3 ms·

Poor Can’t Afford Not to Wear Nice Clothes

• tcj_phx 8y ago
  It's easy for people to make assumptions about others -- pattern matching is a survival skill. When people have assumptions made about them, sometimes they become self-fulfilling prophecies. The author of this essay, a black woman, learned from her family how to run pattern interrupts on people so she doesn't get stuck in the pattern. [...] I was miffed, as only an only child could be, about sharing my mother’s time with the neighbor girl. I must have said something about why we had to do this. The Vivian, as I called my mother, fixed me with a stare as she was slipping on her pearl earrings and told me that people who can do must do. "people who can do must do" - this is a constructive philosophy for getting through life, a local version of 'a rising tide lifts all boats'. I learned, watching my mother, that there was a price we had to pay to signal to gatekeepers that we were worthy of engaging. It meant dressing well and speaking well. It might not work. It likely wouldn’t work, but on the off chance that it would, you had to try. I'm dealing with gatekeepers at the moment, except the ones I'm trying to convince to do their job are rather inaccessible. Maybe I am learning the value of persistence.