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Healing from Class Division

Anonymous
4/20/03
Critical and Alternative Voices

Standing in front of the Museum of Natural History on a hot summer day, I ate a lemonade slushy. Fourteen years old and satisfied for the moment, I went to throw away my half-eaten dessert. Suddenly, I noticed a man standing next to the garbage can. His look of exhaustion instantly struck me — he needed liquid and sugar. I wanted to give my slushy to him and say enjoy! But instead, I set it on top of the garbage can, took a step back, and watched him take the slushy, slowly but without hesitation. Tears swelled up in my eyes and I walked away. For years I replayed this day in my head, unable to understand both my inability to physically hand the slushy to this man and my emotional reaction following that failure. Fortunately, before this day goes missing from my memory, bell hooks’ Class Matters and Patricia J. Williams’ The Alchemy of Race and Rights present me with new insights towards its re-discovery.

How can I figure out who I am without talking about the neighborhood I grew up in and to which I still return? “Forest on the Lake” is a typical suburban neighborhood outside of Seattle. While there is no physical gate to the neighborhood, the small sign next to the lake provides a clear message: “Members Only.” Intuitively, this separation of classes should have been visible to me, as manifested by the sign. Yet in spite of physically seeing the sign each day, I never once saw its purpose: To allow the rich “to avoid questions of class in relationships by choosing to forge bonds solely within their own class” (hooks 74). My inability to see the sign — the invisibility of my neighborhood as a particular class — is bound up with isolation that does not want to see injustice. “Separation allows the upper class to live the fantasy that there is no connection between their opulent lifestyles and the misery these lifestyles produce” (hooks 78). Not surprisingly, while money is often discussed in my neighborhood, no one ever mentions the word class. In this way, the “Members Only” sign is not just a physical limitation, but a verbal gate as well.

Extending my neighborhood’s influence on me to my experience in New York, the injustice of my eating dessert as this man was visibly thirsty and hungry could only strike me because there was no “Members Only” sign preventing our interaction. Yet, in spite of literally seeing what my neighborhood purposefully isolates me from, I could not yield my “belief that the United States is a class-free society — that anyone who works hard enough can make it to the top” (hooks 5). Thus, I immediately blamed the man standing by the garbage can for his need. My parents’ conditioned lack of eye contact solidified this blame, in which giving “directly is ‘not the way we do things’” (Williams 22). Furthermore, my personal distancing and lack of responsibility, seen through my blame, protected me from a threat to the deeply vested ordering of my world in which the rationale follows: “The poor are envious of the rich; the rich worked hard to get where they are or have more valuable social characteristics and therefore deserve it; they have suffered” (22).

Not only did I blame this man for his need, but also for making me feel guilty. Not wanting to feel vulnerable, I made no eye contact in fear that such a connection would force me to see him — even only insofar as his acknowledgement of my guilt would make it more real to me. Thus, looking down, I thought about this man in my own terms: Could he read my guilt that my body exuded? Did he know that I felt patronizing in expecting him to eat off the spoon of a stranger? Human need became subservient to my feelings of guilt:

With no reciprocity, I deflected the double burden onto this man of raising the issue correctly and of being responsible for its impact on me should I take it wrong. I rendered myself unaccountable for my feeling … because in the end it is all his fault. (Williams 64)

In my mind, to raise the issue correctly meant not raising it at all. I wanted him to either work his way up the American ladder or disappear off the steps of the museum. I tried to relinquish his power to the “collective ideal” of my neighborhood; I tried to prevent him from seeing himself (Williams 63). Existence is relational. I needed to recognize him in a way that creates space for my own accountability. However, by denying him inner subjective relation to myself, I reinforced the type of social death already enacted by my neighborhood upon the class system itself.

In spite of shifting my blame to hide my guilt, my inability to ignore this man’s immediate need led me to a self-inoculating insight, which manifested itself in tears. For the first time, I saw my own ugliness — even in the face of immediate need, I could not give freely. Clearly, “Forest on the Lake” did not teach me a sense of community as reciprocal need. Every new car, every newly built swimming pool, even the precision of Christmas lights hung by hired help gives off a “you got it, flaunt it” message. This show of excess is a sign that replaces the activity of creating meaning with “ostentatious materiality, the flaunting of excess, that erodes community” (hooks 62). Money signals a certain kind of relationship that constructs reality as insatiable need for more. In such a relationship, money becomes the form of language. Only speaking this language, I trusted that my neighborhood showed me the meaning of relationship. In this way, my I could not see that my neighborhood covered up my blindness and silence with the message that we purchase our liberties and citizenship.

Yet my small connection with this man — putting a lemonade slushy on top of the garbage can and seeing him receive it — did free me in another sense. I found myself at a loss of my previously held values. “In a culture where money is the measure of value, where it is believed that everything and everybody can be bought, it is difficult to sustain different values,” as to become aware these different values even exist (hooks 47). For the first time, I saw “the deep–rooted commonplaceness of our economically rationalized notions of humanity” (Williams 27). Like Williams, “As strange as it sounds, I realized that breaking the bond of my silence was like breaking the bond of our silence” (Williams 128). Here we see another aspect of my emotional reaction: In seeing my inability to freely give I began to change in ways that hinged upon first mourning the loss of my “Forest on the Lake” world, in which many people purposefully withhold resources to reinforce their power. Interestingly enough, my parents did not recognize my tears in these (my) terms, just as I did not fully recognize the man’s need in his terms. My family did not speak of the importance of “responsiveness to immediate need” (Williams 27). Rather, they first lectured me on the dangers of being victimized and then praised me for my “random act of kindness,” which emphasized self-satisfaction over the actual need.

Still, I did not have the courage to follow through with this self-inoculating insight by putting myself in a vulnerable position and actually reaching out to this man. As Williams says,

Our culture … does not make all selves or I’s the servants of others, but only some. Thus some I’s are defined as ‘your servant,’ some as ‘your master.’ The struggle for the self becomes not a true mirroring of self-in-other, but a hierarchically inspired series of distortions, where some serve without ever being served; some master with no sense of what it is to be mastered. (63) 

I could not reach out and personally give him the lemonade slushy because such an act of physically acknowledging the space between us would invite him into a relationship in which I both served him and saw him as part of myself. “To see the poor as ourselves we must want for the poor what we want for ourselves” (hooks 48). Therefore, I could see his immediate need in terms of thirst and heat exhaustion, but, with no sense of community of my own, I could not see the importance of relation.

My response based upon feeling, though key in helping me pause and take another look at my values, is inadequate. Tears do not aim “at redistributing wealth or eliminating class hierarchy” (hooks 159). The question becomes: How can I give in ways that do not reinforce my ruling class power? How will I take a stand and maintain the complexity of power relations in class by constantly re-figuring what it is to take a stand? As hooks quotes from Robin Hood Was Right: A Guide to Giving Your Money for Social Change,

… Supporting and creating social change are about power. Power can infuse lives with purpose and dignity. That opens up the possibility of joy. The life of the giver, as well as that of receiver, is transformed. (159)

I must give in a way that sees the receiver as having certain human rights. Unlike needs, which are not compelling, rights empower and make visible1. I am learning what it is to give a gift as a gift, which involves “listening to and looking for interests beyond the narrowest boundaries of linear, dualistically reciprocal encounters is characteristic of gift relationships, networks of encompassing expectation and support” (Williams 161). Such a free gift of un-indebted generosity gives rights away by seeing others as part of the self — by seeing what it is for the man searching through the garbage to exist in the world.

But how will I incorporate my neighborhood? To create genuine meaningful exchange I plan to talk to the woman in charge of the book club in our neighborhood. I will introduce her to both Class Matters and The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Also, I am going to have my parents read this paper and look into different volunteering opportunities. As hooks says, only “when we recognize that abundance can be spread around, that more of our nations citizens should have access to material plenty that enable us all to live ‘a good life,’ the rich will not need to live in constant fear and alienation” (79). We must live simply. As with my emotional response, cutting back on material things is insufficient. Not buying the lemonade slushy and hoarding the money instead does not address my inability for giving in a way that makes connections. Therefore, living simply also means the “principled practice of sharing my resources” (hooks 60). “The poor are not fooled when the privileged offer castoff and worn-out hand-me-down as a gesture of ‘generosity’ while buying only the new and best for themselves” (hooks 47). Only seeing ourselves as having enough will lead my neighbors and myself to recognize that greedy consumption must end.

To personally prevent myself from falling back into a “constant state of ‘lack,’ thus having no reason to identify with those less fortunate,” I plan to volunteer more often while in Walla Walla (hooks 60). Specifically, I am going to mentor once a week at a local elementary school. I am also going to volunteer at another local organization. I am meeting with the volunteer coordinator this coming week to learn about the available opportunities. In this way, I hope to create a space for building relationships that allow me to see out of different subject positions than that constituted by the “Members Only” sign.

1 (Williams 150-3)