On Being White: A Series (7)

Low-status white becomes high-status black

My own feeling about not quite belonging at events like that in Central Park reflects, for sure, loyalty to my own roots among ordinary Americans, as we felt ourselves to be in the 1950s, when we aspired not to be elite, but simply middle class. But my hesitations may also may indicate why blacks of equal educational achievement as myself are not as quick as I am to take advantage of such events. However much I may feel like an interloper, I do not stand out; I pass. The same cannot be said for blacks; they always stand out, which is not necessarily what you hav in mind when prepare to go out for an evening of music. Unlike in my case, one suspects that they may feel judged as to how well they measure up to the expectations of the milieu. (Something very similar happened to me when I lived in Japan for several years: every time I picked up a pair of chopsticks, every Japanese eye was on me to see how well I performed.) It’s not very relaxing to be constantly self-monitoring, which is demanded by current public discourse on race. Better, blacks might think, to stick with their own gatherings, social and professional, which are numerous in the age of Meet Up and at which they would be among people "like themselves."

No doubt high-status blacks feel the same gratifications (and are subject to the same insecurities) as do high-status whites when they fill up their shopping carts at Whole Foods or Citarella. In my previous post, I mentioned the cultural assumptions of white liberals about low-status whites as well as their condescension toward them. Do high-status blacks feel the same toward the whites who are "not with it"? I suspect that they do. Material and moral “advancement” go together. There always has to be someone to look down on.

Yet how different is their public attitudes toward their own less fortunate brethren, those without their educational advantage or their professional status. I speak not of the views blacks hold among themselves, in churches, in barber shops and hair salons, on the street, especially about the black underclass. But has anyone lately heard them engage in condescension toward folks in their neighborhoods and cohort who still hold to the values of “middle class” life: marriage, good work habits, and church attendance? While affirmative action may have played a role in their own good fortune, more important for their success (and they know it) is that they, like me, grew up with such values. Whatever they may personally think of the behavior of the black underclass, their hesitation may come down to, “There but for the grace of God …”

In contrast, many of us who grew up in the 1950s have forgotten the source of our good fortune. There is, however, nothing “natural” about it: it was constructed by the working classes of this country, white and black, by laborers in the field or on assembly lines, by small business owners, by all the people in the 1950s who managed to “get ahead,” which meant keeping a roof over their head and supporting a family without a college degree.

Liberal condescension toward low-status whites is supported by the myth of the terrible 1950s. The shelves of Barnes and Noble overflow with memoirs and novels in which incest and rape, alcoholism, bigotry, and general benightedness constitute the hidden family life of that decade. Really, it’s a wonder anyone survived such times. The novelist Jonathan Franzen, who wasn’t even born until the end of the 1950s, who wasn’t in college in 1968 and could not have experienced the Sixties (which for many were the 1970s), wrote a novel about the effects on children who grew up in the 1950s. It was called The Corrections, and it won the National Book Award in 2001. Franzen proved that you don’t even have to have experienced the 1950s to know how terrible they were. The converse of this myth is that, since we came of age –– having survived the 1950s, if you like –– we have made the world a better place. If you believe that, you are most definitely a liberal.

Picture credit: Crisis Forums