Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America

by Barbara Jensen

In This Fine Place So Far from Home, a 1995 collection of essays by graduate students and college teachers from the working class, Stephen Garger describes how a colleague interrupted his presentation three times to argue against it in the same way: Where I came from, the immediate and practically the only response to a fellow ignoring or contradicting an explanation three times is to yell and go for the throat—literally and figuratively. Early in my college career silence was the only way to override that response, and this is exactly what happened…. All the verbal cues I was receiving indicated the questioner was insulting me and pushing for a fight. However, his physical demeanor most certainly contradicted that impression. The mixed message I was getting was further clouded by the fact that we were violating the unwritten [working class] rule that you don’t fight with the people you hang with. (Dews and Law 1995, 41–53) After a friend of his explained that intellectual arguing was something of a recreational sport among academics, Garger mused, “John, the questioner, just may have been opening the door for fun. When I did not respond to the protocol, he tried again and again. Undoubtedly, he was receiving mixed messages, too.” He concluded: “It was as if we were engaged in different and separate rituals in which neither of us understood the rules the other was playing by” (Dews and Law 1995, 41–53).