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Why do people from privileged classes misidentify their origins?

19 points by mcguire 6y ago

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Our findings indicate that this misidentification is rooted in a self-understanding built on particular ‘origin stories’ ...blah blah blah... By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins... My dad grew up on a farm and dropped out of high school. My mother grew up in Germany during World War II and its aftermath. My dad had shrapnel in his eye and was uninsurable because of it and was unemployed for months at a time. I grew up with a garden in the backyard and my mother cooking from scratch and sewing a lot of my clothes and all I heard was my parents stressing about money and telling me about their humble backgrounds. My mother worked as a maid for a lot of years. I was homeless for about a year in my late forties before I understood how upper class my mother's expectations were and that this was related to her mother having come from a noble family (that sold the title, so I don't have a title). I was a child when I was being told constantly about their humble beginnings and how they were humble working class stiffs and so forth. As a child, I believed what I was told. I think my parents believed it too. My mother resented working as the maid. All I heard for years was her bitterly and loudly complaining about how when she married my dad, she had a maid and now "I am the maid." When she married my dad he was an American soldier stationed in Germany and the exchange rate was 4 Marks to the dollar. All American soldiers had maids in Germany at that time because of the exchange rate, not because American soldiers are college educated upper class types. My dad was a foot soldier, not a desk jockey. Maybe sometimes people tell these humble origin stories because that's exactly how they understand their background. I also spent years homeless as an adult and I'm still dirt poor and yadda. I live humbly now and I have repeatedly had people on Hacker News -- where lots of smart educated people hang -- tell me that social class is entirely about your current income. So I don't know where in the hell I am supposed to have a nuanced discussion about "Well, yeah, money has always been tight. I've never had much money. But!...it's not as simple as I'm just some dirt poor lower class schmuck. My life is a lot more complicated than that." Once in a while I seem able to effectively make a point like that in a blog post.* But casual conversation? Nah. Good luck with that. * For example: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/12/this-is-real-thats-not.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/12/this-is-rea...
thundergolfer 6y ago
Ella: (extemporaneous justification of working-class idenitifaction) Interviewer: Yeah.. Ella: (more extemporaneous justification that's becoming more and more contradiction than justification. "... my grandparents they owned a hotel ...") Interviewer: Okay. Ella: (even more, ending with the idea that she only went a "really small" private school) That bit was pretty amusing to me, and illustrative of basically the whole thrust of the study.
Yizahi 6y ago
Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think splitting "working class", "middle class", "professional class" and other similar names is incorrect simply because of ambiguous definitions. What is even "middle"? Median middle? Average middle? By what metric? Income? Assets? Income and assets? Education? Mobility? Why are "workers" different from "professionals", who decided that? There can't be professional workers? Or is it cut simply looking at education? What about people changing professions? What about countries where higher education is "mandatory" and the system is abused? This classification is flawed by design, no wonder it's getting flawed results.
D13Fd 6y ago
Seems like an awful lot of paper to support some pretty obvious and mostly uncontroversial ideas: - People often like to play up the idea that they came from behind in life - People often count their grandparent's backgrounds as part of their family history - People who did not live in other people's circumstances ("privileged", "working class", or whatever other arbitrary classification) may not fully understand those circumstances
levi-turner 6y ago
This is a concept which has rattled around in my brain for a while now and which has come to the fore recently. At the end of the day, "privilege" as I have seen it used in popular culture is too simplistic. There are many facets to it. From my life story, I can sketch a portrait which suggests a lack of (many forms of) privilege or the alternative. Anti-Privilege: I grew up in a rural part of state in the US to parents who by no means were well to-do. While we didn't have noteworthy scarcity, we also didn't have 'nice' things. The cars each parents had were late model at the time. If we took family vacations they were to local destinations. The house I grew up in could probably be purchased for under $70k USD (hard to pin down since it there's no Zillow estimate). Since we weren't rolling in money, I worked a manual labor job at close to full-time during high school. Pro-Privilege: I didn't want for anything growing up. While we had tame tastes, we could afford the things we needed. We were able to purchase a home computer in the mid-90s. Buying back-to-school clothes was possible, although it wouldn't include anything fancy. Both of my parents, either directly or indirectly through family, owned (small) local businesses. Both parents cultivated a culture of learning in the house, despite neither having done anything more than a few classes at a local community college. Through wise investments, my maternal grandfather was able to help supplement my full-time work to get through state college loan free. Anti-Privilege: My father passed when I was a young child and my mother needed to support us with Social Security Death Benefit + lower than median wages. Pro-Privilege: I am white and in generally good health. Due to intrinsic and cultivated habits and capabilities, I have been able to build a well paying career in a relatively stable profession (tech, broadly construed). Anti-Privilege: I did go through 6-8 years of being clinically depressed during my teenage - young adult years. The net/net: - Race: Privileged. Whites are privileged in the US. I could be worse off here. - Class: Unprivileged. I would peg myself as around median for the US, or maybe slightly below growing up. - Economics: On the margin but probably unprivileged. I was raised in a high working / low middle class, it could be worse. There are elements of privilege. I could be worse off here, but I'd guesstimate that it's below median. - Health: About median by any definition, but could definitely be worse off here so let's call it privileged. - Mental capabilities: Definitely privileged. Honors / AP classes in (an admittedly crappy) public school. A university that most have heard of, although still a state school. Elements could have been better but overall, the Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance style thought experiment would net out that I am above median here. - Generational: Privileged. I grew up during a boom time for the US (90s). I attended college from 2003-2007 so just at the beginning of the rapid inflation of the price for a degree. I graduated in 2007 which was certainly a much better time to graduate than the following year. There are a bunch of pro-privilege assessments here but it seems incredibly weird to me to envision the life I've lived as being 'privileged'. But that's ultimately how privilege works, an unearned credit which silently lifts your prospects and buffers you from random chance decimating your chance at living a fulfilling life.
mansion7 6y ago
There have been multiple news articles in the past few years of professors and activists (besides Elizabeth Warren) portraying themselves as minorities. It can only be concluded that they perceive a benefit to minority status over the so-called privileges of being white. Examples include scholarships, hiring programs, "diversity" programs, loans, and grants that aren't available for white folks. Another benefit is to remove oneself from a class that is sociologically defined as an "oppressor" class.

19 points by mcguire 6y ago

Our findings indicate that this misidentification is rooted in a self-understanding built on particular ‘origin stories’ ...blah blah blah... By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins... My dad grew up on a farm and dropped out of high school. My mother grew up in Germany during World War II and its aftermath. My dad had shrapnel in his eye and was uninsurable because of it and was unemployed for months at a time. I grew up with a garden in the backyard and my mother cooking from scratch and sewing a lot of my clothes and all I heard was my parents stressing about money and telling me about their humble backgrounds. My mother worked as a maid for a lot of years. I was homeless for about a year in my late forties before I understood how upper class my mother's expectations were and that this was related to her mother having come from a noble family (that sold the title, so I don't have a title). I was a child when I was being told constantly about their humble beginnings and how they were humble working class stiffs and so forth. As a child, I believed what I was told. I think my parents believed it too. My mother resented working as the maid. All I heard for years was her bitterly and loudly complaining about how when she married my dad, she had a maid and now "I am the maid." When she married my dad he was an American soldier stationed in Germany and the exchange rate was 4 Marks to the dollar. All American soldiers had maids in Germany at that time because of the exchange rate, not because American soldiers are college educated upper class types. My dad was a foot soldier, not a desk jockey. Maybe sometimes people tell these humble origin stories because that's exactly how they understand their background. I also spent years homeless as an adult and I'm still dirt poor and yadda. I live humbly now and I have repeatedly had people on Hacker News -- where lots of smart educated people hang -- tell me that social class is entirely about your current income. So I don't know where in the hell I am supposed to have a nuanced discussion about "Well, yeah, money has always been tight. I've never had much money. But!...it's not as simple as I'm just some dirt poor lower class schmuck. My life is a lot more complicated than that." Once in a while I seem able to effectively make a point like that in a blog post.* But casual conversation? Nah. Good luck with that. * For example: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/12/this-is-real-thats-not.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/12/this-is-rea...

thundergolfer 6y ago

Ella: (extemporaneous justification of working-class idenitifaction) Interviewer: Yeah.. Ella: (more extemporaneous justification that's becoming more and more contradiction than justification. "... my grandparents they owned a hotel ...") Interviewer: Okay. Ella: (even more, ending with the idea that she only went a "really small" private school) That bit was pretty amusing to me, and illustrative of basically the whole thrust of the study.

Yizahi 6y ago

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think splitting "working class", "middle class", "professional class" and other similar names is incorrect simply because of ambiguous definitions. What is even "middle"? Median middle? Average middle? By what metric? Income? Assets? Income and assets? Education? Mobility? Why are "workers" different from "professionals", who decided that? There can't be professional workers? Or is it cut simply looking at education? What about people changing professions? What about countries where higher education is "mandatory" and the system is abused? This classification is flawed by design, no wonder it's getting flawed results.

D13Fd 6y ago

Seems like an awful lot of paper to support some pretty obvious and mostly uncontroversial ideas: - People often like to play up the idea that they came from behind in life - People often count their grandparent's backgrounds as part of their family history - People who did not live in other people's circumstances ("privileged", "working class", or whatever other arbitrary classification) may not fully understand those circumstances

levi-turner 6y ago

This is a concept which has rattled around in my brain for a while now and which has come to the fore recently. At the end of the day, "privilege" as I have seen it used in popular culture is too simplistic. There are many facets to it. From my life story, I can sketch a portrait which suggests a lack of (many forms of) privilege or the alternative. Anti-Privilege: I grew up in a rural part of state in the US to parents who by no means were well to-do. While we didn't have noteworthy scarcity, we also didn't have 'nice' things. The cars each parents had were late model at the time. If we took family vacations they were to local destinations. The house I grew up in could probably be purchased for under $70k USD (hard to pin down since it there's no Zillow estimate). Since we weren't rolling in money, I worked a manual labor job at close to full-time during high school. Pro-Privilege: I didn't want for anything growing up. While we had tame tastes, we could afford the things we needed. We were able to purchase a home computer in the mid-90s. Buying back-to-school clothes was possible, although it wouldn't include anything fancy. Both of my parents, either directly or indirectly through family, owned (small) local businesses. Both parents cultivated a culture of learning in the house, despite neither having done anything more than a few classes at a local community college. Through wise investments, my maternal grandfather was able to help supplement my full-time work to get through state college loan free. Anti-Privilege: My father passed when I was a young child and my mother needed to support us with Social Security Death Benefit + lower than median wages. Pro-Privilege: I am white and in generally good health. Due to intrinsic and cultivated habits and capabilities, I have been able to build a well paying career in a relatively stable profession (tech, broadly construed). Anti-Privilege: I did go through 6-8 years of being clinically depressed during my teenage - young adult years. The net/net: - Race: Privileged. Whites are privileged in the US. I could be worse off here. - Class: Unprivileged. I would peg myself as around median for the US, or maybe slightly below growing up. - Economics: On the margin but probably unprivileged. I was raised in a high working / low middle class, it could be worse. There are elements of privilege. I could be worse off here, but I'd guesstimate that it's below median. - Health: About median by any definition, but could definitely be worse off here so let's call it privileged. - Mental capabilities: Definitely privileged. Honors / AP classes in (an admittedly crappy) public school. A university that most have heard of, although still a state school. Elements could have been better but overall, the Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance style thought experiment would net out that I am above median here. - Generational: Privileged. I grew up during a boom time for the US (90s). I attended college from 2003-2007 so just at the beginning of the rapid inflation of the price for a degree. I graduated in 2007 which was certainly a much better time to graduate than the following year. There are a bunch of pro-privilege assessments here but it seems incredibly weird to me to envision the life I've lived as being 'privileged'. But that's ultimately how privilege works, an unearned credit which silently lifts your prospects and buffers you from random chance decimating your chance at living a fulfilling life.

mansion7 6y ago

There have been multiple news articles in the past few years of professors and activists (besides Elizabeth Warren) portraying themselves as minorities. It can only be concluded that they perceive a benefit to minority status over the so-called privileges of being white. Examples include scholarships, hiring programs, "diversity" programs, loans, and grants that aren't available for white folks. Another benefit is to remove oneself from a class that is sociologically defined as an "oppressor" class.