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 Classism
Is a Real Issue
This spring the College held its first-ever forum
on classism on campus, sponsored by the Diversity Awareness Committee.
Associate professor of writing Fred Wilcox spoke at the forum, and we
asked him to write on the subject for the ICQ.
Growing up in poverty, I learned a great deal about class
distinctions. When my coal miner grandfather died, he left $19 and a gold
watch. My mother, deeply wounded by a lifetime of deprivation, refused
to talk about our family’s heritage. When asked from where our ancestors
might have immigrated, she would reply, "We come from a long line of horse
thieves." When attempting to explain our cultural identity, she would
declare that "we live on the wrong side of the tracks." All of my kin
lived in the poorest section of Des Moines, just down the road from the
Rath packing plant and the city dump. My mother believed, because life
had informed her this was the case, that "you can’t get ahead for losing."
Her greatest fear was that she would "wind up in the poorhouse."
I don’t remember trying to revise my mother’s vision of
the world. After all, when the kids down the block were riding sparkling
new bikes, I was pedaling my sister’s hand-me-down. When other boys showed
up at Cub Scouts in brand-new outfits, I couldn’t afford to buy even the
shirt. My parents argued and, sometimes, cried over stacks of unpaid bills.
My family didn’t talk about class distinctions: we merely
lived what, it appears to me now, were our culturally assigned roles.
By the time I was 15, I had been in many fights, had spent time in jail,
had been nearly stabbed to death, and had come close to killing other
young men. My future looked bleak — a long time in prison or, if I were
lucky, a pregnant girlfriend and a lifetime on some assembly line.
Later, I would fulfill some of these expectations by dropping
out of college and spending nearly seven homeless years on New York City’s
mean streets (ICQ, winter 1997). And still later, I would leave — or so
I thought — my working-class origins behind by earning graduate degrees,
writing books, becoming a college professor. But I have learned that no
matter how far one may drift from one’s origins, class distinctions determine
how one is perceived by and how one perceives the world.
Growing up in poverty, I learned that class distinctions
are far more than Marxist theory. Class distinctions are social, economic,
and political realities, determining where we live, where we attend school,
whom we marry, what church we attend, and where we work.
As is the case elsewhere in the United States, some administrators,
faculty, and students here at Ithaca College seem to have a hard time
acknowledging the influence of such class distinctions. Those who come
from working-class backgrounds, as I did, would like a public forum where
issues of economic and social inequality can be discussed openly and honestly.
But there’s a kind of collective silence regarding issues of class — it’s
bad form to talk openly about such things. On top of this, at Ithaca College
there has historically been a very definite presumption of wealth. Students
who must work during spring break will be discouraged by tales of frolics
in the Cancun sun. And for faculty the question "Where do you plan to
summer?" is irritatingly presumptuous if one is forced to augment one’s
income with freelance writing, teaching summer school, or waiting on tables.
One way to address this problem is a continuing all-College
forum at which participants can discuss and debate issues of class distinctions,
in society at large and at Ithaca College as well. We have made a start
this spring. Let’s not stop now. We owe it to ourselves to speak clearly
and candidly about the nature of our society and the institutions we serve.
Addressing the reality of class distinctions in academia would be one
important step in that direction. 
Fred Wilcox is the author of six books and numerous
articles and editorials.
Photo by Cascadilla Photography
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