Gender and class and movin’ on up
At this rate, I won't ever need to sit down and write about my own experiences of class and gender. I can just keep linking to War on Error every time she writes about it.I disagree, though, that much has changed in a generation. I still didn't know any lawyers, or professors, or executives; the only doctors I knew were my pediatrician and the one my mom worked for. So getting from there to here was mostly a hit or miss proposition and I still haven't figured out exactly what happened.
But I'm here now, and that's more than most people expected of me. What I haven't managed to reconcile is my general understanding of the difficulties of class movement and my own experiences. I'd like to think it doesn't matter, but when it comes to having working class kids in my (future) courses or faculty with very different backgrounds, I feel like where I came from makes a big difference. Not only because it makes me uncomfortable with some of the basic assumptions of the power of education, but also because I simply don't know the rules of the game.
The angst over the academic dinner this semester is a case in point--I wasn't raised going to dinner parties. We had cookouts and potlucks, which have their own rules and assumptions. We had family get-togethers and every once in a while my dad's friends from the old neighborhood would bring their kids around and play cards. Not exactly preparation for what I find myself doing now. I'm not complaining about where I am or what I do, but I wonder if things might be easier if I came from a place where the sentence "I'm having a cocktail party" isn't met with a burst of laughter and invitations to grab a beer and shut up because the football game is starting.
So I guess that what I'm saying is that I'm uncomfortable complaining about the lack of class mobility from a position that basically argues the opposite: if I can change who I am (and a substantial number of my siblings and cousins are doing the same), then what effect does the class you're born into have on achievement?
Mind you, if I'd known how much I'd hate grading papers, I might have gone ahead and taken that job at the Kmart. But that's not related to class--it's a question of grammar.
posted by Elizabeth @ 3:07 PM
7 Comments:
by moving up, does this meaning being able to differintiate between the pickle fork and the shrimp fork?
There's a pickle fork? Why would you need a fork for a pickle? Or a shrimp, for that matter. Isn't that what fingers are for?
according to my mother (who is still trying to convnce people that i was not raised in a barn or by wolves) yes there is a pickle fork (2 tongs) and a shrimp fork (very small but with 3 tongs or there is something like that).
as for finger food. i have recently discovered that sushi is actually a finger food. so now i am truly confused.
what i find truly scary is that nowhere in planning for a cocktail party does a discussion of who brings the potato salad come up.
Yeah, she's not getting very far with that, is she?
Wait, so I've been spearing the little sushi bites with a chopstick all these years and I DIDN'T HAVE TO? Damn. Just when I was getting good at flicking them across the room at the end.
I've never understood the problem with potato salad at cocktail parties. Seems like the perfect combination to me. But I like potato salad. If I didn't, maybe I'd prefer those little hotdogs wrapped in crescent rolls. Those are the best. And I don't even like hotdogs.
it took me a while to realize that chicken wings (despite what some people think) were not cocktail party food as well.
but those little sausages wrapped in the cresent rolls are the best.
except for maybe the tray of smoked gouda cheese. mmmmmmm cheeeeessseeee.
actually witht he sushi it is the rolls are eaten with chopstix but if it is an inside out roll (where the whatever is laid on the top of the roll) then it is suppose dto be a finger food. that and apparently you dip the meat or whatever not the rice int he soy sauce.
( i take no liability for this knowledge the sushi chef at the place we go for lunch informed us of this while laughing at some of our group struggle with chopstix)
Hmm...I didn't know any PhDs at all when growing up, everybody I know from high school is married and with babies or have had posh jobs for years, most got married/had babies/got posh jobs when I was still in undergrad, they are all happy and wonder why more studying is needed (Oh, you are STILL in University being a common refrain last year when I went home) but I think I have less trouble working out the mysteries of the Sushi/pickle/shimp forks.
Not because I was trained to identify such tools with ease (ha!) but because, as a Nepali, I am not supposed to know these things. Everybody knows "Nepali folk" eat with our hands (well, one hand at a time) so no one expects me to know these things. So, I usually get away with "oh...how?..." (add bewildered look) and then some person offers to help out. Problem solved :-)
You grew up in the Nepali equivalent of my hometown, then. Or I grew up in the American equivalent of yours. Whatever. Local knowledge, my ass. It's just the same things over and over.
Seriously, that looking confused thing works for you? I just get annoyed faces and pointing. Maybe I'm not doing it right. Perhaps I should just stab the irritated perties with a shrimp fork.
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