Summer 2007 Alumnae Quarterly Web Extra
Learn More About Class
This information was gathered by Corinna Yazbek in connection with her article in the summer 2007 Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly magazine. |
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Corinna Yazbek ’01 |
Web sites About Class and Classism
› alumnae.mtholyoke.eduCorinna Yazbek’s Alumnae Quarterly article grew from a previous essay on the topic. “From the Trailer Park to the Ivy League” addresses her experiences of class before and during her Mount Holyoke years.
Making Class Visible: Always at the forefront of encouraging discussion about sensitive topics, Mount Holyoke has created a forum where dialogue can flourish about privilege, classism, and identity. This site is an accessible vehicle to promote a deeper understanding of the complexity of socioeconomic diversity and interactions on the Mount Holyoke College campus.
Class Action is a nonprofit that offers training and consulting about the issues of class and money and their impact on our individual lives, our relationships, organizations, institutions, and culture.
A team of reporters spent more than a year exploring ways that class—defined as a combination of income, education, wealth, and occupation—influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity.
This New York Times interactive graphic will rank your class percentile based on four critical factors: occupation, education, income and wealth.
United for a Fair Economy is a national, independent, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3)nonprofit organization. UFE raises awareness that concentrated wealth and power undermine the economy, corrupt democracy, deepen the racial divide, and tear communities apart. We support and help build social movements for greater equality.
The Racial Wealth Divide project of United for a Fair Economy aims to deepen the understanding and analysis about the historical and contemporary barriers to wealth creation and its negative impact on society. The project lifts up the importance of wealth and wealth-building strategies among communities struggling to attain economic equality and develops and offers resources—such as workshops, publications, data, policy initiatives, and community empowerment strategies—for community leaders, activists, organizations, media, and the public at large.
Betsy Leondar-Wright's forthcoming book is Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle Class Activists. This Web site contains interviews with poor and working class activists, tips, and information collected in the course of writing the book.
Resource Generation is an alliance of young people supporting and challenging each other to effect social change through the creative, responsible, and strategic use of financial and other resources.
Responsible Wealth is a national network of businesspeople, investors, and affluent Americans who are concerned about deepening economic inequality and are working for widespread prosperity. Their three primary areas of work are tax fairness, corporate responsibility, and living wages.
The “People Like Us” Web site is a companion to the PBS documentary special—a place to learn how social class works in America and to test your own preconceptions about who belongs where on the social scale.
Fighting Classism
(From www.classism.org)
Ten Things You Can Do About Class
- Speak up about your class background. Ask others about theirs.
- Work to end poverty 100% (so everyone has a good place to live, good food, health care, and …)
- Work to end capitalism.
- Ask yourself: is your share of the world’s (finite) resources a fair share?
- Think: what would it take to meet everyone’s needs?
- What will you do about it?
- Be brave—call people on classist remarks (class attacks).
- Respect cultural differences.
- A living wage, and a maximum wage: help make it happen.
- Find others who want to end classism, and help each other.
Model Non-Classist Behavior and Attitudes
- Build and maintain friendships and relationships across class and race lines. Break out of your “comfort zone.”
- Use the words “class” and “classism” in your conversations.
- Acknowledge the class implications of all the decisions that you make.
- Don't assume that others have the same level of resources as you do.
- Don't assume that “everyone can afford.”
- Support the leadership of poor and working class people.
- Don't make assumptions about people's intelligence based on their appearance.
- If you view “nice” as always a positive trait and “angry” as always a negative trait, question these assumptions.
- Be open to talking about your class situation and class of origin.
- Notice who you judge and why. Notice what judgments you fear about yourself.
- Notice what clothing you wear and why.
- Break the taboo and ask people questions about their own money and class stories.
- Go to activities and events that are outside of your class comfort zone.
- Be aware of your class in a global context, in thinking about how much is enough?
- Support boycotts and strikes.
- Encourage young people to dream, and think outside their class box.
- Maintain an attitude toward working on classism and other oppression issues which is both urgent and maintains a long-term perspective toward change.
- Write letters to the editor.
- Keep track of the numbers that describe inequality.
- If you have more than enough money, share it with organizations working for justice.
Stand Up to Classism and Classist Attitudes
- Respectfully interrupt classist jokes, slurs, comments, or assumptions.
- Offer alternatives or accurate information when you hear classist stereotypes or myths, e.g., welfare bashing.
- Listen for “not our kind of people” statements
