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The Harvard Carnival, Maine Islands, and the Ghost of Eugene V. Debs
I work for Harvard. I mean this not as a student, nor as a researcher, nor as a volunteer, nor as a citizen. I mean this as an actual employee of the toil-and-hours sort—as a captain of
I bring this up not because I've developed a sudden interest in polite manners but because of something I'm increasingly convinced of after the past few months: that classism is increasingly alive and well in America. It's often considered common political dogma that Americans don't respond to class identity. And this may well be true—history itself confirms the difficult time that American economic classes have had in asserting themselves as political classes. But to argue that there is no sense of class in America, and that it is not fraught with hatred, distrust, disrespect, and confusion, is to either ignore the truth or to exhibit a sense of willful naïveité that would put Pangloss to shame.1
I spent a week this summer on Vinalhaven Island off the coast of Maine. The island is entirely shunted into two divisions: on one hand, those living in absolute poverty off the fisheries with abandoned McDonalds refrigerated tractor-trailers pulled to make housing additions; and, on the other, summer folks who are so absurdly rich that they have not even created a thriving downtown—their personal enclaves contain everything they need. It's not difficult to sit by the post office and sort out the residents as they walk by into two very distinct and very different classes.
It's occurrences like these—watching Harvard students together with Harvard custodians, or watching downeast Mainers together with New York billionaires—that make me believe that rampant American classism is so important not simply because of its economic inequality but because of the way economic classes are pigeonholed into social and cultural stereotypes as well. In a very real way, your economic station in America today determines not only how you spend most of your time, but what you wear, what music you listen to you, and, most importantly, your basic conceptions of political understanding. The rich now cannot help but to look on the poor with either a sense of disgust or noblesse-oblige pity; conversely, the poor now cannot help but to look skeptically on the cultural values of those for who manual labor is a cute curiosity.
And yet the increasingly fast pace at which America is separating into classes commonly takes up little space in the halls of political discourse. How can this be? We are looking at a situation in which the very determining factors by which citizens choose their identities and their livelihood are rapidly becoming shackles. It's a situation that isn't good for anyone in society. The fact that it has not come to a head yet does not, in my opinion, serve as demonstration of the resilience and optimism of American opportunity. I see it, instead, as a policy of dejection and deference, of cultural hegemony, and of rank misunderstanding.
All this is to say, perhaps rather jumbledly, that we at Harvard, and as liberals in particular, have a responsibility to understand the economic situations of all Americans and to throw our efforts at breaking down classism. I mean this with no bias towards the rich or towards the poor, or to anything at all except a society in which our economic classes are no longer predatory and hostile to each other. We owe our society this not in the form of guilt and obligation—not out of some middle-class white debt that we devolve onto the less-fortunate by way of making ourselves feel better—but by a true understanding of what it life is like in other economic classes. One day of picking up garbage at the Harvard Carnival is, in my view, a more powerful destruction of class barriers than five years writing white-papers for a non-profit. We ought no longer to think it our duty to help the working class. We ought think it our duty to be the working class.
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1 That was probably way too grandiloquent of a sentence for someone writing against snooty classism. Whatever.
As a Dorm Crew clean-up
As a Dorm Crew clean-up captain who works under GGDN, I can confirm everything and more that he shared. During the carnival I had a couple laugh in my face when I asked them to use other trash receptacles less than 6 feet away because the one I was changing was overflowing. Did anyone else see the Crimson article that slammed Dorm Crew for the competitive service that we provide? (Harvard hires us because we do it cheaper and better than anyone else.)
I feel that it should be a requirement for all students to work at least one AlPo event (for non Dorm Crewers, this is the trashing/setting up for alumni events that GGDN refered to) or at least 10 hrs. of term-time work a year to graduate. Especially the football players that destroyed Mather before moving out (let's just say some rooms were biohazards).
I also feel that Harvard hasn't responded to the fact that there is a more divided class system on campus since the HFAI (I think only people who are in this program know about its existence). Now there are no longer just the rich and the middle class at Harvard but there are actually a few students whose families live slightly above, at or below the U.S. poverty line. I think this makes for an interesting case study because according to admissions, we're all equally intelligent and capable but range in class system. It is interesting to me because this is not a national trend where people have the opportunities to excel equally without regard to class like Kyle discussed. I hope that the Dems take some time after campaign season to discuss this (and of course to keep it in mind as we support the party that works to improve equal access to opportunity.)
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I agree completely with your
I agree completely with your assertion of our duty to all Americans.
The problem is that Bush and the Republicans have been trying to destroy the middle class of America. They have not only sat aside but actively pursued the growing economic disparity in this nation. The goal of America should be to give every child an equal opportunity to be the President of the United States or any other thing which they strive to be. There should be no lower class, there should be no upper class (there already almost isn't a middle class).
This means ensuring every child has the opportunity to go to college, to grow up healthy, and to have all their rights no matter what their economic background. Once we do that, we will all be of the lower class.