Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America

by Barbara Jensen

The deeper the conflict and the more powerless one feels, the greater the need to escape the pain and confusion. Michael Schwalbe reported a telling example of this: Once when I was talking to a professor in his office, another professor leaned in the doorway and said, “I just heard a new excuse for missing an exam. A student said he couldn’t come in today because he had to move a trailer house.” The professor to whom I was talking laughed and replied, “That’s one I never heard before. I guess it tells you you’re really at a blue-collar college.” Part of me liked being privy to this exchange. I took it to mean I was being treated as an insider. But I also sympathized with the student. It made sense to me that you might have to miss an exam to move a trailer house. What was funny about that? (Dews and Law 1995, 312) Rosa Maria Pegueros answered his question. “Being working class,” she observed, “means never knowing with certainty why someone is laughing at you” (Dews and Law 1995, 96). “All the awards and honors cannot convince you you’re in,” Mary Cappello reflected on her cultural struggle in higher education. “You still think analogically in a profession that welcomed you into its precincts for your clarity and logic” (130).