Not Living in a Bubble
Yesterday, as I was procrastinating about grading papers, I came across two very different yet similar things that I found quite fascinating and yet relevant.
On the PBS website, I found an article called Do You Live in a Bubble? which is about the fact that many upper class White Americans are out of touch with the lives of the rest of America. This has been one of my biggest issues with the 1% in that they think everybody has the same opportunities and they do not realize the amount of privilege that they have. As there was a quiz in it, I decided to take to see where I fit in.
My result was a 49. According to the key, I fit somewhere in between the following:
On the PBS website, I found an article called Do You Live in a Bubble? which is about the fact that many upper class White Americans are out of touch with the lives of the rest of America. This has been one of my biggest issues with the 1% in that they think everybody has the same opportunities and they do not realize the amount of privilege that they have. As there was a quiz in it, I decided to take to see where I fit in.
My result was a 49. According to the key, I fit somewhere in between the following:
- 42–100: A first-generation middle-class person with working-class parents and average television and movie going habits. Typical: 66.
- 11–80: A first-generation upper middle-class person with middle-class parents. Typical: 33.
I found this to be fascinating but not for the reasons you may think.
Yes, my husband and I are technically either at the high end of middle-class or actually upper middle-class (depending on whose model you use), and if you look at our professions, we are more upper middle-class. Being a professor doesn't hurt. However, according to this, you think I would fit into the second category as first-generation upper middle-class, right?
Wrong.
Yes, my husband and I are technically either at the high end of middle-class or actually upper middle-class (depending on whose model you use), and if you look at our professions, we are more upper middle-class. Being a professor doesn't hurt. However, according to this, you think I would fit into the second category as first-generation upper middle-class, right?
Wrong.
Growing up I lived in an upper-class community in New York, where the average income now is well over $180,000 and the average house worth over $1 million. However, as my parents were "only" upper middle-class, we lived in what was considered the "wrong side of town" if you can believe it.
In school, I was competing with children whose parents were CEO's or high-level executives in large corporations, planned on going to the country's top colleges, and expected to maintain their high standard of living with high-paying jobs once they graduated. I was looking at Facebook and noticed that many of my classmates followed in the footsteps of their parents as executives, doctors, lawyers, and business owners. One is even a fancy surgeon in a very famous zip code in California. It makes me as a college professor look like an underachiever.
In school, I was competing with children whose parents were CEO's or high-level executives in large corporations, planned on going to the country's top colleges, and expected to maintain their high standard of living with high-paying jobs once they graduated. I was looking at Facebook and noticed that many of my classmates followed in the footsteps of their parents as executives, doctors, lawyers, and business owners. One is even a fancy surgeon in a very famous zip code in California. It makes me as a college professor look like an underachiever.
The reason why I bring this up is that I also found an article about my high school in the New York Times that discussed how teenagers in my community were dealing with the recession from the early 1990s. Here were some of the responses:
Talk about living in a bubble!
These are the people that now make up the group above.
But yet how did I end up so different?
Don't get me wrong. I lived in that bubble until my early 20s. OK, so I went to state college and drove a used car that my grandmother had saved up for years for my graduation gift. It's not like I went to Harvard and drove a Volvo like a lot of my classmates did. However, I was very shielded. The town had a non-existent minority population with less than 1% being Black or Latino. There were more Asian families than there were of all the other minority groups combined. Plus, it was not like anybody was really struggling economically. OK, so no third car. Boo hoo. Mommy and Daddy were still driving their BMWs, Mercedes, and Volvos, and your brand new red Jeep will have to sit in the garage for a bit. While my parents only had one car, it was a Cadillac, which was nothing to scoff at back then.
For me, it was reality that burst my bubble. I ended up in poverty for a few years, lived in Section 8 housing, and went days without being able to put something on my table other than Ramen noodles. Plus, I started waking up. I noticed what life was like outside that bubble and wanted to understand how society really was, not the polished up BMW-driving Ivy Leaguers believed it was.
I guess that is why I was so attracted to social work. I also guess that's why this little quiz really could not figure out what my socioeconomic status really is. I've learned to appreciate what I have and not take things for granted, but I've also learned that there are a lot of people out there who are much worse off than I am through no fault of their own. However, I also realized that the upper-class really has no clue. Everything has been handed to them and they have no idea how our society really works for the rest of us. I think this is why I hated Mitt Romney so much. Too much privilege and not enough empathy.
So I woke up and now that my bubble has been broken, I wonder if the rest of my peers from my childhood will ever do the same. Whether or not we like it, they are the ones who have all of the power and make the decisions. It could be in politics or in the board room. Either way, all the rest of us can hope for is that they will eventually see the light.
- They were fearful about how they would possibly have to attend state schools instead of Ivy League schools. *gasp*
- One girl stated that her family "will likely stop driving a third car to save money on insurance."
- She was probably in the same group that had one student driving a "sporty red Jeep" and another saying "When you're driving BMW's and you have everything you need and everybody is having a good time, why wouldn't you want it to continue?"
Talk about living in a bubble!
These are the people that now make up the group above.
But yet how did I end up so different?
Don't get me wrong. I lived in that bubble until my early 20s. OK, so I went to state college and drove a used car that my grandmother had saved up for years for my graduation gift. It's not like I went to Harvard and drove a Volvo like a lot of my classmates did. However, I was very shielded. The town had a non-existent minority population with less than 1% being Black or Latino. There were more Asian families than there were of all the other minority groups combined. Plus, it was not like anybody was really struggling economically. OK, so no third car. Boo hoo. Mommy and Daddy were still driving their BMWs, Mercedes, and Volvos, and your brand new red Jeep will have to sit in the garage for a bit. While my parents only had one car, it was a Cadillac, which was nothing to scoff at back then.
For me, it was reality that burst my bubble. I ended up in poverty for a few years, lived in Section 8 housing, and went days without being able to put something on my table other than Ramen noodles. Plus, I started waking up. I noticed what life was like outside that bubble and wanted to understand how society really was, not the polished up BMW-driving Ivy Leaguers believed it was.
I guess that is why I was so attracted to social work. I also guess that's why this little quiz really could not figure out what my socioeconomic status really is. I've learned to appreciate what I have and not take things for granted, but I've also learned that there are a lot of people out there who are much worse off than I am through no fault of their own. However, I also realized that the upper-class really has no clue. Everything has been handed to them and they have no idea how our society really works for the rest of us. I think this is why I hated Mitt Romney so much. Too much privilege and not enough empathy.
So I woke up and now that my bubble has been broken, I wonder if the rest of my peers from my childhood will ever do the same. Whether or not we like it, they are the ones who have all of the power and make the decisions. It could be in politics or in the board room. Either way, all the rest of us can hope for is that they will eventually see the light.
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