Lisa’s Story, Part IV: Class & Status

Class is a very volatile issue for both sides of my family over many generations. As a result, there are deep generational patterns that have repeated themselves over many generations. Those patterns are deeply rooted in a tension between money/class vs. family/community—patterns that continue to play themselves out unresolved.

On my father's side my grandparents were immigrants. They lived in the poorest section of a small New England town. Neither of my grandparents were college educated. My father went into the army in order to gain veteran benefits so that he could get an associates degree. My father sold carpeting for a living and eventually became part owner of a small carpeting business.

My father grew up in the poorest section of the small New England town. He went into the military because he saw it as his ticket to getting an education. After he left the military he used his veteran benefits to get an associates degree. Growing up poor left an indelible mark on him. I remember him telling us stories of his childhood spent on a street that no one would venture down except the people who lived on it. He often commented on how dirty the street was and how decapitated the houses were. He told these stories with shame and pain in his voice. Decades later, one of his sources of pride was seeing the street gentrified by developers and wealthy people who, one by one, bought the houses, “fixed them up” and sold them for hundreds and thousands of dollars.

My mother grew up in an immigrant working-middle class family. Her father, who came from a wealthy Lebanese family, walked away from his inherited wealth when my mother was a baby. The reason for this was because his siblings began to fight over the wealth my great-grandfather had accumulated as an antique and oriental rug dealer in Cambridge Massachusetts. My grandfather felt that family was more important than money and he simply refused to engage in the class warfare his siblings had turned into a spectators sport. As a result, my grandfather picked up his family, moved out of my great grandfather’s home, and moved to New Hampshire where he stared his own antique and oriental rug store.

Class issues are at the root of why the relationship between my mother and her siblings is so strained. Repeating a generational pattern, my mother walked away from her family partially due to infighting around my grandfather’s well established business.

My grandfather died in the 1980’s and left behind a business that is, to this day, deeply rooted in the community. Yet, upon my grandfather’s death, one of my mother’s siblings kicked all of the other siblings out of the family business—a business they had all been trained for and groomed to take over collectively. When I look at how this displacement from family, community and collectivity has impacted the three siblings that were displaced, I am reminded of how money and class can be used to erode some of the most important aspects of our lives. Over the years this displacement has eroded the very essence of my family. Everyone is in pain—including the uncle that spends most of his time concealing it by achieving social prominence.

Reflecting on the generational aspects of how class has impacted both sides of my family highlights for me the salience of class in our lives. Neither side of my family has been able to name its impact-- yet class dynamics have shaped almost every aspect of family life. It has determined who speaks to whom and how members of my family do or do not relate to one another.

Overall, it is clear to me that if we had been able to talk about class honestly on both sides of my family less generational damage would have been done and certain patterns in my family would not have taken such firm root.


My Class Experience

Throughout my life, I have had access to education, financial resources, health care and housing. As a child I do not remember needing the basics. We always had food, clothing, education, healthcare and a roof over our heads. Yet, when I dig deeper into my experiences I realize that even though money has come and gone at various times of my life, I was raised by working class, first generation immigrant parents that instilled in me a strong work ethic and values based on sharing and community.

My immediate family (mother, father, sister and I) have had a very mixed class status. When I was young my parents were solidly working class. My father sold carpeting and my mother was a secretary before she began to work inside the home. They lived paycheck to paycheck with two children until I was in my early teens.

Class was one of the things that brought my parents together, yet it was also one of the factors that tore their marriage apart. My father married my mother in order to move up the class ladder. My mother married my father in order to escape the shame and racism of being Arab. For the most part, it was a marriage made of oppressive mutual convenience. The simmering pot of resentment my parents had around their race, class and religious differences ended in a volatile eighteen year marriage.

From 12-17 my fathers business began to do very well and we began to add additions onto our house (including a swimming pool and master bedroom for my parents). We started to travel internationally and my parents started taking us to cultural events and the theater. We had access to excellent health care, education and resources. My parents’ divorce quickly ended all of that. From 1991 on my mother, sister and I have all had a solidly working class experience--working paycheck to paycheck, having sporadic access to health care and insurance, having little to no liquid assets.

Although I have had the privilege of a college education, my experience has been mixed with both privilege and barriers to access. I attended a small, private liberal arts college in New England. I received an excellent education and access to many resources. Yet, the college that I was accepted to only did so because they did not place emphasis on standardized testing. They looked more at my academic record and my interests than at my test scores. If I recall I only got accepted to a very small handful of schools because my test scores were so poor. Having a learning disability has definitely made my educational access a "both/and". Although I graduated from college magna cum laude, I was rejected from almost all of the graduate programs that I applied for because of my test scores and learning disability. As a result, my ability to use education as a way to further any professional or personal goals I set for myself has always been tenuous. Not to mention that for my entire primary and secondary education I was literally battered by public school systems. Both my sister and I were labeled as "severely retarded" and "uneducable" (their language, not mine) by the NH school system for years. As a result, my educational skill set is mixed. I have very poor math skills and I was never deemed "worthy" of a formal English or writing class. I struggle to this day to build up my skills in those areas.

In the late 80’s my parents moved us from New Hampshire to Massachusetts. The New Hampshire school system refused to educate my sister and me because we had severe learning disabilities. After a protracted battle with the NH school system my parents had two options: file a law suit or move to a school district that valued students with disabilities. They chose to move to one of the wealthiest suburbs of Massachusetts because the public school system in this community was integrating students with disabilities into the classroom. My sister and I found ourselves plunged into a white, upper middle class community overnight. The four years that we lived in this small Massachusetts town gave us a broad range of access to material and economic resources.

In my junior year of high school my parents separated. One year later my father declared bankruptcy in an effort to protect THEIR assets from my mother. My mother, who has a high school education and very little work experience, was left on her own to raise two teenage daughters. From this time period forward, my mother, sister and I have worked multiple jobs to make ends meat. Each of us trying to support ourselves and one another. Not until I met my partner in 1998 did I not have to work two or three jobs simultaneously.

My experience tells me that class and money are related but that one does not always determine the other. In other words, even at times in my life where I have had money, my working class sensibilities and experiences kick in. I am a saver, I do not like or need material extravagance and when I have more than I need I’m always thinking about how it can be shared.

Although money can be an indicator of one’s class, I believe that the values and sensibilities that shape who we are also figure into defining our class background. I think that this is where we need to bust the binary around class. Many people think that the amount of money one has defines their class background. Yet, I believe that class is a much deeper and generationally rooted lived reality for most people.

In reflecting upon these experiences, I have come to realize how "up front" the issues of class and race have been in my family. These issues--for many different reasons--have shaped my family relationships and dynamics in very obvert ways. Yet, there has been very little ability on either side of my family to have the hard discussions they need to have to work though their differences. So, in essence there is a big divide between the volatility and pervasiveness of these issues and everyone's willingness to discuss and work though these tensions/issues.

All of this has impacted the way I live my life now. I hate to fight around money because relationships are more important to me than money. My red flag always goes up when I am around people who value money over relationships and community. It makes me feel very distrustful. I'm big on sharing resources in any way that I can because my beliefs around community and solidarity outweigh my attachment to money. Yet, I also feel strongly about self- care and about using whatever money and resources I have to stay in this work and in my community for the long haul.