"Rich Boy" and Class Consciousness at Colby

I think Dana’s post entitled “Insecurity in Rich Boy” really highlighted some important issues that are not usually addressed at Colby. She comments, “simple things like having one student ask another if they ski or where they summer can trigger insecurity for a student who has not been able to participate in these wealthy pastimes.” Dana then recommends that the school integrate social class oriented discussions. At Colby, people are often afraid to talk about class because there is a fear of being different. While race is manifested physically, class can be disguised. If you wear the right clothes, or have the right bag, you can look like you are from the right class. Thus class becomes easier to ignore.

Race, ethnicity, or religion is much more easily discussed. For example, Colby Conversation on Race (CCOR) perpetuates discussions about race, but no similar committee exists to provide a safe place to talk about class. Similarly, different religions at Colby seem to interest other students. Rather than shy away from religion, students are curious. Class on the other hand, is not something to be curious about. Instead, if you ask about one’s social class you seem to be inappropriately prying and being nosy.

While I definitely agree with Dana that conversations should be facilitated, it is difficult to think of a manner in which to do so. Maybe I am naïve, but I assume that students of a lesser socioeconomic position would be more hesitant to discuss their class. As many contend, Colby is definitely a bubble. Chances are, we will never again be surrounded by this much wealth. Thus, it is important that we learn that our middleclass should not be normative. We cannot and should not judge those of a different class with our lens. Therefore, it is necessary that Colby provide the opportunity to discuss our differing lenses and how they apply to the rest of the world.

Connections in "Schooled"

Like Chelsea, Anna Tagert’s father boosting that he could get her a job at Merrill Lynch struck me. However, I think at Colby many of students that are assisted by their parents in their job search are actually very well qualified. I agree that Anna Targert may not have been aptly suited for a career in the financial sector. However, I do not think one necessarily needs an economic or business background to be successful at a company like Merrill Lynch. Moreover, I think that if most people were given the opportunity for their parents’ to help them, they would not deny the help.

My parents without a doubt assisted me with getting a job. As an English major, I had a difficult time selling myself as a potential businesswoman. Without the help of my parents, I would have never had the interview opportunities I had.

Although I think my parents’ connections through their occupations helped me, I think it was more that people trusted and liked my parents. I think they figured that because my parents were good people, they could give me a shot. Maybe I am blind to the reality of that because I am so excited about being employed in a tough time. However, I think my experience has shown that kindness and fairness definitely goes a long way.

Private Education in the US

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/06/america-elite-schools-leadership-prep.html

Abigail Jones writes, “Reputation matters, and for many of the children of America's elite where you go to prep schools is just as important, if not more, than where you go to college.” After reading Anisha Lakhani’s Schooled, I was interested in researching what private education looks like today. Although Lakhani’s school is a public school in Manhattan, it obviously has the amenities only private schools elsewhere in the country would have.

For the top 25 elite private schools in the US, most tuition for boarding students is over $40,000. While the tuition at Colby is more per year, it is important to remember that these schools provide only a high school education. Moreover, the endowments of these schools are well over $150 million, which rivals most small colleges. They boast notable alums from John F. Kennedy and George H. W. Bush to Ivanka Trump and Vera Wang. These schools have 9-hole golf courses and some of the largest libraries in the world.

However, they also have their dark sides (sides that I find slightly more interesting). In 1984, 13 students at Choate Rosemary Hall were expelled for attempting to smuggle $300,000 worth of cocaine from Venezuela. At Phillips Exeter, a teacher was arrested after being found with over 700 child pornography videotapes.

Although American private education is clearly flawed, I think it also provides students with an exceptional opportunity to excel and learn. Many issues that are rampant at private schools are also visible at public schools.

I also wonder if the name of the high school I went to really matter that much. Does that fact that I went to a public school with a very reputable school system discourage colleges from accepting me? I think to some degree it does. However, as Jones' states, it is far more important what college diploma is hanging in your office.

"The Women of Brewster Place:" Etta Mae's Female Dependecy

In Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place I found Etta Mae’s character to be most interesting. Etta is constantly seeking male companionship, despite knowing “They were all the same” (72). She lives in through the blues songs she invokes in order to avoid the reality of her life. At best, Etta is obsessed with sex and at worst, she is a prostitute. Therefore, moving into Brewster Place and befriending Mattie, Etta no longer needs to live vicariously through song lyrics.

I especially liked her description of entering the neighborhood. As Etta looks at Brewster Place, she sees “it crouched there in the thin predawn light, like a pulsating mouth awaiting her arrival” (73). The neighborhood takes on animalistic qualities as Etta imagines it devouring her. However, it is Mattie’s companionship that encourages her to remain.

Notably, Mattie is listening to Etta’s music, which is also what Etta sees as her biography. Unlike the men who were “all meshed together into one lump that rested like an iron ball on her chest…they were breathing masses,” Mattie was a friend. At First, Etta can only see Mattie’s shadow through her window. However, this shadow gives Etta more “light and love and comfort” than any man she had slept with.

Although Etta and Mattie are not explicitly in a lesbian relationship like Theresa and Lorriane, Naylor seems to suggest that the most fulfilling relationships that a woman has are with her female friends. I think this is an important point for two reasons. First, Naylor highlights that female unity is the only means that women can improve their social position. Second, she also implies that it is difficult, if not impossible, to have a successful and positive relationship with a man.

The Impermanence of Brewster Place

In Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, the idea of migration to Brewster Place serves to accentuate notions of the ostracism of African Americans following the Civil Rights strife of the 1960s. Through Etta's failed relationships, Mattie’s loss of her home, and Cora Lee’s obsession with children, Naylor suggests that women are constantly searching for a tangible link to something permanent and concrete. In the end, Brewster Place is condemned and the women are forced out. Thus any hope that readers had for a happy ending is banished and the cruel reality of the lives of African American women is exposed.

The final chapter “Dusk” uses the motif of the neighborhood to represent the reality of the lives of African American women. The characters in the novel lose their individuality as they come to represent symbols, rather than actual women. The narrator describes how the neighborhood, “watched its last generation of children torn away from it by court orders and eviction notices, and it had become too tired and sick to help them” (191). The women of Brewster Place and Brewster Place become synonymous and their fates are the same. Just as the neighborhood is destroyed, so are the hopes that the women will have anything tangible to cling to.

Without a doubt Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place leave readers with a decidedly negative view on the fate of African American women. Although, I do not think Naylor’s voice adequately highlights the reality of every black woman’s life, it is important to convey the darkest side in order to make a strong impression on readers.

Are Middle-Class Virtues Normative?

Roberta Rosenberg’s essay “’I Hate this Book’: Middle-Class Virtues and the Teaching of Multicultural Texts” addressed why it is often easier to accept cultural disparity in regards to race, ethnicity, or religion, but not class. In the United States, middle-class values tend to be seen as “the norm.” Poverty is inextricably linked to “fatalism, helplessness, dependence and inferiority.” Middle-class Americans are driven to increase the perceived gap between themselves and the poor. Impoverished Americans are not to be related to or sympathized with. In an era where the American Dream is just a fantasy, the poor are chastised and punished for failing to succeed.

In The Beans of Egypt, Maine the Bean family is a striking example of the failure of the lower class, rather than a failure of America as a whole. If America is characterized by middle-class values, then the Beans cannot even been considered Americans. Instead, Earlene describes them as entirely the other. They are more animals than human as Roberta’s babies resemble a pack of wild hyenas with “fox colored” eyes.

In an ultimate defiance of middle-class virtues, the Beans seem to be content in their poverty. They do not go to school or church and refuse government aid that may alleviate their situation. Although Rosenberg points out that there is also a third person narrator who is sympathetic with the Beans, readers refuse to acknowledge this voice. After reading this essay, I went back and looked at moment that the Beans are presented in a positive light. With Rosenberg’s comments in mind, I realized that I had skipped these passages because I found them to be unbelievable. Once my opinion of the Beans had formed, I refused to allow a counter argument to sway me.

I hoped Rosenberg would have addressed why readers easily accept cultural disparity in regards to race. Is it because that disparity is so engrained in our culture? Does middle-class America really mean middle-class, suburban, white, Christian, America? I think this essay will affect the ways I read other literature. I hope to recognize that the virtues associated with middle-class America are not necessarily those that should be perpetuated.

The Lens of Poverty

Carolyn Chute’s The Beans of Egypt, Maine is not pleasant to read. At no point are readers content with the character’s poverty that has forced them to live without morals. Yet the poverty and physical decay is not what bothers readers. Instead, it is the notion that Americans can and do live like this. From the squalor in which they live to the incest that is rampant throughout the novel, readers are constantly on edge. Chute’s novel introduces readers to a type of poverty that probably is not seen by the average American.

In class on Monday, our discussion led us to ask why Chute wrote the novel. Although it is undoubtedly important to confront real poverty, I think it also may be beneficial to see poverty from an analytical and removed prospective, which writing allows. When faced with real poverty, I hope my first instinct would be to be sympathetic to their plight. In this case, I would be driven to help out at first on an individual level. No longer could I compare them to “middle class” life because there would be few similarities.

However, when you read about poverty and are presented with their struggles on a moral level, I think you are forced to look at it from an analytic lens. Rather than questioning the individuals, you are forced to look at the larger insitutions that failed them. By comparing the lives of characters in the “culture of poverty” to my middle-class existence, I would be struck by the dissimilarities that are allowed to flourish in the same state.

I do not think I can look out my window and see true poverty. Yes, there are people that need help. Yes, there are families that struggle every day. By no means do I think people in Waterville have it easy. I think we as Colby students are just really lucky.