There’s no subtle way of saying this. “Hey friend, you know... I come from an upper middle class family.” Umm... too academic. Plus like, who says that? “Hey friend, my family is rich.” Does that sound like bragging? What if they dislike me after I say something like that? Quite honestly, I don’t know the best way to approach class issues. This confusion doesn’t exist only on a semantic level; rather it stems from something much deeper—my lack of understanding of what it means to grow up in a household where food is always ready, overseas vacations are an option, and summer jobs are not necessary. As a radical feminist, it seems hypocritical to me that I have been glossing over this important part of my positionality. At Carleton, not even my closest friend had known my family’s socioeconomic status before we had the conversation described above.
I feel guilty, sad, and responsible. I possess immense privilege because of the environment that I was born in. When I tried to confront it with my family and friend group back home, the best answer I got was, “What do you want me to do? I work hard, and deserve what I have.” As if systems of historical and social inequalities among nationality, race, gender, ability, etc., were not at work and did not account for their social and economic wealth.
Ironically, it is through these conversations with people back home that I learned how to be an ally: to expose myself to vulnerable discussions and situations where my class status is questioned and examined, to critically reflect on my own privileges, to be mindful of the impact of my actions, to speak up when marginalized class experiences are underrepresented, and to retreat myself from certain discussions in order to leave space for less privileged voices.
But I am still learning to talk about class. I am learning to question the existing neoliberal capitalist economy. It is through the constant, often perceived as “necessary,” privatization and commodification of the racialized, gendered human bodies that most nations in this world achieved “modernity” and “industrialization.” I, as a college student and citizen, am an active political actor within the system. Precisely for this reason, conversations about systemic class privilege should happen more often on/outside of this campus on multiple levels, from personal to national.
- Melanie Xu
I feel guilty, sad, and responsible. I possess immense privilege because of the environment that I was born in. When I tried to confront it with my family and friend group back home, the best answer I got was, “What do you want me to do? I work hard, and deserve what I have.” As if systems of historical and social inequalities among nationality, race, gender, ability, etc., were not at work and did not account for their social and economic wealth.
Ironically, it is through these conversations with people back home that I learned how to be an ally: to expose myself to vulnerable discussions and situations where my class status is questioned and examined, to critically reflect on my own privileges, to be mindful of the impact of my actions, to speak up when marginalized class experiences are underrepresented, and to retreat myself from certain discussions in order to leave space for less privileged voices.
But I am still learning to talk about class. I am learning to question the existing neoliberal capitalist economy. It is through the constant, often perceived as “necessary,” privatization and commodification of the racialized, gendered human bodies that most nations in this world achieved “modernity” and “industrialization.” I, as a college student and citizen, am an active political actor within the system. Precisely for this reason, conversations about systemic class privilege should happen more often on/outside of this campus on multiple levels, from personal to national.
- Melanie Xu