissertation, Missing Class, I talked with some decidedly non-rebellious working-class members of the 25 groups I studied. Most were Christians who prided themselves on their respectability; for them, involvement in a community group or union was just another form of giving back to the community, like helping neighbors in need, or coaching youth sports. Some felt disempowered and avoided public roles. But there was another subset of working-class activists whom I call “the outlaws”: they prided themselves on their toughness, they scorned respectability, and some were formidable, kick-ass leaders.

The qualities that made these outlaw activists so powerful were the very qualities Jensen herself had as a child and that she identifies as working-class cultural strengths, in particular in her chapter on “Identity and Resistance”:

~~ The courage and toughness to flout authority and to speak up, even if it means getting in trouble;
~~ Skills at disruption, resistance and subversion of authority;
~~ Solidarity and loyalty, the willingness to forgo individual rewards to stand with your peers; less of the competitive individualism that plagues middle-class activist groups;
~~ Skepticism about slick arguments and official lines;
~~ Anger at being disrespected, “a more forward-moving emotion than despair.”

Jensen grew up to be an activist and an advocate for other working-class-background people. Her childhood resistance to authority was good preparation for new and effective forms of mouthing off. She says of her own and other straddlers’ struggles to integrate two class identities, “When we engage in activities that save others from injustices we have endured, we make new meaning of those obstacles and our lives.”