GCD Reflection 2.6.09

Internalized classism is one of the many results of institutionalized oppression. Stout describes institutionalized oppression as being “when a prejudice is supported by all the systems of society with all the power to back up that prejudice, so that it becomes the canon – the accepted way.” Because of the acceptance of classism in dominant society, members of all economic classes are subject to internalized classism, be it privilege or oppression.
Kadi mentions a few of the tools that have led to the general acceptance of classist beliefs. “Class socialization begins early. Material possessions, home environment, and neighborhood provide information about our present situation and our future. Family members’ sense of/lack of entitlement and expectation provides more. Social constructions of class, put out by institutions such as media and school are a third factor.” From an early age, we are led to believe in classist stereotypes such as that poor people are stupid and that is why they are in poverty. Because of these structures in place that maintain class difference and retain class privilege, the majority of people living in a classist society remain unaware of the ways they are oppressed by it or the ways that they benefit from it. Same as a white person may believe that they are not a racist because they have not learned to understand the ways in which they benefit from white privilege, a middle or upper class person may not recognize the privileges they have due to class nor understand the daily oppression of the poor.
Internalized oppression is important to understand and come to grips with in order for those who experience what Kadi describes as having the feet of the privileged on the necks of the oppressed, to empower themselves and grow as individuals and as a community towards creating justice. Recognizing and understanding institutionalized oppression (classism, racism, sexism, etc.) and how we as individuals internalize the mechanisms in place that reinforce the canon of social structure is the first step that has to be taken before a group can come together to explore ways to make social change happen.
While doing these readings, I was forced to come to terms with my own internalized oppression and classism. I identified with Kadi and Stout, having grown up in poverty. I can remember very clearly feeling separated from my peers because of class socialization. My father is a working class child of working class parents. He had a 9th grade education and has worked as a carpenter for his entire life, from when he dropped out of high school until the present moment in which he is in his late fifties. My mother was a first generation college graduate, but even having a degree would not save her from poverty. She has worked as a preschool teacher for her entire adult life, and now she is 60 and retirement is not an option that is foreseeable for her.
In my life experience, I was socialized to believe that my family was not as good, and that I could never be as good as the middle and upper classes. One of the damages I have withstood as a result of growing up poor in a classist society is a lack of confidence in myself socially. When I was young, my mother decided to move us out of urban and predominantly low-income Lynn, and to move into one of the segregated low-income housing neighborhoods in the predominantly white and middle-to-upper class town of Ipswich. Before, I hadn’t experienced the enormous disparity between classes, as almost all of my peers and neighbors in Lynn were in the same economic status as my family. However, in Ipswich, it was made abundantly clear to me that I was an outsider, somehow different from the other students. The other children’s parents brought them shopping regularly for new things, their families went on vacations; my mother’s four children relied on hand-me-downs from older cousins, and my mother couldn’t afford a car, much less a vacation. My upper-middle class friends would be afraid to come to the apartment my family lived in. My two brothers, sister, and I all internalized these things growing up, and each one of us struggled with academic failure in the public schools, depression and anxiety, low self-esteem and self-destructive habits, debt, drug addiction, and bad decision-making.
I dropped out of high school and wanted nothing more from life than to sleep through all of it. The conditions in which my family lived made me hate myself and hate my mother. Four teenagers experiencing an assault of institutionalized classism and taking the blame out on their single and clinically depressed mother for not being middle class and married sums up the environment in which I lived for the majority of my adolescence. I like to think of my mother as being “accidentally poor” though. She raised her children with values commonly associated with the more economically privileged. She raised her children vegetarian, refused to allow junk food into her house, provided us with intellectually stimulating toys, media, and books, and encouraged all of us to do well enough in school to go to college.
Because of my mother’s diligence to turn us into critical thinkers and expose us to the pleasures of the middle class that many others in poverty to not have exposure to (such as healthy nutrition or literature), my siblings and I have all come out of our experience growing up poor with an awareness of the injustice of institutionalized classism. This is not true for most children who are raised in poverty, however. Unless their community or parents are able to provide the resources for them to learn how to talk about, investigate, and thus make change to these social injustices, than the children of poverty are only able to internalize this oppression as anger, confusion, or self-loathing.