Privilege in America: HOWL
I confess: I broke my vow to never, ever watch John Stossel last night in order to see all my worst fears confirmed about the way things really work. I watched Privilege in America, or yet another Nip/Tuck Ugly Betty Devil Wore Prada HOWL about how pretty rich people have it better. Stossel hit all the highlights of the brewing revolt of the fairly rich (usually posing as the “middle class”), though he carefully avoided talking about the 35.9 million Americans living in poverty whose underpaid labor has long subsidized the middle class lifestyle.
I haven’t been around for a few weeks because I’m really tired. But let me offer this twist: I’m tired because of the efforts of well-meaning people who care about me. As usually, the conversation finally came around to why a bright, highly-skilled, and very nice person like me can’t get work in a booming economy. Since no one feels they can do anything about BushCo’s rigged numbers, the diagnosis was it’s all my fault: I don’t try hard enough, I’m not putting enough time and money to make myself attractive, and I’m not making a major effort to socialize.
After looking longingly at my various unfinished creative projects, my only source of happiness, I subordinated myself to the outlook of my friends who “know better” in that truthiness kind of way.
I made an effort to go out more and meet people. This is inevitably pretty painful for me, because bar-hopping is expensive for someone who has no regular income, and the historical record shows that the investment will be futile. I make very few friends this way - but I do get to go through a lot of rejection, a lot of people overtly leaving me off their lists for group gatherings even when I finally stop hoping to be embraced and ask to be included, and occasionally a few people who take serious advantage of my needy position.
The reason this happens is that I’m seen as someone who has nothing to offer. This isn’t about my confidence or paranoia or any other psychological trickiness. It’s about the cold fact that I’m not that attractive, I don’t have money or other forms of class access, I don’t have many social connections or any influence, and whatever talent, skills, or intelligence I have don’t matter because they aren’t expressed in a social context. This isn’t the distorted perceptions of someone who lacks confidence. This isn’t paranoia. It’s the plain truth, and frankly it hurts me more when people try to pretend that this is something I can overcome with a little extra effort and a makeover.
This reject-status doesn’t just mean I’m not invited to the party - it means I don’t even get the benefit of the relationships I pay for. I spent seven years of graduate school trying to get an advisor for my dissertation. I would go into professor’s office hours with a raft full of questions and potential contributions and avid interest in their work…to be met with icy silence - and the experience of listening to the next student be treated very differently while I gathered my books out in the hall. It wasn’t because I lacked merit or was deficient in my academic work - it was because I couldn’t bring the fellowships, connections, or any other sign of a “bright future” to those professors. I wore myself down trying to fight the administrator of my department who did everything in his power to make me drop out (and he eventually succeeded).
In fact, my harrowing experience with graduate school is why my hair was prematurely gray before I hit thirty. It’s from nutritional deficiencies related to several starvation periods because I didn’t have an advisor to sponsor me for work in my own department. This gray hair is now one of my “social deficits” that well-meaning people insist that I have to “fix” - i.e., though I’m usually out of work, I should be paying to have my hair professionally dyed and styled on a regular basis. Dishing out blame isn’t going to help anything - I just need to accept the fact that poor people who have had their looks hijacked by society have to pay more to meet society’s standards of attractiveness.
So after seeing my attempts at socializing weren’t really working, and just draining the little IRA I started while working and attempting to be a good citizen, my friends started getting antsy about what else I should do…i.e. my hair, my nails, my weight, my teeth, better-fitting clothes. When all their hinting didn’t lead to a shopping spree and a makeover, the hints became a “birthday present”. I got my hair professionally done, and now I have to put up with the constant pressure to keep paying to “keep it up”. I bet the “present” to get my nails done is just around the corner.
My hair does look better…but it’s not doing anything to change my life. It’s not getting me “over the top” in job interviews. The people who were repulsing me from their social circles are still repulsing me.
The thing is, I could have told my well-meaning friends this wouldn’t work in advance. I know because I’ve been through this over, and over, and over again. Everytime I meet someone new, they look at my sorry condition in life and try to figure out what I can do to help myself. This usually involves a regimen of (expensive) self-improvement and socialization. These people project what worked for them onto me. This usually comes with an urban legend about how a poor thirty-fourth cousin invested their last dollar in a nice suit, talked themselves up, engaged in some telephone-rounds scam where they told each person that someone else “wanted them” or “already agreed to it”, and ended up with a plum job/promotion/book deal/angel investor/etc.
Worst of all, these friends are demanding that I shut down my ability to learn from the past. As much as the U.S. has promoted a society of continuous learning, our dirty secret is we don’t want anyone learning anything if their experience tells them to stop jumping through the social hoops that work for the top ten percent. All of that good advice doled out to people to be confident, to network, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and not let the bastards get them down…that’s all about defying the record of experience. Repressing your memories and functioning as if you haven’t experienced rejection doing the same thing ten times over is really, really hard work. It’s draining. I’d even propose this is a root cause of major depression.
However, I go through the motions because the well-meaning self-appointed life coach will be my friend as long as I do what they say. Pointing out the truth will be end of that relationship.
In sum, emulating privilege is not going to make me privileged. Not everyone can be privileged. Everyone is trying to optimize their social networks and maximize their filters for a good reason: the current social scenario is that you have to be privileged just to survive. However, the privileged cannot exist, by definition, without the not-privileged. And there’s not a virtuous circulation of privilege that gives everyone a turn, either. Privilege breeds more privilege and lack of privilege accumulates the problems that keep you down.
As the Victorians used to say, the Poor Will Always Be With Us.
Some people like me get filtered out. Automatically. It’s time to DEAL WITH IT.
Everyone wants to be communicators and visionaries, to “raise awareness” of problems that everyone already knows about. All of this is tap-dancing around the core issue: redistribution of wealth. No one wants to talk about solutions because it involves dirty words like taxes and the image of Big Brother reaching into your wallet to filch your hard-earned money.
The only way to solve problems like mine, though, is to guarantee a minimum survival kit, including either the right to work or the right to be subsidized when you’re denied work. This is the point where people’s eyes usually glaze over and they start talking about Magical Macroeconomics. And that’s where the people who have not only fallen through the cracks, but are being held down there, start to hear nothing but, “Blah, blah, blah…” There is no dodging the ultimate truth: if there’s no work and no subsidy for not working, then people starve and die. All other options besides guaranteeing work or subsidies for no work make us a country of murderers. Dropping dead of stress and preventable disease is just as bad as holding a gun up to them and shooting them. Diffusing responsibility throughout society changes nothing for a dead person.
Redistribution of wealth is not about ideology, it’s about fairness. It’s about giving back some of the hay you made out of your privileges, and doing it in a way that hits everyone’s pockets in a fair way. It’s about recognizing that our social system runs on privilege and filtering. And it’s about realizing that trying to force people to adjust their attitudes to compensate for homelessness or hunger is a form of mental torture. Let’s strive to be a better country than that, and vote for the political representatives who want us to be a better country than that.
I’ve grown to hate John Stossel. His anti governemnt rantings have contributed to the dismantling of the welfare state and the weakening governement regulations. I got the same advice about networking and frankly the same thing happened as described in this article. This country works in that you have to have money to make money. It’s of by and for the rich. Rich get richer and the rest of us are left behind. I despise how hollywood makes these films about these “exceptional” people who pull themselves out of poverty that makes the rest of us feel like we’re lazy. THe right wing loves those films because it alleviates governement of all responsibility to do anything for the poor and middle class. Despite whatever George Clooney said in his Oscar speech Hollywood is not all that liberal. Miguel
Comment by Miguel — November 11, 2006 @ 10:16 am
Thanks for your comment - I totally agree about John Stossel. He also seems obsessed with proving women are biologically inferior to men. The thing that most bothers me is that the rich are certainly talking “about” the poor in America. However, when push comes to shove, they don’t want to change any of their attitudes, much less redistribute wealth. They just want the poor to change for them somehow.
Comment by Elisa — November 11, 2006 @ 10:19 am
He said that women were biologically inferior to men? When was this? And if so, why does sommeone so blatantly sexist still have a job? Miguel
Comment by Miguel — November 13, 2006 @ 6:54 pm
I just read an article of boomers having to deal with bosses younger than them. This is a first in the work place. I’m pretty sure the stigma is if you’re younger than your boss he just had more drive than you or you’re afraid of leadership or some garbage like that. Miguel
Comment by Miguel — November 13, 2006 @ 6:57 pm
I think he’s done at least two shows on bio-determined gender, which boils down to justifying assertions that women are inferior to men.
Part of the boomer problem is that it’s hard to get *hired* when the boss is younger. I think this whole situation reveals a massive failure in our society: the boomers in this situation weren’t offered the training and opportunities to keep the respect and position that should have come with their experience.
Comment by Elisa — November 13, 2006 @ 7:02 pm
Thank you so much for not pulling punches. In the market economy you have to market yourself. The market economy, being centered around on marketing rather than production, necessarily puts image ahead of substance. In the America I grew up in, what is now called “networking” was called “inside pull” or “office politics.” Networking, as it’s called, makes your social life a wholly owned subsidiary of your professional life. It makes people a means to an end. As you pointed out, “everyone is trying to optimize their social networks and maximize their filters…” The well-connected are walking assets, while those on the outside looking in on the market-ing economy are walking liabilities. Networking literally amounts to sizing people up as winners or losers, and deciding based on your educated guesses which ones are worth spending your time with. A “makeover” will not generally change that assessment in the eyes of those who know how to play the game, if what comes out of your mouth does not indicate being socially and informationally “plugged in.”
The bourgeoisie is setting itself up as a gated community, with management ensconcing its offices in literal fortresses and practicing applied information asymmetry (CRM, supply chain, the usual buzzwords) at a level of sophistication worthy of intelligence agencies. They know we (the sans culottes, or people without an established stake in the future) need them more than they need us. They know that, without gainful (as opposed to contingent) economic opportunities, our sociological problems are going to be intractable. Hence a stronger pattern of geographic class segregation. The future looks brutish for most of us. I’m glad I decided not to have kids, and I continue to agitate for zero population growth.
The only way to solve problems like mine, though, is to guarantee a minimum survival kit, including either the right to work or the right to be subsidized when you’re denied work.
Unfortunately, the phrase “right to work” has been dishonestly spun into the public debate as a synonym for non-union shop. Being subsidized when denied work (less politely called welfare or charity) is an affront to dignity. What I think is needed is a return to a large or at least economically significant civil service, with provisions that the existence of job openings is part of the public record, signed applications and not resumes are used as documents of first contact, and interviews (i.e. introvert filters) are a late stage in the selection process, after application processing and competitive examinations. I’m not above advocating holding private sector human resources practices to similar standards. If that makes me a commie, so be it. I also advocate a database of public record for announcements of vacancies, public and private, or at least a proof-of-publication requirement when new employees are added to quarterly withholding tax returns. These reforms would still leave de facto employees who are de jure “independent contractors” as a loophole. Perhaps you can think of a policy strategy for de-gaming that aspect of it. Not that policy is a morally legitimate instrument in a nation whose political spectrum extends from right to center.
For your entertainment:
http://geocities.com/n8chz/slogans.htm
Comment by Lori — January 22, 2007 @ 7:32 am
Thanks for putting it in terms of the market economy. I’ve never thought of it from that angle, but I believe you’re right.
I listened to a panel of gaming industry experts last night, and when they were talking about their attempts to create social (collaborative, team) environments, a lot of the contadictions became apparent. For instance, they said that the team mattered more than the individual because there were no original ideas. However they also acknowledged ways to cheat to move up in the system and exploit the people below you (which keeps them from moving up if they are just playing fairly). This affects who is selected to be on teams: this is a place of privilege. Thus “networking” provides certain individuals advantage while also providing them with some patter that denies that privilege to the people they exploited.
While the subject was online gaming, where higher ranking players and players in groups use isolated individuals for their own purposes and keep them down, this could easily apply to corporations. We also talked about the problem with promoting ideas and user-generated content in social situations where higher ranking people are in a better position to exploit the ideas and move ahead, while lower ranking people don’t get any benefit from sharing their ideas: in fact, they remain low rank as long as their ideas are being “farmed”.
I’ve noticed several online resumes where people are announcing the size of their rolodex and their willingness to “work their contacts” to bring other winners wherever they are hired. This surprised me because I always thought the rolodex factor was something strongly implied, but never discussed. Previously I had only seen it in after-hiring analysis articles: for instance, I read a great article about Chelsea Clinton’s first job where she was paid $100k a year basically for her rolodex.
Now people are explicit about and even screaming about their rolodexes. I guess that’s the market economy in action.
I like your ideas about fixing the job application process! I would add that there should be stong discouragement of using outside research (Googling). People of low rank/resources have little means to defend their reputation, and even “trusted” sources like newspapers may not bother with fact-checking. This means adding something to your job application might be a “key word” that could get you in trouble - the sort of thing some people decide to leave off their resume. If there’s going to be a universal application which truthfully lists all working experience, then it should be somehow kept free of all the perception manipulations of the marketing world.
By the way, I decided not to have kids either. I don’t want to provide more fodder for the contingent workforce.
Ps. That’s a great list of slogans!
Comment by Elisa — January 22, 2007 @ 10:39 am
>Ps. That’s a great list of slogans!
I keep adding more. Most recent compilation:
http://geocities.com/n8chz/slogans5.htm
Comment by Lori — February 2, 2007 @ 11:22 am
Hi Elisa,
I experienced a period of unemployment and felt worthless. I went to Dress for Success and received interview clothing and felt pretty. This resource may help you too. After I got a job I attended a job retention support group sponsored by Dress for Success. It is so encouraging and supportive being around other women who experience rankism. We support each other develop friendships and learn helpful skills to combat rankism and succeed.
I wish you Success & Dignity!
In Solidarity,
Lisa
Comment by Lisa — March 27, 2008 @ 10:13 pm