Busting the Lens and Collapsing the Binaries: Reframing Class

When we talk about oppression and identity we talk about how critical it is for these things to be framed as intersectional.  There is nothing hierarchal, binary or one dimensional about oppression and identity.  For this reason, it is important to discuss class not as a space to bust binaries, but as a place to discuss how busting binaries within a space of intentional murkiness can only contribute to greater oppression.

Class is multi-dimensional, intersectional and is rooted in a particular experience (ie: it's not murkey).  We need to define class in complex ways as well as to develop the skills and consciousness to understand how to break down our class experiences with particularity and clarity.

For example, around the issue of race, we have developed some skill in our movements around dismantling racism and understanding our place within the US race construct.  Even given the limitations to some of the work that has been done, we can point to an emerging praxis.  Around class, no such praxis or skill building exists on a movement wide level.  Most of us struggle with understanding class and our place in it in complex and multi-dimensional ways.  As we said earlier, that only perpetuates classism and supremacy.

Ana’s point in this space is critical:

"Using class as the primary frame for analysis has often failed to take into account the ways in which class has functioned in this society, in particular with the US history of immigration and undocumented labor, as well as with the constructs of race, gender and sexuality.  Class has also been framed as something static that moves along two lines – up and down.  When, from the way I see it, it moves in all kinds of ways given all kinds of factors (and not just race and gender as two binaries, either).”

Maybe rather than framing our work around class as binary busting--we need to frame it as busting through the intentionally murky and linear framing of class.  Clarity, particularity and intersectionality must be a priority when framing and developing models around class.

Most of our peers within social justice work are young, college educated middle and upper class organizers who come to the work with the opportunity to join or leave the work, ourselves included.  We have often arrived to work within a pre-existing community that is defined by an identity (LGBT), an issue (homelessness), or a geographic area ( Empire State or Massachusetts State Prison system) and we have the option of moving in and out of the work.  We are paid for the work that we do, and we may or may not be directly affected by the issues we are working on.  Many times, we are working with the community either in the form of political education or by organizing “them”. 

We have also come to see that when groups of working class or mixed class people do work together, that power often ends up in the hands of those with more education and/or access to resources, especially when the work “just needs to get done” and there aren’t accountable processes in place. 

As Lisa said, we can  “challenge ourselves to dig deeply at the roots of the particularity of our experiences so that we can create a framework around class that is complex (not dualistic) and holds us accountable to whatever class privileges we hold.” 

What immediately comes to mind is that class, in the US specifically, is one area that is not defined in binary terms.  Neither within our social justice movements or our society at large. Part of signing onto American identity is agreeing to the baseline of the American dream, which as a social contract, assumes that we are all able to attain this very middle class ideal.  But that ideal is unattainable for most of us, and the boundaries of the middle class extend very broadly.  So that someone can say they are middle class, whether their family’s median income has been $35,000 or $300,000 over their lifetime

This is not to deny that race, gender and sexuality end up affecting one’s ability to access socio-economic resources.  It is precisely because they do that we think our social justice movements work so hard on issues of identity and on confronting the manifestations of oppression.  However, we think it is super important to extract these from a specific discussion around class in such a way that allows us to see the roots of class privilege and oppression; that allows us to acknowledge race, gender and sexual orientation as categories for maintaining socio-economic privilege, rather than as direct identifiers of socio-economic privilege. 

Given that so many people ascribe themselves to the middle class, and when the media speaks of the middle class, and when our movements are based on the values and ethics of the middle class, how then can we speak of a binary within this realm of experience and identity?

Class is the one area of experience and identity where the binaries are not maintained, and that this is so in order to maintain a certain murkiness that enables the majority of people to believe in the social contract of the American dream.  For, if it did collapse into a binary, we would have the kinds of understanding around class that exist in Latin America, where the majority of people believe that one can only attain wealth and status through family connections, rather than hard work and democratic principles.  While that principle is true in the United States (that one can only really achieve wealth and status through the connections one makes, ie access), there is an underlying belief that hard work and democratic participation enables this possibility. 

The impact of the murkiness around class is similar to the impact that we witness when issues are framed in binary terms.  Class is used--as is race, gender etc--to divide us so that there is little basis for solidarity, collectivity or resource sharing. Not framing the class in binary terms, which we advocate for with most of the other issues, still bolsters the project of domestic and international supremacy perpetuated by the U.S. What this leads me to ponder is what does it mean for our overall premise around binary busting we see that there is no class binary framework to bust and that doing so has only fueled supremacy and maintained the notion of the social contract?

In all of the conversations we have had around binary busting over the years, one thing that we are both very clear on is that when a binary is busted it must be done with the utmost accountability, clarity and solidarity.  Binary busting, as we know, can be a very dangerous act because it can--if done outside of an anti-oppression framework-- further divisions and tensions.  Between communities. Therefore, when we speak of binary busting we are NOT advocating for a complete break down of frameworks like we see around the issue of class. Both extremes--maintaining rigid binaries or breaking down frameworks without clarity, accountability and particularity--lead to the same outcome.

In the case of class constructs within the U.S. , we must challenge ourselves to dig deeply at the roots of the particularity of our experiences so that we can create a framework around class that is complex (not dualistic) and holds us accountable to whatever class privileges we hold.  Class has been kept intentionally murky so that we don't engage in these class conversations across all lines of difference—thus keeping us divided. 

The binary we are busting around class is rigid dualism vs. a complete breaking down of frameworks. In the end, we are advocating for is complexity, particularity and a both/and strategy that allows for structure and fluidity simultaneously.