By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:23:47 +0000

Hi Jeanne: yes I'm more "generic American" than Julie. I think the tendency goes back some generations. My maternal grandmother apparently started going to the Lutheran church in town simply because the "good people" all went there and was completely mortified whenever I did anything hippy'ish. There's pretty clearly some Lenape mixed in on that side too--Colonial-era Moravian missionaries in the area encouraged the Lenape to essentially become white by adopting Christianity, German names and the farming lifestyle. I'd publish some hilariously in-denial family histories ("Seneca Bryfogel" of Indiantown, PA whose family must have come from southern Germany because everyone's so dark-skinned) except I don't want to be one of those whitey's claiming an Cherokee great grandmother. Whatever DNA's back there is pretty much a moot point, as the assimilation's pretty complete and my childhood cultural influences are much more indebted to Gilligan's Island, Star Trek and Doctor Who than anything learned on my grandmother's knee. So yes, in one of those oddities that make the world so interesting, Julie gets more points on the privilege scale than I, but grew up much more culturally working class and is less able to deal with Quaker's largely unexamined class issues.

By: Jeanne

Jeanne — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:17:26 +0000

Martin, Thanks for pointing out the survey. I hope to do one of my one sometime in the future. Just so you know, the list is supposed to show just some of the advantages people get as a child, rather than things they earned themselves. You're right, it isn't a complete list. Your point about clothing is a good one. My mother, too, would never "lower herself" to go to second-hand clothing stores. She made many of our clothes when we were very young, until I was out of elementary school. After then, they used Sears lay-away to buy new school clothes for us every year. My brother and I had a paper route and I babysat. I bought things I wanted with that money, including clothes. And the first thing I bought with my first actual pay check was new clothes. Interesting about the differences between you and Julie. I wonder about how each of your families felt about your situation. My mother disdained her roots (her father was a coal miner in KY) and also our family's situation (in a working class neighborhood). People I've talked to whose family were proud of their heritage have a very different cultural persona than I do (I feel like was less culturally working class than my neighbors and classmates). I read an interesting article recently on some of these differences in an academic setting. PDF article is here. Before reading it, I hadn't thought about my own family's attitudes and the difference that made in my life.

Comments on: Taking Jeanne’s social class quiz

By: Martin Kelley

By: Jeanne