Panel Description: Race and class are two identities that exist in tandem, one never really trumping the other. What are the ways they intersect, diverge, conflict? What happens when our internal race/class state differs from an external race/class assignment—and what factors go into forming internal/external states in the first place? This panel will look at the realities of how we exist within and negotiate race and class without privileging either concept.
Saturday, 2:30-3:45pm
Twitter Hash-Tag:
#RaceOnMyClassPanelists: Saladin Ahmed, Eileen Gunn, Nisi Shawl, Chris Wrdnrd (There was no moderator.)
As always, this is not a verbatim transcript. Things that seem like non-sequitors/etc. are because I couldn't type fast enough. These panelists were great. Corrections appreciated in the comments; I can edit the post whenever I'm able, but will be away from my computer for much of the day.
NS: I helped come up with the panel.
SA: I’m a fantasy writer, my debut novel is Throne of the Crescent Moon. Arabian nights fantasy. Set in land that is like people in the Middle East rather than medieval European fantasy. Protagonists are working people.
EG: Never sure what class I am or my family is. Barbara Jensen has written a fantastic book on class. Did a panel a few years back. If you don’t know what class you are, then probably middle.
CW: Collaborated to be on the panel.
CW: A few years ago, we had a class basics panel. Class and race was shied away from, in part because it’s so large it needs so many panels.
NS: Noticed that it provides a point for conflict because you can be assigned a totally different class from perceptions of outsiders than you experience yourself. That’s an observation of mine, can’t back it up with any personal experience. I think of everyone as my equal. Anybody else have anything to say about the conflict between external assignment and internal state?
EG: I see it in the workplace. Corporations have an internal class system. Managers have upper class in structure of the workplace. How that works in interaction with them. They may not see themselves as middle class. Working class who work themselves up into corporation but see themselves as (?!). Conflict from both sides. Subordinate sees their boss as upper class, but boss sees themselves as working class. I see that a lot, also employee and employee relationship. Class based on status in the corporation.
SA: In my own experience, like race for me, what other people are thinking about me depends on context – how I’m dressed, how my hair is cut, whether I’m with my children or my wife or certain friends and other friends, whether I’m at a poetry reading of MFA students or etc. With loud relatives in a Ponderosa. Not only outsider perceptions, but emphasis in range of class positions - cycle through them a lot.
NS: Is it like code switching?
SA: It is, but it’s almost a conscious act. Been poor my life – I grew up in an immigrant enclave in a factory town, now because I’m in an MFA program in NYC. Different kind of upward mobility. Went to Uni of Michigan. I knew other working class kids, they studied pragmatic things to get out of class position they were in. My parents were artsy. Weren’t working class b/c they were artsy types. Something about it becomes automatic.
CW: One of the things that gets me about assumptions people make – I work a middle class desk job. My boss assumes that I’m as middle class as he is, he assumes that I collude with his humor. He tried to tell me one day that the decline of the English language was due to people living in trailers. It's such an icky feeling when someone assumes I’m going to share their sense of humor.
SA: That’s where race intersects hard. He wouldn’t be defaulting to the dynamic if you were black or if you wore a hijab. He wouldn’t assume you were in that club even if though you might be, if you weren’t the same race.
NS: Story I know from living in Ann Arbor. Black city council man who got stopped for driving while black. He was arrested because he didn’t have his ID on him. He was perceived as being of the underclass, but he was actually a “ruler.” Prime example of someone having a conflict between their experience, what their actual daily life is in terms of class, and what it’s perceived as. Maybe internal experience was different yet again.
AUD: My family’s well-off, I had black boyfriend. Perceptions are so different. My parents were clueless/awful, asking if he knows how to use a microwave, etc.
SA: Always fraught. I try to be a pretty nice and happy person in personal interactions. At the core, I have a dark nihilistic part of me. Thus, often find myself playing devil’s advocate – we can always have happy alliances, different agendas don’t have to be at war – sometimes they are! More recent example – the Skip Gates (Nisi’s story). I grew up in some proximity to African American culture in Detroit. When I say something – of course the cops are fucked up, etc. When I see Skip Gates, he was reacting in almost imperial manner. Part of his reaction was: of course it happened, I’m a black man in America. But he also reacted with a “how dare you” energy. Has its own class energy. “I’m not a common criminal” reaction. I grew up w/ people involved in various criminal enterprises – they’re not shitty people, either. Being mistaken for the underclass – maligning of this thing that you’ve been taken for is a mental trip. Being mistaken for Muslim. Well, that sucks, but you want me to get upset because someone called you this horrible thing? Part of me that ...race and class interact in really uncomfortable ways.
EG: You don’t become a professor at Harvard without a certain level of arrogance. Air of “I’m right/you’re wrong.” Not just classist, but a personal assumption – “I’m right!”
NS: It also can be irritating to be mistaken for the wrong race, as I can attest. Thinking of Chip Delaney. He taught a course at University of Michigan. I didn’t pay any money, just sat in. He came to class one morning furious b/c someone had been hurling racist epithets at him and they were the wrong race. He taught a very interesting class. Other thing I think in terms of race and class intersecting, is race is a much simpler construct than class in my opinion.
EG: It’s an on/off switch to many people, to people who perceive race in that way.
SA: Oh yeah, dominant narrative is that there are four boxes. In the States, we have so little to talk about class. Even now, in talking about “class warfare,” we’re not talking about it in any radical level. We talk uselessly about it a lot more. There's a lot of vocabulary out there even if shit doesn’t change (race).
NS: "MFA poorness" as opposed to "growing up poorness." How many kinds of black are there, and how many kinds of poor are there?
AUD (Mary Kay Kare): Suggestion that race is simpler is very US –centric because talk about race here but we don’t talk about class much. You would find those constructs different in different places.
EG: Didn’t think argument was going that way. Americans brought up to believe they’re in a classless society, even when they know they’re not..
SA: Not thought of as identity categories. We’ve spent 20-30 years as a culture.....people react ass-backwardsly (new favorite word) to feminism/multiculturalism but are engaging.....not happening in the same way as class is.
NS: Maybe it has to do w/many people told they can change classes. Very few people told they can change race.
AUD: Married to English man, talks about race all the time. Accents, speech, etc.
EG: Barbara Jensen’s book. Gave a talk here, talking about all the different classes and how much money your mother/father have. The class marker that's most reliable was where you kept your garbage in the kitchen. In a trash can visible next to wall, or under the sink. If you hide it, you're middle class, if it's out in the open, you're working class.
SA: So...my wife was also working class, is a psychologist now. We kept a trash can under the sink, but we never use it. We keep a loose bag hanging on the outside.
CW: .....What does worm bin indicate?
AUD (Karen Babich): The loose garbage back indicates you're a student!
In America, lazy. Visually, class is hard to pick up especially with onset of cable TV, MTV, and big box clothing stores. Race and gender are things we can assume we look and see know something about.
David Emerson AUD: Barbara Jensen: Class is internal experience. People in the working class in general have a different set of expectations about the world .....(I just stopped recording his comment, sorry lol)
SA: There was
that Scalzi post about race/gaming settings and difficulty settings. Class not included, that’s preposterous to me. I can pass on class, but I am still going to be that kid (from immigrant enclave factory town). Doesn’t fluctuate to me. Garcia Marquez book – Love in the Time of Cholera quote: I’m not a rich man, I’m a poor man with money. Well, I’m a poor man with an education.
Genevieve A. Lopez AUD: As far as things like class-passing and race-passing can be very touchy to talk about, but race-passing and class-passing, what have your experiences been regarding that? What are difficulties in untangling when both of those might be happening at once?
NS: I tend to think of myself as everybody’s equal so I really have a hard time...I can see there’s a difference when I tell them I went to a Confirmation class at St. Luke’s Episcopal. Makes me a higher class than going to North Glade elementary – north side of black people. If someone knows your address, they know your class. I wasn’t trying to pass, I had an older friend who went to that church, so she had me go to a confirmation class series. I’d be treated very differently depending on where I told them. Passing unintentionally happens all the time. On a plane, someone asked me where I’m from. I said, Kalamazoo. “Oh, not India?” I had some Indian beads on. IDK.
EG: When I was younger, my partner was a black man. Lived in East Cambridge. Portuguese part of town. Having lunch in a restaurant. He made friends with everyone. He had taught himself to speak a radio announcer sort of accent, removed the accent. He could do 7 different Boston accents, could teach himself many different accents. He didn’t deliberately do anything, disturbed people.
NS: Did they think you were Portugese?
EG: People think I’m Italian. I’m Irish, mostly. Maybe just because I don’t act like an Irish person.
NS: It’s all that wine you drink.
AUD Karen Moore: Moving through class panel last night, someone made a really cogent observation that made me have a light bulb moment. Well, you know I grew up poor and I’ve been very well to do for the last 20 years and I still can’t throw out leftovers and I thought oh God, yes. Then talking about Imposter Syndrome. Even though you’ve moved into a different class, you feel as though you’re not really there. Maybe not the thrust of this panel. Talk about how class becomes internally defined thing and hold on to it no matter what you externally appear to be. Pattern keeps coming back.
EG: IDK about Imposter Syndrome, but interesting she’d think that because she had money she ought to throw out leftovers.
SA: Most cogent for friends of mine – friends with degrees, using French, taste in food has changed, etc.
NS: Grew up well below the poverty level. Money is a class marker but there are other markers, too. Survey in some women’s magazine that purported to answer the question, of what class do I belong to? How many pictures of yourself do you have on your walls? Your ancestors? We keep talking about money but I keep thinking it must be more than that. Because there’s such a thing as poor upper class people, aren’t there?
AUD: I teach high school in Chicago. Students are poor and black. Their race identity is much stronger than any class identity. Haven’t been taught to think of class. They bring in some of the stereotypes/oppressive behavior. One student starts to do well in an English class or etc., and someone says, “Stop talking white.” One thing for some students that helps is science fiction, I wish there was more with black heroes.
AUD LaShawn Wanak: I also grew up in poor black neighborhood in south side of Chicago. Didn’t think of class as growing up, knew I was different than people in my neighborhood. Made contact with old friend. I don’t consider myself rich or to-do or etc., I live on SW side of Madison, mixed neighborhood. Talking with her, I became very aware of class difference between the two of us. Normally wouldn’t have bothered me because we still like the same things. Big house, she lives w/many relatives, hasn’t been to school. Gives me a higher sense of privilege. Discombobulating.
NS: You felt different when younger...class (collision?)?
LaShawn: I liked things different than everyone else.
NS: LaShawn...ou’re a nerd. (laughter)
LaShawn: Very interesting to see how now there’s a divide between my friend and I.
NS: Is science fiction a class? Or is it a race?
SA: It’s an orientation.
AUD: It’s a choice!
AUD Isabel Schecter: What Karen said about leftovers. I have that same experience, for me it’s compounded by race, doubly so because I can pass. Grew up on welfare. I talked white, very clear to everyone in my family that I was going to become white when I grew up. I was going to go to college and marry a white man. I did those two things. Only person in family to go to college, got two degrees. Married a rich white man. If you ask his family, they’ll say he’s middle class. My family says we’re filthy rich. I have all this money, can come to WisCon, eat foofy food. I can’t bring myself to throw out the leftovers. I know I have huge amounts of privilege but I also have these really conflicted issues about race. Growing up, didn’t know poor/nefarious activities, didn’t make distinction between class and race. Assumed we were this way because we were Latino and flawed. Didn’t realize until later it was class, and socioeconomic issues. Now I’m a rich white lady, except that I’m not rich and not white. Terrifying to figure out your identity/what have I become.
AUD: Permeability of class. Permeable across 2-3 generations. I come from an upper class/middle class marriage. I know the difference in visiting my grandparents that they were different classes. In college, I thought I passed, until started seeing markers that were invisible. I knew I had transgressed some marker, still don’t know what that marker was.
SA: We don't have a moderator, so I hope I can steer just a little bit. Focus on questions that are about race
and class?
NS: Can add racial overtone to that audience comment. The idea of changing class over generations has a parallel in black community of changing race over a generation. Struck by Isabel – you are going to be white when you grow up.
AUD: (I did not write anything down!)
AUD: Intersection of class and race is complicated issue to deal with. One thing that struck me is how fluid that can be and how people can perceive race and class and see one and not see the other. Grew up in Virginia, old VA city. Two classes of people in general. (I did not write the rest of this comment.)
SA: Meta level on which, when we talk about race, the class positions we’re doing it from. At WisCon: This is a literary convention, we all read. Very basic underpinnings like that. If you read a fair amount, and most people you’re talking to about race read a lot, then you’re getting a disproportionate slice. You’re only talking with some people about some aspects of race. Ways in which it intersects with race not discussed. Comes out most emphatically online. Facebook becoming a little democratized. Way more class-diverse than Twitter. Really intriguing to me. Blow-ups of controversies in [SF/F] genre happen largely online. What I see that’s missing, is people with college jobs who have time to be online a lot during the day. That’s not most people. Doesn’t suggest we go out and recruit everyone, but knowing your privilege/etc. – underpinning to that discourse has to do with access to computers, a certain vocabulary about oppression, etc. Wish we were a little more conscious about that. When someone says “Aaaa-rahb,” it’s context-specific. Knowing how to pronounce "Arab" correctly can be a class marker. The way they talk about women or queer people would not pass in our blogosphere or here. They don’t hate queer people any more than someone who knows the right words. If we’re going to have an open conversation where we’re talking across race lines as well as class lines, [I stopped mid-sentence!]
NS: I like running Internet dramas by my sister, sort of a pulse-check, to see how she reads it.
AUD: Touched on this, but wondered if you could talk about intelligence and how that is perceived across class and race. Know the same degree of privilege I have is not perceived in the same way in other people.
CW: Interesting how articulate you are can erase class lines. I’ve seen how articulate a person is can erase race lines. Black man who's a friend of my husband's got into an argument on World of Warcraft, he was playing with someone on headsets – "you can’t be black, you’re so articulate!" It’s a really big one.
AUD: Seen it do the opposite. Large black man, being articulate gained him hostility.
EG: Different people have different abilities to reposition other people’s opinions of them. Not an intelligence dependent thing, but something black people experience far more than white people. White people assumed – look at your skin/clothing/etc. Don’t have to [I missed the end of this statement!]
SA: See it a lot online. North Carolina [recent passage of amendment banning gay marriage]. So many tweets from upper middle class friends were like, these dumb fucking rednecks. If you can’t respond without “I’m pro-gay rights because I went to college, and these people are all fucking their cousins,” ....you’re perpetuating other stupid shit.
CW: Wanting to ask, when discussions of race and class happen, why does it go to class? What is behind that impulse? "If you just fix the class problems, racism will magically go away."
SA: That is an unfortunate tendency. See – every time someone brings up class in a race discussion, they are always accused of derailing. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it needs to be a part of the conversation. We have to look at each instance and look at what people are doing.
AUD: Reason that class comes up and derails, unconscious derailing – more comfortable with conversation about class than race, which makes us uncomfortable as white people.
(Nisi tried to challenge this audience member's use of the phrase "us," implying "we are all white people," but I think the audience member didn't get it.)
NS: Can’t say anything about that. Almost out of time....Growing up, we had a function called honorary whiteness, also had honorary blackness. Mostly black school. Sanchezes were there. Didn’t know what to do with this non-binary class, decided they were black, because of their class. Same clothes/shoes/neighborhood, assigned them a race based on their class.
AUD Karen Babich: Where are the good conversations happening?
NS: World Fantasy Con 2 years ago. Science fiction conventions.
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