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> "The struggle is huge, and I keep having to look inside myself to figure out what "my people" is supposed to mean." For me, the weirdest part is the way in w
by dionidium 9y ago
> "The struggle is huge, and I keep having to look inside myself to figure out what "my people" is supposed to mean."
For me, the weirdest part is the way in which the upper-middle class people I now associate and work with talk about "my people" (i.e. the working-class folks I grew up with). They mythologize them as the noble, hard-working, salt of the earth, when in reality, they clearly don't like most of their habits, their religion, their tastes, their opinions, their language, or much else about them. Poor and working-class people are described in archetypes, stereotypes, and as abstract ideas. But very little said matches what I know about actual poor people. They are always -- always -- praised when spoken of in the abstract. But when the conversation drifts toward the specific, it's pretty clear that they're not really big fans.
I find myself simultaneously defending the behaviors of the working class while also walking upper-class liberals back a few steps on just how noble and hard-working -- they're always described as hard-working -- most actual poor people really are. They're just people.
- Retric 9y agoI work with plenty of people that may put in a "hard" 2-3 hours of actual work a day. Comparing effort and every poor person I grew up with actually worked really hard. If anything it's coded language for 'working hard is a great way to end up poor'. PS: Consider all the "hardworking" people here on HN. Yes, long hours may be expected, but effort has little direct benefit.
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoThere’s a difference between working hard and working smart. One is the brute force solution. The other uses a heuristic to narrow the solution space.
- emodendroket 9y agoI think the point here is that in white-collar workplaces long hours are mostly an abstract way of signaling that you take the job seriously, not exhausting in the way that long hours in a job demanding physical labor would be.
- gbacon 9y agoThere are different kinds of tired — physically exhausted, brain-fried, and emotionally spent — but I’m not making any sort of comparison between them.
- emodendroket 9y agoYeah, but the guy who always stays after at work, how much of his time is work and how much of it is browsing Reddit?
- gbacon 9y agoFair question. Is that person slacking, projecting, coping, or percolating?
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoThey’re signaling to management. Plain and simple.
- dionidium 9y agoNo doubt. They are hard workers, hustlers (in the best sense of the word), scammers, grifters, and some of the laziest folks I've ever met -- and everything in between. They're just people. When the upper-classes talk about the poor as all good or all bad it's always in the context of selling you their politics.
- JBlue42 9y agoThis is a good point. We've been idealizing rural / commoner folk for a while. IIRC, French nobility in the 18th or 19th century had the habit of running out to the country and playacting as peasants for fun. Not to mention there's a glut of 'rural/blue collar porn', (Duck Dynasty, etc) or at least there was a few years back. Some of that maybe people watched condescendingly but there could also be the tendency of portraying these folks as knowing something others do not.
- hiuaql 9y agoDuck Dynasty's audience was not substantially less rural / blue collar than the cast. There's a glut of "urban white collar porn": Nearly all mainstream television sitcoms and dramas.
- JBlue42 9y agoThink I had this older article in the back of my head when writing that: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/08/here_comes_honey_boo_boo_and_the_history_of_the_hillbilly_in_america_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/08/here_c... I don't disagree about urban white collar porn (sitcoms, dramas, sure but all those house hunting shows too) but neither of these were the main thrust of my comment.
- dizzystar 9y agoAt some point you end up in this in between world, where the office worker sees you as a car mechanic and the car mechanic sees you as an office worker. This gray area is very difficult to navigate and causes severe identity crisis.
- emodendroket 9y agoYou know, this is interesting, because I have a different, but I think somewhat related, experience. I am from a pretty comfortable background but I'm a lifelong suburbanite and now live in one of Boston's less tony suburbs. I work in Boston, though, and there is a lot of kind of subterranean contempt for the "townies" who live in these places and their tastes and habits (naturally enough many of them I share and I like my neighbors, making that a little uncomfortable). People blithely say things like "oh, yeah, it's full of white trash over there." And if you tell people in Boston you're visiting from one of these suburbs a lot of them act like you just said you flew in from Idaho, never mind that a ton of people take a train to Boston every single day. People can find a lot of different reasons to be snobs.